I have old photos of myself that make me want to crawl back into that year for five minutes, which is fucking insane because I remember how badly I wanted out. Adulthood has this fucked-up little party trick where it makes you nostalgic for versions of yourself you were miserable being and willoh turns that emotional whiplash into ‘CU’, an alt-pop and indietronica track that feels like opening an old camera roll and discovering your past has started flirting with you again. A picked guitar slips in first, then the production starts bending around her voice until the whole thing feels half-memory and half-glitch. It is dreamy enough to pull you under and sharp enough to keep you slightly uneasy. Basically, nostalgia showed up looking hot and carrying receipts.
She barely gets started before the person she used to be is already tugging at her sleeve. “Why won’t I listen? I’m always too involved / I think I missed it, I think I miss it all.” That admission catches the nasty little trick inside romanticizing a rough chapter after enough time has passed to soften the edges. You remember the feeling differently once you are safely outside it, and suddenly something painful starts looking strangely desirable again. Girl, memory is a manipulative little bitch because give it six months and the era you cried through somehow has a flattering filter and a soundtrack.
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The part that gets me is how urgently she wants contact with that earlier self. “And you grew older, wish I could see ya / Before it’s over” turns growing up into this weird race against losing touch with who she was before adulthood finishes rearranging everything. willoh’s own explanation makes the longing especially complicated because she knows that previous chapter held real darkness, yet some part of her still wants to reach back toward the person living inside it. I know that feeling because nothing makes your old chaos look cuter than an adult-ass calendar full of responsibilities.
Then “I-I wanna see ya, I don’t believe you’re real” makes the nostalgia start feeling almost uncanny. She has revisited this person in her head so often that the girl she misses has begun to feel invented by memory, which is where ‘CU’ gets especially good. She is asking whether that past self still exists anywhere beyond the story she keeps telling herself about her. I have absolutely scrolled through old photos and thought, who the fuck was she and why does she look like she knew something I don’t?
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willoh is a Springfield, Missouri singer-songwriter and producer who built her early music in her bedroom using recording equipment bought with savings from a hometown McDonald’s job. Her self-produced debut, not more than that, but more please, arrived in early 2025, and the music since has kept stretching her alternative sound into increasingly strange territory. Now ‘CU’ leads toward the BUCK EP, due October 23 on Santa Anna. The leap from fast-food savings to this next chapter happened fast as hell, and her music still carries the curiosity of somebody happily fucking around with sound until it becomes hers.
‘CU’ leaves me with the rude little truth that growing up can make you grieve past selves you would never actually choose to become again. willoh lets the track stay on the fence because that indecision is where the feeling lives, and the glitching final stretch makes the past feel unstable right when she is trying to reach it. Apparently adulthood includes missing your old shit while remembering why you escaped it, which is rude as fuck and painfully familiar. I hate how much I understand this song.
