Talking About Bug and Gardens with Kacy Hill

The DIY Festival is right around the corner! To get everyone familiar with the event, SLUG sat down with a few of the performers, including—lucky for us—national headlining musician Kacy Hill. The nearly genreless artist experiments in pop, country, folk, electronic and many other sounds throughout her catalog. Here, she chats about her relationship to hip-hop, her unique view on creative success and her latest album Bug.

SLUG: While your solo stuff fits more into the singer-songwriter category, you’ve worked with some pretty big-name hip-hop/rap artists—being signed to Kanye West’s GOOD Music, landing a feature with Travis Scott on his track “90210” and being produced by DJ Mustard, Terrace Martin and others. Do you feel a closeness to hip-hop/rap and if so, how does that impact your music?

Hill: I don’t think there’s many direct influences in the music that I make, but I think that there’s something really cool about working in that world and kind of experimenting. Something that I really admire about hip-hop and rap is they’re very experimental with song structure and production over the last, I don’t know, 20 years, especially. I think that hip-hop and rap have dictated and influenced pop music so much. And I do think that it’s cool, being in the room … I’ve learned so much from those rooms and from those artists in there, risk-taking and questioning how songs are structured and how songs are made. I really admired that. There really aren’t rules in the way that there are with other [types of] songwriting, you know? 

SLUG: A notable aspect of your rise to fame is being signed to GOOD Music and departing the label soon after. Your following projects were self-released and now you’re back with Nettwerk. For you, what is the difference between independent creation and being signed to a label?  

Hill: I mean, my experience with Nettwerk is very different from my first label experience, I think because they’re independent [as opposed to] a major label. I’m able to call the shots a little more, but honestly, it’s so nice to have a label again and to have a team, because when you do things fully independently, like with distribution, there’s the added bonus of, “Oh, you call the shots on everything all the time.” I think if you have a label partner that understands what you want to do, it’s really good and important to have discourse about, like, “Okay, what if we were to release this thing this way, and try it this way?” I do trust a lot of their input, and I can still sort of go with my gut on what I’m thinking creatively. But it’s just so nice to have a team. I feel like that’s the biggest difference—you have people behind you who are able to assist and ultimately execute your vision a little bit better. Yeah, has it made this most recent project with Bug a lot easier in that way? It’s not that it’s easier, it’s just that we have more resources. It’s also hard to compare to because the last two albums I put out before Bug were very much still in pandemic times. I feel like it was really hard to make a dent in the world of music during those times. This feels like the first project since my first album where it’s like, “Okay, you can tour normally and you can do stuff.” It makes such a huge difference having a team, where[as] when you do fully independent stuff, you end up getting really caught up in the weeds of the tiny little tasks. There’s obviously still plenty of tiny little tasks, but it’s very time consuming, putting out your own music. And I’m kind of a control freak, so I ended up doing a lot. 

SLUG: Was the original album cover for Bug inspired by The Strokes’ debut album cover for Is This It? 

Hill: I didn’t even realize or I didn’t make that connection until someone else commented [on] it. And I was like, “Oh, interesting.” But they’re pretty different—no, it was not at all [an influence]. But I do love that album cover. That’s a classic album cover that also got censored.

SLUG: In a 2024 NYLON article, you noted that starting a small garden changed your whole perception of creation and success. Could you tell me a bit about that? How do you go about “planting seeds”?

Hill: I mean, I’ve been doing music for a while now. I think when I got into it, I just got thrown into the deep end, where my impression of making music and of the music industry was just like, “Okay, everyone makes a lot of money.” I had so many influential people around me that when that didn’t pan out the way that I thought it would, or everyone was telling me it would, I felt like I had really failed. I think that that’s not really a fair assessment  in hindsight, because there are so many things that are out of my control. It took me a number of years to sort of reshape my mindset, and I think the garden was really crucial in this and just [thinking] like, “I am not really owed anything,” you know? I’m not owed success or any amount of money, regardless of how hard I work or whether I’m a good person. I think in growing a garden, it was sort of this reminder that like—I don’t know, it sounds a little like kooky, cheesy, whatever—but you grow things and there [are] so many things that can go wrong between planting a seed and having something that you can eat that actually tastes good. It was sort of a reminder that in this journey of any creative endeavor, there are so many things that can go wrong that are not in my control. When something does happen, when I do get something that feels like success or feels gratifying, I have to take the time to enjoy it and appreciate it. It was sort of a lesson in gratitude, honestly, more than anything.

SLUG: Your childhood nickname was “Bug,” inspiring the name of your recent album. If you were a bug, what bug would you be? 

Hill: Mmm, interesting question. Depends on the day. I would love to be a monarch butterfly or something. You know what? Maybe I’d be a swallowtail butterfly, because when they’re caterpillars, they eat lots of fennel and dill. I love fennel and dill. Once they’re butterflies, they’re beautiful and [they] get to fly around. I almost said a bee or ladybug. Man, bees are so crazy—they live really intense, very purposeful lives, and that’s beautiful. But they just work to serve the hive, I don’t think I’m cut out for that. 

SLUG: What artist outside of your genre would you like to collaborate with?

Hill: I know inside of my genre, but I don’t even know what my genre is. My two dream collaborations are Peter Gabriel or Sheryl Crow.  

SLUG: What does Bug smell like? 

Hill: You know what? It’s so crazy, I made a candle for it! We basically made a brand based [on] Bug called Bugworld. This is what Bug smells like—it’s called Garden Greens.

Kacy Hill will be performing on Friday, August 9 at 9:10 p.m. at the KRCL 90.9 FM stage for Craft Lake City’s 16th Annual DIY Festival. You can by single-day tickets or three-day packages at craftlakecity.com/diy-festival-2024. For more info on Kacy Hill, follow her on Instagram at @kacyhill or listen to her newest album Bug on all streaming platforms.

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