KRISTIANE'S NEW EP ‘NOT ANYTHING, JUST EVERYTHING’: THE SOUNDTRACK FOR BECOMING YOURSELF
Kristiane is Billboard’s Artist of the Month and NYLON’s Next Sad Indie Rock Songwriter. On February 4th, the indie darling released her long-awaited second EP, Not Anything, Just Everything. Built on moody guitar riffs, emotionally precise lyricism, and narrative songwriting, the EP reflects Kristiane’s background both musically and personally. Raised in Los Angeles and shaped by constant movement across its vast array of neighborhoods, she attended community college before transferring to the University of Southern California as a Creative Writing major, a foundation that is showcased within the project’s overall literary depth and cohesion.
The EP opens with “Good & Ready”, which also serves as the lead single, immediately drawing listeners in with a sonorous drum line and cutting lyrics that introduce themes of emotional endurance and relational toxicity. “Beacon” follows quickly, driven by punchy guitar riffs and a sharp chorus honing the lyrics, “Are you pleased with me now? / I’m not coming back around”, mirroring the chaos of its Coney Island merry-go-round music video, and simultaneously using it as a metaphor of the exhaustion of seeking validation. “Smoke & Mirrors” slows the pace for the EP, shifting inward with deliberate minor chords and raw lyrics like “I’m sure I’d disappear if you leave / But I’d kill to be a part of something”, revealing her fear of disappearing with attachment.
On “Idaho”, one of the EP’s most personal tracks, Kristiane dismantles the fantasy of escape. “Turns out the country is as empty as it seems / And I ran and ran and ran / But I’m still me” settles as a central realization of the project. She has shared on her TikTok (@pupkristiane), the song is tied to the loss of her grandmother, a person she says “comes to her in butterflies”, and a sentiment that was underscored by her release-night experience stumbling into a bar under the same ironic name: Idaho.
“The Next One” explores emotional detachment and self-reclamation, rejecting the idea of shining purely for someone else, a theme that is further sharpened on “Put Me In the Ring.” On social media, she has also illustrated that the EP is additionally about truly “hating [herself]”, and nowhere is that tension clearer than within this track. The biting line, “Am I entertaining, baby?” exposes the ultimate cost of self-erasure and performance within relationships, with the repetition of “I can take it / I can take it” ringing constantly in an attempt to strengthen our narrator’s poor imagination.
“Half Full” feels like an utter release. Its melody and vocal delivery embody that of freedom, risk, and forward motion, capturing the moment when choosing yourself feels terrifying, but necessary. The EP closes with its title track, “Not Anything, Just Everything”, an ode to longing, martyrdom, and the pain of desire. Kristiane has described writing the song from “an impending sense of doom”, grappling with the idea of sacrificing oneself to a dream or relationship in hopes of truly being valued in the aftermath. “It hurts to want, and that maybe I’d be better off letting my desires go unexplored”, she reflects, and the track ends not with resolution, but with the acceptance of uncertainty that awaits her.
As Kristiane writes, the EP exists “on the edge of becoming”—balancing clarity and standstills, light and dark, wanting everything and nothing all at once. It also confronts self-loathing head-on, allowing for contradiction to coexist with growth. Not Anything, Just Everything is not about arrival. It is about the fragile, honest moment before it.