Sitting in the car outside a Mount Prospect Dunkin’, James catches up with solo electronic/industrial artist I Ya Toyah to discuss music, tour survival, and staying grounded in an image-obsessed world.

Key Episode Highlights

• Tour Discipline & Balance: I Ya Toyah explains her strict approach to touring, going completely sober on the road to protect her stamina and vocal health, while contrasting it with her everyday love for sweets and evening cocktails.
• The Message Behind “Closer”: She breaks down why she covered Nine Inch Nails’ iconic song. Rather than just paying homage, she used it to confront modern culture’s obsession with perfection, metrics, surveillance, and how people lose themselves trying to measure up.
• The “One-Woman Army” Ethos: I Ya Toyah discusses running her independent label, Famme Fatale Records, sharing why maintaining full creative control is essential to her authenticity, avoiding label formulas designed to pump out repetitive trends.
• Mental Health & The Bracelet Project: Addressing how creative work serves as therapy, I Ya Toyah details her direct suicide prevention outreach. She creates and personally mails free suicide prevention bracelets stamped with the 988 lifeline to fans, sharing stories of how these tokens have sparked life-saving conversations in public.
• What’s Next: Looking ahead to a winter UK tour, I Ya Toyah reveals details about her upcoming single “White Walls” (dropping October 10 for World Mental Health Day), which concludes a thematic single trilogy leading into a new spoken-word and poetry-infused EP.

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