Cauley Talks i saw the sky open up, Making Things on Her Own Terms and What Comes Next

The Brooklyn artist and producer talks self-producing her debut EP, learning to trust what moves her, finding freedom in a new name, and making room for something lighter after grief.

Cauley didn’t make i saw the sky open up by asking everyone around her what they thought.

That was kind of the point.

Before this project, collaboration had been a huge part of how she worked. Demos got played for friends. Feedback came early. Sometimes, as Cauley puts it, the line between wanting actual notes and wanting reassurance got blurry.

So this time she tried something different.

“I wanted to do everything myself and not show it to anyone until I needed actual feedback versus just validation,” Cauley tells Everyday Jams.

The result is i saw the sky open up, Cauley’s debut EP under a name that gave her enough distance to make something more instinctive, more experimental, and more emotionally direct.

Written, produced and mixed by Cauley, the project pulls strange digital textures up against strings, guitars and vocals that are intentionally allowed to feel human. It is colorful in places, heavy in others, and never especially interested in sanding itself down into one clean idea.

That feels appropriate for a project built around grief.

Instinct

Before Cauley, there was McCall.

Born in Atlanta, she moved to Los Angeles to attend USC’s Pop Program before leaving school and spending much of her time there as a collaborator, writing for electronic artists including Grant, Just a Gent, KUURO and ellis, while also co-producing for artists like Ally Evenson and Kate the Dreamer.

Working around other artists taught her a lot.

“I’ve been lucky to work with so many amazing artists and producers who have let me be close to their screens and breathe down their necks and ask a million questions,” she says. “I love working with other people and getting to learn their references, processes, etc.”

But eventually, making something completely hers required a different kind of process.

Starting again under a new name helped.

Cauley

“Releasing music under a name that wasn’t my own made me feel like a Real Artist for the first time, and also took some of the pressure off, weirdly,” Cauley says.

The name itself is personal. “Cauley” is a misspelling of the nickname her family uses for her, and she says hearing it brings her back to a younger version of herself in a way that changes how she creates.

“It changes the mindset I’m in when I’m creating.”

There is something nice about that contradiction.

The alias creates distance, but it also brings her closer to herself.

Grief

Songs like “BIRCH,” “briefcase” and “keep it comin” don’t necessarily sound like they were built from the same template.

Cauley likes that.

She says she used to think much more about whether a project was sonically “cohesive,” until a friend gave her a simpler way to look at it: if she was making everything herself, it was probably going to sound like her anyway.

So cohesion became less about matching production and more about what the songs were circling emotionally.

“I chose this group of songs mostly because they dance around the topic of grief, and I like that they all look at that process through a slightly different lens.”

That grief had been sitting there for a while.

After losing her mom in late 2022, followed closely by two of her aunts, Cauley moved across the country to Brooklyn and began what would become i saw the sky open up.

At first, she had been writing about lighter things.

Then the heavier material stopped being something she could comfortably avoid.

Later, while looking toward whatever comes next, Cauley describes the EP plainly: “Most of these songs were written to process the grief I’d been pretending wasn’t affecting me.”

She is glad she finally looked at it.

She is also ready, at least for a little while, to write about something else.

“I’m happy I did and I know I will be looking at it forever, but I’m ready to put that down for a little bit and write about the more amusing side of my life.”

Contrast

Sonically, Cauley traces a lot of her instincts back to the era when she was learning how to produce.

Artists like SOPHIE, A. G. Cook, Caroline Polachek and Dylan Brady were reshaping what pop production could sound like, often putting something abrasive right next to something beautiful.

Cauley paid attention.

“Their music is full of harshness and beauty in a way that still feels so original,” she says. “I’ve tried my best to digest that fully so it comes out naturally when I start producing out songs.”

On i saw the sky open up, that influence doesn’t feel like imitation.

Instead, it shows up in the instinct to let two very different things exist together.

Strings can sit beside processed textures. A song can feel delicate and a little ugly at the same time. Something organic can suddenly get pulled somewhere digital.

Cauley jokes that part of this comes from knowing exactly what she isn’t.

“I’m not a good enough engineer to make a completely stunning, analog record like Andy Shauf, and I’m not a good enough synthesizer to build insane digital sounds like SOPHIE.”

Then comes the more interesting part.

“But I am okay enough at both of those things to put two pretty good ideas together to make something new that isn’t reaching in either of those directions.”

That might be one of the best descriptions of the project.

Not perfection in either direction.

Something stranger in the middle.

Feeling

Cauley’s changing relationship with vocals says a lot about where she is creatively now.

Her early work writing and singing toplines for EDM meant getting used to vocals that were extremely clean, aligned and technically controlled.

She knows how to make them sound that way.

She is just less convinced that “perfect” automatically means better.

“It takes a lot of work to make a vocal sound like that, and oftentimes it doesn’t move me the same way the voice memo did,” Cauley says.

These days, she is trying to choose the take that does something to her emotionally instead of automatically reaching for the one that sounds most technically correct.

“I’m still learning how to choose the takes that make me feel something rather than what sounds the ‘best.’”

That philosophy fits the rest of the EP too.

i saw the sky open up doesn’t feel precious.

It feels worked on, obsessed over and eventually released before Cauley could change it one more time.

Which, apparently, takes a while.

Process

Cauley writes, produces and mixes her own music, which means every stage can send her backward.

Production reveals a lyric that needs changing. A new vocal changes the arrangement. Mixing exposes a section that suddenly needs to be rebuilt.

One decision creates another.

Then another.

“Eventually I’ll get so tired that I’m like ‘okay let’s just try a mix of this,’ and then a whole new section or production idea will arise,” she says.

And after enough revisions?

“Then I’ll hate the song enough to finally finish working on it :)”

It is probably not the most romantic description of finishing a record.

It is definitely one of the more believable ones.

Brooklyn

Moving to New York changed Cauley’s environment immediately.

It also changed her schedule.

“Everything’s so damn expensive here, so your girl got a day job as a stone mason,” she says.

That means waking up at 5 a.m. for manual labor five days a week before protecting whatever studio time is left.

“Waking up at 5am to do manual labor five days a week definitely makes time in the studio more precious.”

There is no tortured-artist mythology attached to it.

It is just life.

Work. Music. New York. A new sensory world. Trying to make enough time for the thing she actually wants to make.

And somehow, things are starting to feel more fun.

When asked what “fun” looks like in the studio right now, Cauley doesn’t give us some glamorous image of creative flow.

She gives us staring into the distance and messing up the same guitar line hundreds of times.

But moving to New York and releasing i saw the sky open up has also introduced her to new people and new creative energy.

“In general, things are more fun right now.”

That feels important.

Especially after the record she just made.

Next

Cauley is already writing the next project.

Some things are coming with her.

The willingness to experiment. The new production process. The confidence that comes from making a project without constantly looking outward for approval.

Other things can stay here for a while.

The grief isn’t disappearing, and Cauley isn’t pretending it will.

She just doesn’t want it to be the only thing she gets to write about.

That makes the next chapter less about reinvention and more about allowing herself a wider emotional range.

And if i saw the sky open up reaches the right person, Cauley has a very specific hope for what happens next.

Not that they finish the EP.

Not even that they immediately play it again.

“I hope people who listen feel inspired enough to stop listening halfway through and immediately make something of their own.”

She points to The Japanese House and Bon Iver as artists who give her that feeling.

“It would be really cool to be that to other artists one day.”

That might be the nicest possible ending for a record Cauley made largely by herself.

Someone hears it.

Then they go make something too.

i saw the sky open up is out now. Stream Cauley’s debut EP wherever you listen.

Photography by Anna Scholfield.