Mia Sunahara, or Kimiko, is a Japanese-Canadian singer-songwriter from San Diego, California. She's twenty years old, has released five singles, and has collaborated with San Diego artists such as Topeka Clementine and Tristan Brooks. I grabbed a clipboard I stole and some paper from my roommate's wide-ruled notebook. I dragged my Honda Civic to Amplified Studios, where I was to interview Mia. At first, like many before me, I thought her name was Kimiko… It's not exactly wrong… but it's still embarrassing.

"It's my middle name, passed down from my godmother; it's also my cousin's Japanese name. "

Embarrassed not just because she got to the studio before me, I quickly changed the conversation point and began the interview.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO WITH YOUR MUSIC? 

"I don't know yet. I really enjoy writing and recording, and I enjoy performing; at the moment, it's purely for enjoyment. I also go to school for science. – I hope I can find a career that will allow me to have a balance. I was thinking about it a lot when I was deciding to go to school."

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR NEW SINGLE "IF YOU ASK(ED) ME" WITH TOPEKA CLEMENTINE. WHO MAINLY WROTE IT? WHY IS THE "ED" PARENTHESES?

"It was a pretty even collaboration; we had been DMing about music we like and eventually said, ‘Let's write a song!’ We met up in Solana Beach and then just sat at one of those tables on the hill. It was kinda gorgeous, and it's the coolest place I've written a song – they started strumming around on my guitar, and we kinda like started playing some chords; I'd hum over it, and we'd write lyrics on the notes app."

"I don't know [why it's in parentheses]; we didn't talk about that beforehand."

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT COLLABORATIONS?

"I'm not the more into writing with a lot of people. I end up being very 'people pleasey', and I'll end up not having the connection with the song, but it works very well with Kai."

"If you leave me somewhere long enough, I will write a song."

HOW MANY SONGS HAVE YOU WRITTEN THAT JUST NEVER MAKE IT THROUGH TO RECORD?

"I've written a lot of songs. I write purely as a coping mechanism for existing. So I write them as little diary entries, and they are not exactly directly related to my life, but they always have something genuine within them, whether it is the emotion or the concept in time. — I write so much stuff that just sits on my phone forever; I've thought of doing less produced versions of things so I can release them on my own."

DO YOU EVER TRY REVISITING THAT OLD MATERIAL?

"Some things I do, I used to have a hard time with writing partial songs and then going back, I used to hate going back to things cause I would overthink it too much, and I would feel like the heart and soul of the songs is gone, cause I don't like to overwork things. A lot of that old stuff, you can definitely hear the learning curve."

"In cases when I have revisited songs, they have to have emotions strong enough to bring me back to that spot. So when I'm writing, I'm still in a mindset that still works to adapt that song maybe in a different direction but still has the heart of what it originally had. That's kind of cool as well. It's some… weird… compound-type song. But yeah, I don't like writing something if I'm not feeling inspired in a way.”

DO YOU EVER SIT DOWN TO WRITE A SONG, OR DOES IT JUST COME SOMETIMES?

"Normally, I do. Before I start writing a song, I have a little spur of inspiration. Either it has been a long day, or I heard something that sounded really cool! And it made wanna write something not necessarily related at all to what I heard. When I see people being creative, or when I see songwriters who are just like doing their own thing, it makes me wanna write music. Cause I like all this creative energy, and it makes me wanna kinda work on that for myself again. — But I really hate forced songs, so if I'm not in the mood, I'm not writing; I know I will hate what comes out of it."

HAVE YOU EVER WRITTEN SOMETHING UNAWARE OF WHAT IT'S ABOUT?

"Oh yeah, it's like when you go to bed, and you have a dream, and when you wake up, and it makes so much chance when you're writing it, and you finish, and you're like … extremely confused, you have no idea what you created. And you can't tell whether it was a good dream or a bad dream. But I'll go into something, and I'll write, and I'll be like, oh yeah, this feels right. And at the end of it's kind of a jumble of a bunch of different aspects sometimes related to something or a feel. Sometimes, I'll have to listen to my own song and piece it together to find my own connection to it."

"I'm super ADHD, and it used to be exactly the same way I wrote essays when I was younger. I was really good at creative writing, but if you told me to be strict with structure I would struggle and I would have to go back and tire it all together."

MY BIGGEST FEAR IS WHEN PEOPLE HEAR ONE OF MY SONGS AND ASK, "WHAT'S IT ABOUT?" WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT QUESTION?

"I have a lot of things where I have my own interpretation of 'what's this about,' and I hope people can make their own as well, but those things can be wildly different. For example, June Bloom, it's about my sister, and it's also about love." 

HOW WAS GROWING UP? WAS IT A MUSICAL ENVIRONMENT?

"I think I grew up in a good family environment; my dad is very musical. He is a scientist, but he likes to sing and play. He apprenticed as a luthier for Sergei, who was an apprentice for Jean Larrivée. He had around seven apprentices, and Sergei was one of them; my dad apprenticed to the apprentice. He started when he was 16, and he loved it. He eventually moved away from it as he got into science. And then, over COVID, he got back into it. He made this five-string electric mandolin. And he made my bass..."

DO YOU PREFER LIVE OR STUDIO?

"It's very different. The more I do studio, the more I enjoy it cause like, you know things better the more you feel in the groove. Everything is more planned out, the guitar parts down, and a lot of times, it's building with Tristan. I like seeing what he comes up with, but I really like the way that the songs come out when I'm in the studio; like one of my songs, Hush and a Warning Signs, I thought would be a lot more indie alt, rock pop way. And Tristan (Brooks) got in it and it came out more folky and I love that choice. It's kinda cool to see how it came up."

After Tristan came up, Mia and I lost track of the conversation. We kept talking about our mutual friends and how much we loved them. How annoying they can be, and most importantly, how cool it is to be in a scene that can see through the Spotify numbers and really focus on what matters: creating and supporting each other. Our friends are our producers, our bandmates, and our booking agents. It's hard to survive in this industry; it is destructive, chaotic, and worth every moment.

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