The Jakarta-native singer-songwriter Natasha Kurnia, better known as Navakaine, started her songwriting journey at 14 years old, with nothing but a pen, paper, and an old piano in her living room.
She began writing about the movies she watched or the video games she played, but it wasn't until a year later when she moved to Seattle, that she began writing about her newfound life in the United States. Her first relationship, and its consequent end, became the potent fuel for her songwriting. After making the move to New York City as a college freshman, she started crafting away. Her experiences as a late teenager trying to get over a breakup in arguably the most intense and euphoric city in the whole world shaped her debut album, Aftersummer.
As a result, Aftersummer became a sonic landscape, where its skyline is shaped like New York's, and the characters that live in it are pretty, heartbroken, and larger than life.
Though Aftersummer was technically finished in the Fall of 2018, the album was never properly readied for a release, and Navakaine went on hiatus instead. In 2019, she experienced a personal tragedy that pushed her to find a home in Europe. In July 2020, she threw caution to the wind and finally released the unpolished Aftersummer worldwide, with zero marketing. The titular track off the album succeeded on entering the Fresh Finds Indonesia playlist on #3 on Spotify.
For the past couple of years, Navakaine has been quietly creating her next chapter, Woman in Fear, in her newfound home in Stockholm, Sweden. The first single off her sophomore album, titled “21”, will be released on July 15, 2022. Woman in Fear is set to be released some time in 2023.