By Hasan Beyaz
xiihu didn't set out to be a musician. Until she was 17, she was studying computer programming. Music was background noise, something she listened to rather than made. Then one day, out of curiosity more than ambition, she opened GarageBand and recorded herself singing through the microphone on her earphones. That small, unplanned moment changed everything.
From there, she taught herself to produce, took vocal lessons, and built a practice entirely on her own terms. By 19, unable to find producers making the kind of music she wanted, she decided to become one herself. Today, xiihu operates across three roles – producer, singer-songwriter, and DJ – and each one feeds the others. Ideas tested in front of a club crowd make their way back into the studio. Production choices shape how she selects records for a set. Nothing is separate.
Her music sits at the intersection of R&B, hip-hop, and electronic, and is emotionally candid by design. Honesty isn't a stylistic choice for xiihu so much as a baseline. Every song she writes is rooted in something that actually happened. When her debut album Synthetic Heart arrived in 2021, it carried the raw, unstable energy of someone who had just found a creative outlet where they could make sense of themselves. Last year's Signals went somewhere more specific – written in the aftermath of her first long-term relationship ending, it was an attempt to process heartbreak by documenting it in full. Earlier this year, the FROSTBITE EP brought a colder, harder edge, its band-influenced sound shaped partly by the musical taste of the person she had feelings for at the time.
Her latest single, "tellmenow," lands somewhere between elation and anxiety – the feeling of being completely taken with someone while not knowing if they feel the same.