You’ll be forgiven if you mistake “Dysmorphia,” the debut single from San Diego-based singer-songwriter Rebecca Sykes, for a lost Juliana Hatfield song—perhaps a Beautiful Creature-era outtake. From Sykes’ slow-motion vocals to the song’s delicate production, it’s hushed, intimate, and soul scorching, the kind of song that leads you to lean into the grooves in hopes of hearing more.
The lyrics explore a topic many folks, including Juliana, will identify with: body image. The press release quotes Sykes as saying, “This song shows you exactly how I have perceived myself and my body and how I have struggled to find the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Her backstory speaks to the changing nature of music discovery. As a preteen and young teen, aka last decade, she became adept at clarinet, plus played around with drums, guitar and bass, but—as she recounts in a VoyageLA interview—became obsessed with the backbeat thanks to The Beatles: Rock Band video game. (To appropriate a lyric from Ringo Starr, drumming quickly became her madness.) Post-school, she’s served as a session drummer for San Diego bands and, too, worked an audio engineer. It wasn’t until the early days of the pandemic, however, that she turned to songwriting as an outlet. To again quote her via the press release, “My mental health took a spiral downhill, but songwriting was the one true outlet I had to release my thoughts and process everything I was feeling.”
For “Dysmorphia” and the other three songs on the forthcoming EP, which is titled Face to Face and slated for release on Dusty Mars Records on November 21, she—with a few assists from producer Ryan Finch—played all the instruments. It’s a remarkable outing.
The Old Grey Cat 
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