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Photo: Melissa Crumby

A good neighborhood is always littered with characters—storytellers who deliver a poetic pulse to the static canvas of buildings, flora, and winding streets. Zahara Jaime, professionally known as zzzahara, is just such a figure to the layered and leveled community of Highland Park in LA, a blast of everyday approachable intrigue to a daily commute, a handholding walk, or a nerve-wracking skate down a steep, busy boulevard. As a prototypical waylaid youth, zzzahara started crafting songs in their early teenage years, taking unexplained anxieties and creating creative containers, songs, to cope.

A cycle of reading, sleeping, writing music, and partying ensued, always spurred by the idea that music was a way of helping people, especially those like themselves that weren’t buoyed by built-in advantages, delivering a nuanced, less-expressed queer Latino culture to the forefront. Tailoring a community approach, ‘generating' their own algorithm, and building a world more accessible, Zahara is a travel guide to the shadows we cast, navigating a world we often pass by instead of pausing to appreciate. 

The beauty of zzzahara’s songwriting is how brilliantly they take the mundane and make it magical, and this is readily apparent on their latest album liminal spaces. A voyeuristic bus ride through Highland Park, its lovers, loose ends, and unanswered questions, an 11-song adventure traveling across imaginary fences of codependent friendships, lustful exchanges, and class divides.

Bottled-up emotions ferment like alcohol, building a poison that is sweet and sticky, concealing its health burden beneath glazed memories and blackouts, and zzzahara’s music plays out like a hangover of feelings inviting you to feel even more. Their concoction of stark honesty, blatant lyrical charm, and a tendency to always be “living in nostalgia” creates a foundational epitome for an artist whose depth only grows with every listen. Consider this a drink with a brutally honest friend, listen, mellow out and be better for it. 

Listen to liminal places below: