On a grey London morning, I logged into a Zoom call that opened onto an equally overcast Toronto. Lia Pappas-Kemps appeared onscreen softly spoken and alert, the kind of presence that feels inward but steady. At 21, the Toronto-based singer-songwriter is days away from introducing herself more formally to the world with “Towers,” a new single arriving January 23, and the announcement of her debut album Winged, due March 13, 2026. The music positions her among a lineage of writers who value restraint and emotional precision over spectacle, songs that feel lived-in rather than performed. What struck me immediately was how closely her speaking voice mirrors her songwriting: thoughtful, unforced, and articulate.
What is your vibe for today?
My vibe? I’m feeling good today. I just woke up, and Toronto’s pretty gloomy. So I feel like it’s kind of annoying to be like, the weather is making me feel exactly how it is. But I guess I’m feeling a bit gloomy, but I’m really excited. And I played a show a couple of days ago, and I’m still kind of reeling from that. It was really fun.
That oscillation between heaviness and excitement is a useful entry point into Winged, which Lia describes as a document of a very specific window in her life. Unlike her earlier EP Gleam, the album feels anchored to a narrower emotional range, not smaller, but more focused, attentive to the instability of being nineteen and twenty and not yet settled into certainty.
Winged is your first full-length album. When you look at it as a whole, what does it capture about where you are in your life right now?
I feel like it feels so specific to the last two years of my life. I’m different from my EP, Gleam, because I feel like those ages from sixteen to mid-twenties are so transient and change so much year to year that even listening back to those earlier songs, I feel so vastly different. So I feel like this record is so specific to being nineteen and twenty and just feelings of doubt.
I feel like the apexes of the album are really grandiose, and maybe I have some sort of bravado that I’m trying to exude, while also the lower points are really, really full of self-doubt, maybe. So I think that’s just exemplary of those years of flip-flopping between being like, I’m the greatest, and then also being like, I am the worst, and constantly going in and out of that. I think.
“Towers” sits near the emotional center of the album, not because it explains everything, but because it moves cleanly between those extremes. It’s more direct than much of the record, both musically and lyrically, and that clarity is part of why Lia chose it as the first song listeners would hear.
“Towers” sits at the center of the record. What made it feel like the right entry point?
I feel like picking singles has always been sort of tricky for me because I don’t know how to. I feel like you have to balance a sort of storyline of introducing the record while also being like, what makes sense maybe more commercially?
And I feel like this song is probably the most fun on the record. And I think it’s just the most straightforward in its message. So I feel like maybe that’s why I chose it. I also think that it showcases that feeling I was talking about of just frenetic self-doubt and the feeling of like, what is happening? So I think that.
One of the defining qualities of “Towers” is its intimacy, which comes in part from Lia’s decision to preserve elements of the original demo. The recording carries the sound of a moment captured, something she speaks about with clear conviction.
You’ve spoken about holding onto elements of the original demo for “Towers.” What do demos give you emotionally that finished recordings sometimes don’t?
Totally. So much. I try not to hold onto demos too closely because I think first iterations of songs are often what feel like the truest form of them, even though songs take on so many forms. I sometimes even feel that about voice memos.
But this song, I think as we tried to re-record, it became glaring that we actually did capture something in the demo that we probably won’t be able to recreate. I think there is like a time span for a song sometimes where you capture the thing immediately and you have to stay true to that. Because if you leave it too long or you try to mess with it too much, that feeling won’t be the same.
And also, I recorded it with my cousin, and we were living together in Montreal at that point. And I think that apartment specifically had a specialness to it that we recorded a lot there. And I think the stuff that we did record there that we kept feels very intentional. So I think that’s part of it.
Throughout Winged, moments of uncertainty recur — relationships, self-image, and ambition — but the songs don’t feel diaristic in the traditional sense. Lia describes songwriting as something that reveals itself over time, often before she consciously understands what she’s processing.
Many of the songs on Winged deal with moments where something feels uncertain or close to breaking. Do you write with distance, or are these songs coming from experiences you’re still inside of?
When I think about songwriting for myself, it never feels totally current. Even though in retrospect, I feel like I am saying everything that I haven’t come to terms with yet in the music. And in that way, I feel like songwriting is kind of like fortune-telling, where I’m like, I’m revealing something to myself that I haven’t admitted.
And I think listening back to this record now, I’m like, dang, I said everything that I didn’t realise until months later, and I need to listen to myself more, maybe. But I think at the moment, it doesn’t feel like this is what I’m experiencing and this is what I’m writing. It doesn’t feel so direct for me.
Despite being praised for lyrical intimacy, Lia doesn’t approach songwriting with a strong sense of self-censorship. Her writing tends to remain open-ended, allowing specificity without naming names, emotion without exposition.
As someone often praised for lyrical intimacy, how do you decide what stays private and what becomes part of a song?
I don’t think I’ve ever really questioned lyrics. I don’t think I’ve ever — and maybe that’s just because my lyrics can be vague. I think I do write specifically, but I don’t know if someone would listen to my song and be like, that’s about me. Maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t dealt with that yet.
So I don’t necessarily edit, but I may have to do that eventually, I guess. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. But I think I tend to just stay true to what I originally write. Yeah.
Although Lia began sharing music publicly at a young age, she describes the act of songwriting itself as largely unchanged — still private, still instinctive — even as the audience has grown.
You started sharing music publicly at a young age. How has your relationship to songwriting changed between your early releases and the album?
I think songwriting has sort of remained really constant in my life. And when I think back to writing songs as a young teenager, I think that feeling has stayed pretty much exactly the same. Which is really private for me, or tends to be. And it’s just something I like to do, if that makes sense.
I don’t think that sharing it has changed that part of it for me. I think maybe my process has changed in terms of sharing it with people after I’ve written it more. I think maybe I was more private about songs I had written when I was younger because I felt unsure of them. But now I feel like I am more excited to share ideas with people. But I think the root private songwriting part of it is the exact same.
Completion, she admits, is still elusive. Songs often end not because they meet a structural expectation, but because they reach a point of emotional resolution.
How do you know when a song is done?
I never know. I feel like I’m constantly questioning that. And I was talking to someone recently about how their songwriting process is writing an insane amount for a song and then having to cut it down. And that has never been my problem. I feel like I struggle so much to finish music.
And I guess I know it’s done when I can play it through and I feel satisfied and I don’t feel like I need to write more. And I often feel like it can be a really short song. There are a couple songs on the record that are kind of weird form-wise, like they don’t necessarily come back to a chorus or it doesn’t quite make sense as a pop song.
And I feel like I could have played through that and been like, okay, let’s repeat it, let’s have a chorus. But yeah, I guess it’s just a feeling of like, that feels finished to me, and I’ve also said exactly what I need to say.
As Winged prepares to meet listeners, Lia resists the urge to define how it should be received. Her focus remains on the songs themselves and on what happens when they’re shared in a room.
With Winged about to be out in the world, what do you hope listeners understand about you after sitting with the album front to back?
I don’t even know if I have a hope for that. I think in an ideal world, I feel like people wouldn’t think about me at all. And maybe that’s weird. But I feel like in some way, I wish that people could listen to it and not think about who I am at all and just listen to the songs.
But maybe if they were to put a face to the music, which people do, of course, maybe like… Honestly, I have no idea. I have no idea how people are going to take this music.
When asked who she wants listeners to understand her as, her answer circles back to the same place: the work, and the live experience that brings it into focus.
Who do you want listeners to know you as?
I feel like I may want the focus to be on the writing of the songs. And yeah, I would love for people to hear the record and be like, I would love to see that live, and get excited about coming out to shows.
I think that’s what I’m most excited about for this year, to start playing some shows and play the music live, and for that to be really connected to the record.
With “Towers” arriving January 26 and Winged following in March, Lia Pappas-Kemps isn’t presenting a persona so much as opening a window into a moment of becoming. The songs don’t rush to explain themselves, and neither does she. What emerges instead is a young artist grounded in process, attentive to feeling, and ready to let the music speak first.
