Toronto teen artist Cooper Benaiah releases debut album, CRUSH, an 8-track indie pop project self-produced in his basement studio, out now on all platforms.
Cooper Benaiah, the Toronto-based 16-year-old singer-songwriter, guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer who won the 2026 Canadian High School Songwriter of the Year award for his single “Falling,” releases his debut album CRUSH. Eight original songs, written, recorded, and produced entirely by himself in a makeshift basement studio, CRUSH is a high-energy indie pop record that moves with the instincts of an artist well beyond his years and the fearless, unfiltered charm of someone who has absolutely nothing to prove and everything to share.
What makes CRUSH remarkable is not just that a 16-year-old made it, but how he made it. Benaiah writes in the shower at night, melody arriving moments before the lyrics, the songs arriving nearly fully formed. He captures raw versions on a Taylor guitar on his parents’ couch with a voice memo app, then takes them downstairs to Logic to add what he calls the bells and whistles. The result is music with genuine intimacy baked into its bones, indie pop in the truest sense, homegrown and hook-filled and shot through with a guitar sensibility that reflects a young musician who has absorbed everything from Noah Kahan’s emotional dynamics to the atmospheric tension of MICO and made it entirely his own.
The album works as a complete arc, an accidental rom-com in eight chapters. “Falling” opens it with the giddy, gravity-defying rush of early infatuation: “Feels like I’m falling / Into your arms when I hear you calling out my name.” From there, “1000” sends the story spinning into longing and distance, “Oxygen” deepens the need, “Whatever” plays at denial, and “August” captures the electric warmth of summer romance with acoustic guitar, cajón, and just enough rap to make it feel like a windows-down driving anthem. “Before You Go” and “Left Me at the Altar” navigate the bittersweet turn, the latter arriving as an ironically joyful country-tinged anthem built around fiddles and the liberating realisation that a clean break is its own kind of good fortune. “Pull Me Back” closes the whole thing as a full-room party, a bass-driven invitation to start the whole beautiful cycle again.
Benaiah already performs the material with the stage presence of someone who has been doing this for decades, inhabiting what he describes simply as the rockstar, the part you play for the audience once you get on stage and everything else falls away. To celebrate the release of ‘CRUSH,’ he performs solo at Taste of Philippines in Hamilton on June 13 and at Sessionista Summer Music Festival in Halton on June 20, before fronting his band KASK at It’s Your Festival in Hamilton on June 27. ‘CRUSH’ is available now everywhere.
Hi, Cooper! Good to meet you! Care to introduce yourself to the readers for those not familiar with your music?
Hey! I’d love to introduce myself to the readers! So, I’m a 16-year-old kid who just fell in love with music. But not right away. When I was six, I took a guitar lesson and hated it. And quit. Fast forward seven years. It’s New Year’s Eve and my cousin Ethan had learned to play Ode to Joy. He showed me how to play it. I played Ode over and over until I evolved to all the classic riffs: Layla, Smoke on the Water, Stairway. I played a Yamaha with nylon strings for hours a day… because I loved it.
Convinced I would work hard, my dad took me to a Guitar Center to buy me a guitar. Some guy — had to be fifty, played every classic like he wrote the songs himself — corrected my Layla, “It’s a B-flat, not a B.” I learned the No-Stairway rule. I got this seafoam green Gretsch Electromatic. Loved it.
A few months later, I was addicted. So I went on Amazon and got myself the cheapest worst possible bass money could buy. Seventy-five bucks. That’s still my only bass. I got a used Alesis 8. My dad’s friend gave him his old mic. My folks got me a Mac Mini. I connected to a TV we don’t use anymore. That’s my studio. I’ve been working on my producer skills. I think they’ve come a long, long way in the last year.
Aside from music, I do parkour and backflips—like Benson Boone. Oh, and I just graduated grade ten!
You wrote, recorded, produced, and played everything on CRUSH yourself. What was the first moment where you listened back and thought, “Wait… this actually sounds like an album”?
Originally ‘CRUSH’ had 24 songs. And I listened to it and realized this is not an album. This is like three albums. So, I cut down the song count to my favorite eight. That’s what became the album. Once I listened to those that’s when I realized that these songs will be my first ever album. I was so happy. I listened to my album probably 100 times. I listened when I woke up, few times during the day, in the car, at home, at school, before bed, and whenever I could. But that first moment sitting on the floor in my basement at midnight with my headphones on was one of the best of my life.
You won Canadian High School Songwriter of the Year at 16. How did your classmates react? Did anyone suddenly become your best friend after that?
I could make up this big story and say it made me super popular and awesome. But that would be a lie. Nobody cared. I told a few of my friends and they were like, “Wow that’s really cool, good for you!” And that lasted probably two and half minutes. The rest of the people in my school just shot me a thumbs up in Snap. I was extremely happy to win. I’m 16. Any award helps you get into college. That’s what my mom says.
You describe stepping onstage as becoming “the rockstar.” What’s the biggest difference between Cooper at school and Cooper with a guitar in front of a crowd?
I’m not becoming a rockstar. It’s funny you said it like that. When I have my guitar, I’m me. Relaxed, confident. In my zone. It doesn’t matter if it’s just me on my parents’ couch, or me with friends, or me on stage, if it’s me and my guitar—a Taylor acoustic that my dad’s friend, Randy, found for me on Facebook marketplace—then, it’s me.
You’re only 16 and already have a full album out. When people listen to CRUSH ten years from now, what do you hope they’ll hear in those songs?
Well, first, I hope people are still listening to CRUSH ten years from now. Or even ten weeks from now. Good songs end up in the background of a TikTok until the next catchy one drops—if you’re lucky. If people are listening to CRUSH in ten years, it means I’m still around, still writing, still growing — and maybe Spotify is telling some kid about a younger me, the way it tells people about Dave Grohl before the Foo Fighters.