Toronto shoegaze project AloneKitty turns loss, distortion, and vulnerability into something beautiful on wide awake.
Toronto-based shoegaze project AloneKitty, led by singer-songwriter and guitarist Michelle K, has released its new album, wide awake, a deeply personal collection shaped by grief, musical exploration, and the determination to keep creating through life’s most difficult moments.
Drawing inspiration from influential acts including My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Sonic Youth, and The Jesus and Mary Chain, AloneKitty blends swirling walls of guitar distortion with memorable melodies and emotionally honest songwriting. The result is a sound rooted in classic shoegaze while maintaining a distinctive identity.
Originally launched as Michelle K’s solo recording project, AloneKitty has since evolved into a full band featuring Michael Small on bass and Stefan Loebus on drums. The project’s previous releases, its self-titled debut and sad not sad, both released through Mint 400 Records, charted on the NACC 200 college radio chart.
AloneKitty Finds Beauty Through Grief on wide awake
Although wide awake wasn’t originally intended to explore grief, the album took on new meaning when Michelle K lost both of her parents during the songwriting process.
The experience brought a heightened sense of urgency to the music and a renewed understanding of how fragile life can be.
“No one is there to save me anymore,” Michelle reflects, describing the realization that followed her parents’ deaths.
Rather than allowing those experiences to define the album entirely, Michelle approached the recording process with a desire to remain present, embrace vulnerability, and create something meaningful.
The band recorded almost entirely live over two days at Union Sound in Toronto, working with engineer Darren. Most songs were completed in just one or two takes, capturing the group’s natural chemistry and shared creative instincts.
The album also features an expanded sonic palette inspired by alternate guitar tunings. Influenced by Thurston Moore’s album The Last Day, Michelle used unconventional tunings to write more than half the record, including tracks such as “I’m Wide Awake” and “She Thinks It’s Alright.”
One particularly personal track, “Disappointed (For the Last Time),” was recorded separately at Harlow Sound with engineer Justin McWilliams. Michelle performed every instrument herself, creating a powerful wall of sound inspired by her complicated relationship with her father.
The recording session became an unexpectedly peaceful experience, allowing Michelle to reflect on music, art, and life throughout the process.
wide awake was mixed by Luke Schindler, whose credits include Broken Social Scene and Alexisonfire, and mastered by Simon Scott of Slowdive.
Scott also helped Michelle choose “I’m Wide Awake” as the album’s lead single, describing the track simply as “a banger.”
With its combination of urgency, vulnerability, and immersive guitar textures, wide awake captures AloneKitty at a particularly meaningful point in its creative evolution.
In Conversation With AloneKitty: Michelle K on wide awake, Grief, and Shoegaze
Hi, Michelle! Good to see you again! Care to introduce yourself to the readers for those not familiar with your music?
I’m Michelle and AloneKitty is how I’ve found a way to make the kind of records I’ve always wanted to hear. It’s rooted in the music that changed my life growing up— Sonic Youth, Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine among others. I don’t really think too much about the genre when I’m writing though. I’m really just chasing songs that pour out of my hands into my guitars and then make me feel something.
You say this wasn’t meant to be a grief record, but life rewrote it while you were making it. Looking back now, where do you hear that change happen? Is there a moment on the album where you can actually hear the person you were before your parents died give way to the person you became afterward?
Looking back, I don’t think there’s one moment where the record suddenly becomes about grief. It’s more subtle than that. I feel like the songs gradually became heavier, more urgent. Losing both of my parents stripped away any sort of feeling that the future is something we’re promised. I wasn’t trying to write about grief. I was trying to be fully present while making the record. I think that’s what changed.
Shoegaze is often described as music you get lost in, but your songs never disappear inside the noise. The melody is always reaching for you. Was that a conscious decision—to use all that distortion almost as protection, while still making sure the emotional truth could cut straight through it?
I’ve always loved melody but I don’t really hear the guitars and the melody as competing with one another. I think that wall of sound creates an immersive emotional landscape, but the melody is what gives you an anchor. I’ve always been drawn to the song underneath all the noise in so many of the artists I admire and that’s what informs my approach.
Simon Scott heard “I’m Wide Awake” and immediately said, “That’s the one.” As the person who lived with these songs, what do you think he heard in that track that made him so certain? And did his confidence change the way you heard your own music?
You’d really have to ask Simon! But I think it’s probably the immediacy of it. Some songs take a while to reveal themselves to me. “I’m Wide Awake” kind of announces itself straight away. It still has all the things I love—alternate tunings, walls of sound—but there’s also a chorus that sticks with me. When Simon said, “It’s a banger,” it was reassuring because I trusted his ears. It was a nice confirmation of how I felt about the song. It gave me some confidence that it was the right way to introduce the record.
One of the most striking lines in the release is, “No one is there to save me anymore.” That’s an incredibly vulnerable realization, but this album doesn’t sound defeated—it sounds determined. At what point in making ‘wide awake’ did grief stop feeling like the subject of the record and start becoming the reason to keep creating?
I don’t think grief ever became the subject of the record. It became part of the reason I wanted to finish it. I know it may seem obvious to say but time isn’t an unlimited resource. If there was ever going to be another AloneKitty record, I wanted to make it now, with the best people I could find, and make it as honestly as we could. That’s really what wide awake means to me. Not fear, just being here now.
AloneKitty Upcoming Shows
AloneKitty has several upcoming performances in Ontario, including a Toronto album release show celebrating wide awake.
- October 25, 2026 – Supermarket, Toronto, ON, with Be Stil and Scummm, presented by Major Tom Records
- November 18, 2026 – Houndstooth, Toronto, ON – wide awake Toronto release show, lineup TBA
- January 30, 2027 – Oshawa, ON – Venue TBA
Connect with AloneKitty:
Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | YouTube