A Conversation with Nina Ljeti From Kills Birds: Finding Home, Coping Mechanisms And Creative Process.

I left New York and went back home for the weekend. After having a cup of black coffee, I sat nervously in my childhood bedroom and prepared myself for the interview with Nina Ljeti.

Ljeti is the daughter of Bosnian immigrants, a director, writer, and the lead singer of the band Kills Birds (along with the guitarist Jacob Loeb and bassist Fielder Thomas). Ljeti has worked as a video director for Vogue and artists like Phoebe Bridgers, Wallows, and Crowded House. She directed the music video "Kyoto" by Phoebe Bridgers, which was named one of the best videos of 2020 by Vevo, Nylon, and Crack Magazine.

The cathartic and noisy sound of Kills Birds immediately spoke to me – and it also did for the Foo Fighters frontmen, Dave Grohl, who invited the band to record the album Married at his Studio 606. In the album’s opening song “Rabbit,” Ljeti explores being in a toxic relationship with someone powerful, almost whispering the lines, “How could I? How could I let you?’’

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While Nina's persona on stage is raw and electrifying, during our conversation she had a calming presence. In our conversation, we spoke about setting boundaries, the layers of her creative process, and her personal experiences that inspire her music.

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SOS: How would you describe your routine off work? What do you do to unwind and recharge? 

LJETI: That's a really tough question. I just like writing a lot, it relaxes me. Like, working on lyrics or short stories or script projects that I've been developing. Anything that makes me feel free.

SOS: Is there a place that you like to go to do that? Do you prefer going alone?

LJETI: Usually alone. Like at a cafe or just at home at night. 

SOS: Do you mind sharing some early memories that you have with music? Is there anyone in your family artistically inclined? 

LJETI: I think for me, my mom kind of made me play piano for a long time because she never had the chance to. But I think when I first heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” at 14 kind of changed my life.

SOS: Yes, totally get that! I went down a Nirvana rabbit hole before too. I remember watching the documentary ‘ Montage of Heck’ and reading Kurt’s biography …

LJETI: It’s a good documentary!

SOS: Also, while I was digging into some interviews/performances, I realized you explore the topic like feeling like an outsider, loneliness, the immigrant experience, which is amazing because I feel like not a lot of people talk about it. Do you still feel this way, or did anything change moving from NY to LA? 

LJETI: I don't think that that ever goes away. I think it's like, you never really know exactly how to define the concept of home. I was actually writing about that earlier, just like, what is home? And maybe home doesn't exist in the place that you're from or the place where you're somewhere in between.

SOS: Totally. I talked with my therapist the other day about it too and she mentioned about trying to create your own home, but it’s really tough to process that emotionally. Do you ever struggle with boundaries with your creative work? In terms of needing to step away a little bit and then come back to it after. 

LJETI: Oh yeah I feel like sometimes I don't have boundaries with that. And I'm like, fighting with this person. There's things that I want to do and feel like I need to do. And then there's this other half of me that's like, you need to take a break. And then if I listen to one, I'm upset because I didn't do the other and vice versa. 

SOS: How would you describe your creative process? 

LJETI: When I'm working on something, it is usually because something in my life has inspired me. If there’s something that I've been thinking that's making me really happy or really upset, I just kind of sit with it for a few days and let myself understand where I'm coming from. And then and then I just start writing, you know? And then in the case of like, Kills Birds, it's very much like at that point I'm meeting up with Jacob and we're and I'm reading him my lyrics. And then he's getting inspired by that, but he also has his own idea that he has to go with. We kind of collaborate like that together. When something feels right, it happens really easily. When it's like, unexplored, uncertain territory, I might get a little bit scared to see it through. 

SOS: Do you ever struggle with perfectionism in that sense? 

LJETI: I think so. But I think I read somewhere that perfectionism is a symptom of narcissism. 

SOS: What does that mean? 

LJETI: Maybe If you expect other people to be perfect, it's considered narcissism.

SOS: Interesting. As a similar question, when do you know a song is done?

LJETI: I don't know if a song is ever done. I think it just gets to the point where we're like, Oh, we got to just record this. There's instances where we just gotta record a song that's on the record a specific way, but then live it’s different. Sometimes new things develop as we continue working together. I don't think it ever really ends. 

SOS: I was watching some of your performances with Kills Birds and there’s something about it that feels visceral and raw which I really appreciate. How do you feel when you're onstage? What is the role of performance to you? 

LJETI: I kind of think it's similar to acting in some ways. Like, you do your due diligence to prepare, but then when you get on stage, you let everything go and just have fun and enjoy. That's the best way to involve the audience and be giving to the audience. I think the more that you're in your head trying to be like, I’m gonna sell to the audience that I’m sad, the more ingenuine it comes across. So I just try to have a really good time and just embrace all of the mistakes and treat every performance like it's the last. And honestly, it's just like having fun with my bandmates. I hope the people enjoy the show, but that's an important component, too. You don't want to be on stage and people are just not responding. But to me it is more about letting things out.

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SOS: Do you feel like you enter some sort of state of mind while you're onstage?

LJETI: I definitely think that there's like a version of me that's like only onstage. I think there's a more forward, honest, raw version of me that exists onstage. 

SOS: It's interesting that you compare performing with acting, because I was reading an interview with this artist and they mentioned that in the past, every time they would perform, they would access all those emotions, memories and it got really exhausting! Eventually they just stopped doing that. I’m curious to ask what your opinion is. Do you feel the same way?

LJETI: I think it's interesting that that artist said that because there was a point in Kills Birds when we first started touring [where I felt like] I needed to put myself fully out there and feel every song. And there are moments that I think are evocative in their own right, but I also discovered that the lyrics to the music are there, and in some ways, they speak for you as well, so you don't have to bash people over the head. When I compare it to acting, I mean, like the best actors do their job and they get in front of the camera and they let it go and they just exist. And I think that that's what I learned how to do in the last year of touring with Kills Birds. Honestly, watching Sebastian from Viagra Boys who would go on stage and just exist. It kind of inspired me a lot to really have fun. Because I was on that stage being like, I got to be upset now. And sometimes you go to the stage and you’re already feeling that way but there's also different sides of every song. 

SOS: That is true. I also heard about how you wrote and also performed in one of Marinas Abramović’s pieces. How was that? And, what was it about? I love her work. 

LJETI: So when I was a senior in college, I did my thesis on Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. The character in that play, Nina, probably by all accounts would have been diagnosed with hysteria. And I think it's alluded to that in the play she gets taken away. But hysteria was exclusive to women's illness and a very misogynistic period of time. So I think that kind of posed the question, like perhaps it's the troubles of the main male character in the play who has who would have actually been diagnosed with hysteria. And so then I played Treplev, and then Marina played my mother. And there was a big glass, a stage built. We did, I think, only four performances. I think we're from the same region. She's Serbian and she was really cool. I think she teased me a little bit though. That was a while ago. 

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SOS: What environment did the songs from the last album come from?

LJETI: Our album came out right before COVID hit. So all these things were happening for us, and then when COVID came it all abruptly ended. We've had to deal with that a few times in our career… This kind of something great feels like it's about to happen and then tragedy strikes that affects us directly. So we were all really bummed and I was going through a breakup that was very unnecessarily difficult and I was living alone. So I was feeling a lot of loneliness and loss and confusion about where this was going to go. I think the whole world felt that way. It's made under that pretense, but the album really kind of leans more on like the breakup. I feel like love or the idea of love is a pretty big thing. And it's like, all of my lyrics have something to do with that except for “PTL.” That's the only song that I've ever written that has nothing to do with our lives.

SOS: How do you think you handle heartbreak or a breakup? Do you have a coping mechanism? 

LJETI: That’s something that I lack. I'm trying to find that. I guess my coping mechanism is making art, but then that also has a vicious cycle because you can't just turn to something to kill because then it stops being effective.

SOS: In Sounds of Saving, we like to ask people about songs that found you at the right time. Do you have a song in mind that helped you go through a tough situation? 

LJETI: I would say the album Masterpiece by Big Thief. But also, Paul Simon is always helpful. It changes, I don't know. I had a panic attack on an airplane, I hate flying. For some reason, as a joke, I like the song “One Last Breath” by Creed. And I played it while I was having a panic attack, and it helped me so much. This is just, like, really funny, but also so, like, epically, incredibly amazing but a horrible thing. He's like talking about death and like six feet under and it was perfect.

SOS: Finally, what do you want other people to take from your work? 

LJETI: I just hope that what I want to say is clear enough and relatable enough so other people find support from those words in the same way that some of my favorite artists made me feel less alone. I hope that people know and I can. It’s the most rewarding part of my job. 

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