Ryan Hemsworth is a Canadian musician and producer who grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Before his debut full-length, Guilt Trips, arrived in 2013, he’d already been gaining traction for his collaborative work and remixes for the likes of Lana Del Rey and Cat Power. Across genres, Hemsworth’s always had his fingers on the pulse; one of the artists featured on that first album was Tinashe, and subsequent collaborators included Alex G and Mitski. It’s been eight years since his last album under his own name, Elsewhere, but he’s kept busy: on top of raising two kids, he’s been exploring different avenues for genre experimentation and collaboration, tapping Hand Habits, Hovvdy, Claud, and more for the indie rock-based project Quarter-Life Crisis and forming Bodysync with Giraffage. The duo’s sophomore album, Nutty (released in June 2024, the same month Tinashe, who appeared on their first LP, too, got her first solo entry on the Billboard Hot 100), was self-described as “dance music by fans of DIY punk and Y2K pop.” Hemsworth’s new album Numbskull, which deftly balances his collaborative tendencies with ambient introspection, wears that fandom on its sleeves, compressing his most formative influences in emo, punk, and straight-up pop. It’s simultaneously some of his most hard-hitting and quietly affecting work to date.
We caught up with Ryan Hemsworth for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about taking time between projects, the collaborations on Numbskull, reconnecting with the guitar, and more.
What’s your headspace like now that the album is out? Whenever I speak to an artist who has children, I realize their experience with the rollout process changes quite a bit.
Yeah, you’re right. It’s really different. My last album of my own was 2018, and that was a year before I had my first kid. Honestly, I think it’s better in a lot of ways now. In general, when you become a parent, your priorities shift, and sometimes you can take that in stride, and sometimes it’s a tug-of-war trying to hang on to youthful things that feel important to you. But for me now, the album came out yesterday, and I doing my posting for it, and then I just went and played with my kid and played Minecraft for a while with him. [laughs] So it changes the things that you worry about. When I was in my twenties putting out projects, I was maybe stressing too much over stuff I now realize wasn’t really necessary.
Did you actively think about shifting away from putting out music under your own name, and was it a conscious decision to return to it?
By 2019-ish or so, I was definitely burning out in a lot of ways, just from putting out a lot of stuff and touring nonstop. It was always under my own name, but I think I’ve always had this career dysmorphia, or something like that, where I like just working with a lot of different people, and that process is the thing for me. That allows me to work with different people within different genres, and I’m just more excited to make stuff that feels good, and it doesn’t really need to be in one direction or the other. That’s also kind of bitten me in the ass in a few ways, like with what people expect if they see a new release or go to a show and expect one thing, and it might be different. That’s something I’ve tried not to overthink, even though your brain forces you at times to ask, “What am I doing? Who am I supposed to be to the people who actively choose to listen to me?”
At that point, five or six years ago, I was like, “Alright, I’m just going to try a new moniker.” I did that with Quarter Life Crisis, a project I started that was actively more playing acoustic guitar – still working with different singers, but trying to actually go in the direction of music that I listen to more realistically when I’m at home on headphones. Then on the other side of it, I started Bodysync, which is the opposite kind of dance music with my friend Charlie [Yin]. I wasn’t really realizing it at the moment, but the new name part just feels like it resets your brain a little bit. I find it hard to disassociate working on a thing and having fun from when it goes out in the world and gets packaged; there’s a perception of it as soon as it hits streaming apps and goes out to sites for reviews. So it’s a nice thing to reset, and honestly, this project – just because time has forced it to – feels like a reset as well.
When you started working on demos, how early in the process did you think about which moniker this or that might fit into?
I’ve actually learned to try and not go in with a plan for the most part – even with just sitting down and wanting to make a song or a demo. If I do go in with an intention, I feel like my brain just messes with me and turns it into the opposite thing an hour or two later. I think there’s something contrarian about how I sit down and work, and what path I think I want to go, and where it actually goes. And part of that is just probably from relying more on the sampling process, which can very quickly change your path if you open up a different file or put on a different record or something, and you’re like, “Oh, actually, this sounds sick, I want to go this way now.”
I guess the most important thing is that I always just say yes to whatever comes up and sounds good, instead of, “Wait, no, I wanted to make this house track, but this sounds sad.” If I just say yes, mute the drums and try different drums, it becomes this whole other thing that feels better. I try to appreciate that I can do those things, because some artists have a specific sound, and that’s the direction that they have to go in some ways. People I talk to have told me that, where they’re like, “Oh, I wish I could just drop what I’m doing and just work on a completely different-sounding project.” And I’m like, “Why don’t you? Let’s do it.” So when I’ve worked with vocalists, it’s trying to enter with that mindset of, “We don’t have to do the thing that is expected at all. I don’t think we should.”
I think part of the expectation is that the more time you’ve spent making things, the more self-conscious you become, but the success comes from learning how to be less self-conscious about all those ideas that come up.
I think that’s part that you have to actively work at. After 15 to 20 years of putting out music, in some ways I can feel more self-conscious than ever before. Especially once you’ve got a lot of stuff out, and how visibly easy it is to access this stuff for people now with Spotify and everything, you’re just building up on top of your past catalog. It’s really easy to always have that kind in your line of sight, even as you’re working on new music. Even with this project, I was just really trying to return to that naive feeling of working on music in your first few years, and just not thinking about this discography or what people are going to think about this next thing if they know they didn’t like the last thing I did. You have to almost psych yourself out in a way.
You mentioned the Quarter Life Crisis project, which kind of planted a seed for this record. Part of what excited me about the new record is how you push against these expectations around how a collaboration might sound. I’m thinking about the Allie single you produced under that moniker five years ago, and how different it sounds from the Allie collaboration on this record. There’s maybe a different freedom now in the way you’re bringing these artists into your world.
Yeah, completely. I think it is a test of confidence when it’s your own project and you have collaborators getting involved in that way. The people I work with, I’m a fan of fully, so I’m always trying to respect where they’re coming from. My initial thought always is to meet them kind of beyond halfway; I want to meet them where they are. I learned over the years that generally, if someone says, “Yes, I want to work on something,” they want to meet you at least halfway to where you are. So that has just been trying to embody that confidence a little more as a producer, just to be like, “They’re working with me for a reason, and I want to get the best out of that, and not just do a, ‘Well, they usually do this kind of slow indie rock sound, so I’ll just mimic that.'” They’re coming this way because they want to do some weird stuff, so let’s do it. They’re allowing themselves to be vulnerable in this moment to have you sculpt an idea into something bigger and better than the sum of both parts. So yeah, you do have to walk in with your confidence.
How did you go about choosing what to share with each guest on the record?
Like you said, the Quarter Life Crisis project was definitely a sort of seed to this bigger project that I maybe didn’t realize at the time. A big part of it is just trying to remember to believe in yourself. When I was putting stuff out really constantly through SoundCloud days and all that, and then the more I slowed down – that space in between each release – I felt more and more of my confidence fade away in a confusing way. So gearing up for this project was just putting another brick in the wall of building myself up more and more again, and seeing from the results – from actually just doing it and reaching out to people – that people are happy with stuff when I just follow what feels good in the moment and what sounds best to me.
With ‘I Missed You More’, the Nana Lourdes one, that started as a totally different instrumental. She’d written to it and recorded, but I was so happy with what Nana had done, and I was like, “I feel like I’m just doing a not-good version, instrumentally, of a band that I really like.” So I ended up basically remixing that song and taking the vocals, just working to the acapella basically, and ending up with something that felt like, “Oh yeah, this is actually me. This sounds like me in my head.” Part of that is remixing has always been this huge part, unintentionally, of my career, because it was an easy way to do imaginary collaborations in the beginning when I didn’t have people to work with. I feel like that was my thing, anytime I get attached to a label or whatever, I kind of want to move away from it quickly. So a big part of that as well was like, this is my process: I work on stuff, and then I change it and flip it upside down, and then it ends up being something that feels right.
‘Atypical’ is another one I can imagine going through different versions.
Yeah, that one vocally, more so. The instrumental stayed pretty similar or the same as when I first sent it to Allie, which is probably one of the only ones in that way, but because actually I was originally just making a quick remix of a Katy Perry song [laughs], and then I was like, “Actually, this instrumental’s too good just not to use for anything officially.” So I sent the idea to Allie, and she was super down. But vocally, that was a fun one to produce, because I really wanted the vocals to sound almost alien at times, and messing with the format so it goes high and low. Again, just the vocal approach for the whole project was saturation, distortion – just make it sound like everybody’s singing through a guitar pedal, pretty much, which worked well for all these different voices.
That’s an approach that neatly aligns with a band like MSPAINT, but it’s fun to hear some of the other voices filtered and in the same way, fitting them together.
Yeah, and it’s fun, too, because usually, when I have a bunch of people on a project, they don’t always even know each other. So I sent the album when it was done to Allie, and then Allie was like, “Whoa, I’m next to Tegan and Sara, that’s sick.” [laughs] It was similar for a few people, but a lot of artists I’ve worked with in the past end up talking and working on stuff. It’s like a weird networking thing that ends up happening sometimes as well, which is really cool to see, and not something I’d expect.
Can you think of a time when that happened?
Even through this project, on ‘One Step’ and ‘Break’, Sarah [Tudzin] from illuminati hotties is doing the vocals, and she had known Allie for a while. They started a podcast, and they were talking, and I had come up. They sent it to me after because they said they mentioned me, but I heard them being like, “Oh, I’m on his project,” and “Oh, yeah, we made a song.” [laughs] It’s this weird connection in that way. Over the years, it’s been really interesting just to see what people have turned into as well. On my first project, Tinashe’s on it, and the second one has Alex G – a lot of these artists that, again, I was just a really big fan of and thought they were doing awesome stuff independently at the time. It’s really cool to see a lot of these people just blow up and have people see what I saw in them. Not to take ownership or anything, but just to be a proud fan.
You said something earlier about slowing down and learning to be okay with the space between projects. When did it start feeling good to embrace that pace?
It’s hard to say, because I don’t want to make it sound like I’m in some zen place in that way. Especially since I started putting stuff out and touring, music has been my main thing; I don’t have another job or anything. When you’re living that way, as a lot of artists do and try to balance, it’s really hard to separate the financial aspect of music, touring, and all that stuff. I can’t say that’s ever just not been on my mind or part of the process of what’s motivating you to put out a new thing, because I think that’s just there. Otherwise, I would just happily work some job and never put anything out and just be happy with what I make.
Over the last few years, I was definitely off and on feeling frantic and like I had to get another thing out. Eventually, probably in the last two years, I started realizing maybe taking time is necessary. Maybe this is really just part of what some people need, especially to recalibrate. Looking back at other artists that I love, sometimes they take a long time between projects, and a lot changes for them. I think it’s really important to look back at other people you love and musicians you respect in that way, and you realize you don’t need to only be stuck in the Spotify rollout, constant machine mode at all times. You really need to also live to be able to be inspired to do new things.
Do you have peers or artists in mind that have served as an example for you in that way?
When I’m home and doing my thing, I’m just listening to music and finding old stuff that’s exciting. A lot of the time I’m looking at a lot of bands that I love in the ’90s and artists in the ’70s – I know there’s been this intense acceleration due to the internet and the way everything needs to be digested faster now, but to look at the album cycle that used to be four years in a normal way for most acts is like, okay, maybe that was a necessary cycle that was good for people, that worked for the listener and the creator in that way. I think being able to try and accept that, and at the same time know that it’s just not the same anymore, and you need to find your balance and your version of it – I mean, I’m hoping my next thing won’t take six years or whatever.
Speaking of album cycles, it’s interesting to me that you announced the record with a pair of singles that showcase its duality. When you were coming up with songs like ‘One Step’ and ‘A Display of Emotion’, were you always confident about them belonging to the same project?
Yeah, I did intend to keep those sounds kind of separate early on in a way. I think my immediate gut reaction to how to arrange these things, or what goes where, is like, “Oh, loud things go together, and quiet things go to the other thing.” But once I started really sitting in on iTunes making playlists of demos and going to albums that I am a big fan of – a lot of emo records, post-rock, and early 2000s post-hardcore, where there’s really loud moments and then just a really quiet track – I was realizing that’s really important to me as an album listener. I think you’re just also giving people more of yourself and how your brain doesn’t just think in one way. So that eventually felt really important to me to have that dynamic shifts, ups and downs, and quieter stuff like ‘Winter, Spring’ and the final track.
Do you feel like a different part of your brain was activated when you were making songs like ‘Winter, Spring’ and ‘Shifting and Turning’? Were they coming from a different place, emotionally?
Yeah, probably. I would say ‘One Step’ and ‘Break’ and a few of those were probably made in a pretty close span of time, probably in the same month or two. And then ‘Shifting and Turning’ was a bit older – old enough that I couldn’t get the project file back without having an error when I opened it, when I needed to master it. So I was like, “Alright, I’m just going to use this MP3 I have” because it felt necessary at that point to have it. That’s another part of the process of mastering songs that range between one and five years old – it’s a weird separate process, too, because I changed the programs that I use, so there were a lot of missing files. Stuff that’s interesting, but pretty annoying once I was in the final stage of the project.
Where my headspace was at with those ones… I think the quieter ones definitely come from good days, basically, and the louder ones come from bad days. I kind of stopped working with a few people that I was working with for a really long time for music and going through a lot of changes and things that were frustrating as well. Around then was when making louder, heavier-feeling, distorted stuff felt really good. It’s weird that those changes helped to direct this sound in a direction that I didn’t realize I wanted to go in. The emotional changes were those initial things that feel bad that I feel like actually turned into useful things for where I would end up chasing this sound.
Was it around these changes that Topshelf came in and felt like the right home for these songs?
Yeah, because it had been so long, and some of the stuff I’d been doing in between, like Bodysync, was all self-released. I kind of got used to that and was like, “Well, whatever this ends up being, I’m just going to self-release, and I’m sure that’ll be fine.” I think the more it became a real thing, it felt like I didn’t want to do a bad job of presenting my own thing. Also, staying on top of the label side of things is harder and harder on your own, especially. So I basically had the project done, and I’ve known a few of the Topshelf guys for ten or so years. One of them I email with off and on and just share music with, and he’s a label manager there. I just sent it to him and was like, “How do you feel these days about self-releasing? Any tips?” And then he was just like, “This album sounds great. We could put it out, basically.” And I was like, “Oh, yeah. I mean, I didn’t think that was an option, but that would be awesome.” [laughs] So it just stemmed from naively sending it for tips, and then grew into a bigger thing, because I’ve already been a big fan of them. Anytime they’ve needed stuff for supporting their artists or whatever, I’ve been down to help, so it worked out.
Going back to those dynamics, I’m curious about how you’ve grouped the collaborations and the abrasive moments on the record together in the first half.
I still believe in the vinyl A-side, B-side approach. I think there’s almost a proven scientific method to that – getting halfway through something and having a pause. I wasn’t making the music with that intention, but once you’re at the arrangement part and you’ve got all these things that could be in one place or another, that presentation is still really important regardless of how big playlists are. I listen to playlists, but I do think the ebb and flow of all that is really important. I wanted to go pretty opposite of how I usually do, which is a slow burn, easing someone into something. I wanted to hit you over the head a little bit with the heavier aspects of this project, which feel really important. Not having stuff out for a long time under my own name and everything, it felt important to come back and at least musically kick the door open a little bit. And then, hopefully, by the time you’re into it, you get surprised by the quieter moments. Musically and harmonically, it’s all hopefully speaking the same language, but I think that shift in dynamics is important to keep you going.
As someone who grew up burning CDs every day after school and really caring about my Winamp playlists, even just those details – like how many seconds of silence between this song and that one need to be there – are things that generally, as a listener, you’re not noticing, and you shouldn’t be noticing. Hopefully it should just feel right. But I actually do like that granular part of the process.
You talked about burning CDs after school, and that youthful side of you getting into music is part of the framework of this record, with it being more guitar-forward – reconnecting with the music you grew up with, essentially. Do you remember thinking about those things, or was it a throughline that emerged later?
In my experience with getting into music – first as a kid who’s a fan of bands, rappers, and whatever I can find, and then learning guitar in junior high – the guitar feels really connected to being younger. Once I started playing it and learning it, it was every single day all I cared about. That was just how it was forever, pretty much until I started to play shows and just began DJing out of an offer on the table. I figured I’d learn how to do that, and then that was almost decided for me for the next ten years of my life through my twenties: I’m a producer, and I’ll DJ I feel like my relationship with the guitar changed in that way, so it’s almost like a rekindling feeling with this, of just picking it up, playing it, and listening to it without having an objective.
When you’re a teenager, you’re just going home and learning songs, sitting there doing that for hours, and there’s no end goal. It’s really such a good feeling. The further I got into actually making music and putting it out, it became really hard not to think about, “What am I doing with this thing that I’m making right now? Where is this gonna go? How’s it going to be packaged and presented to people?” So a big part of this time I’ve had to change, reflect, and try new things, was coming back to that feeling of just sitting and allowing time to pass while you play guitar and try things, not allowing yourself to stress too much about what you’re gonna do with it.
As a parent, too, you’re seeing that every day – that mindset can seem so alien as an adult, and you’re suddenly bearing witness to it every single day.
Yeah, I think so. It’s definitely made me hyper-aware of just allowing moments in your life to be bored, because that was a pivotal thing that is a non-thing when you’re younger – you’re not thinking about, “Oh, I’m bored, so I’m gonna do this thing because I don’t know what else to do.” But reflecting on that, those are the moments that spark this new idea, or trying something new randomly that will end up being a very important aspect of your life later on. Definitely as a parent now, it’s easy to see how, with the evolution of technology and just how things exist now like iPads and YouTube, we remove any feelings of boredom ever. I’m trying to be conscious of that as well for my kids, remembering that a lot of good stuff just comes out of not having anything to do or not worrying about time as much.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Ryan Hemsworth’s Numbskull is out now via Topshelf Records.
