As achingly intimate as it is breathtakingly raw, untitled freak’s debut single offers a devastating portrait of imposter syndrome, vulnerability, and the quiet fear of taking up space – an unguarded first look at Ali Genevich’s new solo project as she steps beyond Laveda into a space guided by instinct and emotional excavation.

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Imposter syndrome doesn’t always announce itself as fear; sometimes it shows up as silence, hesitation, and the creeping suspicion that taking up space might be a mistake.

It lives in the gap between what you feel and what you allow yourself to say – between wanting connection and wondering whether disappearing would be easier.

That quiet unraveling sits at the center of “untitled freak,” the debut single from Ali Genevich’s newly unveiled solo project untitled freak. Written from a place where doubt outweighs certainty, the song documents identity at its breaking point – the fragile space where imposter syndrome, emotional hypersensitivity, and self-questioning begin to dictate how much of yourself you’re willing to reveal. At its core, “untitled freak” circles a question many people carry but rarely articulate: How do you stay true to yourself when everything inside you feels unsettled?

Independently released December 9, “untitled freak” serves as both an introduction to a new artist project and a reintroduction to Ali Genevich herself. Best known as the singer and primary songwriter of NYC-based indie noise rock band Laveda – whose work blends shoegaze haze, ‘90s rock abrasion, and emotional candor, most recently on their third full-length album Love, Darla – Genevich has spent years shaping her voice within a collaborative framework. untitled freak steps outside of that structure entirely. Working alone and without outside input, Genevich allows instinct to take the lead, carving out a space where songs arrive unfiltered and unresolved.

“untitled freak” is the first release under that name and the opening chapter of untitled freak’s forthcoming debut EP 7 circles, due March 13, 2026 – a project that reframes Genevich not as a bandleader or collaborator, but as an artist willing to sit inside uncertainty and let the music surface before it’s fully understood.

“It’s extremely freeing to have this new project,” Genevich tells Atwood Magazine. “If it weren’t for the encouragement from my friends, I don’t think I would have felt the need to publicly release anything from it.”

It was actually “untitled freak,” the song, that came first – a sporadic emotional outpouring that arrived in a moment of unguarded intimacy and creation.

“I didn’t have any concrete intentions behind it in the slightest,” Genevich admits, but once the song existed, it opened the door to everything that followed. As she wrote more and more songs in the same one-month span, she knew they all needed a home – someplace distinct from Laveda, that could be hers alone. She ultimately named the project after the song that kickstarted her journey. “I’m definitely exposing a vulnerable part of myself, but it doesn’t scare me,” she says.

That lack of fear is inseparable from the way the song came into being. Genevich wrote “untitled freak” during a moment of acute emotional distress, without intention or expectation – only instinct. “I had never anticipated writing anything that wasn’t for Laveda until I wrote ‘untitled freak,’” she explains. “I was feeling particularly anxious on a freezing January afternoon. A knife that made a tiny cut had caused me internal bleeding; and by that I mean, I was dramatically sad, so naturally I grabbed a guitar.”

What followed was not a carefully constructed composition, but a surrender. “It felt like the first time I let myself just do whatever the music wanted me to. I’d almost describe it as possession. The song wrote and recorded itself.” That immediacy is essential to understanding the song’s power – and its vulnerability. “After it was finished I was really just afraid that I would forget how to even play it,” Genevich adds. “Maybe I’m just a freak, but I sometimes imagine it’s something a doctor would listen to while performing an intricate medical procedure, like an autopsy or something. I don’t know why, it just does.”

That sense of surrender carries directly into the music itself – the sound, the structure, and the way the lyrics refuse to resolve cleanly.

Achingly intimate and breathtakingly raw, the song sounds as exposed as its origin story suggests. Genevich opens in a near-whisper, her voice pressed close to the microphone as electric guitars move gently around her, soft and pulsing rather than driving forward:

Jump in
Got a plan
It’s alright
It’s another kinda world
She’s on the phone
But it’s not what you think you wanted
I don’t even try
It’s the 7 circles of the mind
I don’t wanna cry
It’s the 7th circle of your mind

Rather than offering narrative clarity, “untitled freak” moves in fragments – plans without follow-through, reassurances that don’t quite land, thoughts looping back on themselves. The imagery feels half-formed, as if caught mid-thought, reflecting a mind trying to organize itself while actively resisting that order. References to “the 7 circles of the mind” suggest repetition rather than progress, a cycle of thinking that can’t quite be escaped. Nothing here resolves cleanly, and that’s the point: Genevich isn’t searching for answers so much as documenting the act of being stuck inside the question.

That tension – between motion and paralysis, between jumping in and pulling back – mirrors the emotional bind at the heart of “untitled freak.” Wanting connection doesn’t cancel out the desire to disappear; it complicates it. The song lives in that contradiction, allowing doubt, impulse, and hesitation to coexist without forcing hierarchy or closure. In doing so, Genevich turns vulnerability into process rather than performance, letting the listener sit inside the same unsettled space rather than guiding them toward relief.

The song’s arrangement resists momentum in favor of stasis, allowing space to become an active force. Nothing rushes; everything lingers.

Still, there’s a subtle rise and fall to Genevich’s performance – the second verse stretching further than the first, the emotional center tipping as she reaches her most open, unguarded refrain:

Jump in
Got a plan
It’s another kind and she’s so funny
You don’t wanna see myself
Up in the perogitivity
It’s on mind
I don’t like it when you say
It’s fun
Just know what I
Am I sure
I’m not sure
If I wanna be alone
If I wanna be alone
If I wanna be alone
If I wanna be alone

The guitars and Genevich’s voice move in quiet conversation, ebbing and flowing against one another with stunningly unfiltered finesse – a hypnotic, almost suspended tension. The ache deepens as the song breathes, letting feeling accumulate. The repeated outcry, “If I wanna be alone,” lands as one of the song’s most visceral moments not because it explodes outward, but because it finally slips past restraint. It’s the sound of a thought crossing the threshold from private to spoken – intimate, unpolished, and devastating in its honesty. The recording feels private and almost secretive, like something captured after dark, under the covers, when sleep won’t come until the thought is finally spoken out loud and the feeling has been exorcised from the body.

That climax clarifies what’s been circling the song all along. The hesitation, looping thoughts, and half-formed reassurances that define “untitled freak” stem from a deeper fear of visibility – the suspicion that taking up space, speaking honestly, or being heard at all might be a mistake. This is imposter syndrome not as self-doubt, but as self-protection: A reflexive pull toward disappearance when exposure feels too costly. The song doesn’t resolve because the feeling hasn’t resolved. It stays inside the question because imposter syndrome doesn’t ask to be answered; it asks to be endured.

This tension doesn’t dissipate after it’s named; it settles into the body of the song itself. Genevich’s voice becomes an emotional lightning rod – elastic, exposed, and deliberately unpolished. Singing hot on the mic, she lets breath, strain, and fragility remain audible, allowing feeling to pass through her phrasing rather than be contained by it. Each line feels carried more by impulse than control, as if the song is thinking out loud in real time. That openness pulls the listener deeper into the track’s final stretch, where language loosens further and meaning slips into abstraction. The words begin to blur and repeat, less concerned with coherence than confession, as the song drifts into its last verse like a thought unraveling just before it disappears.

Thing it’s on my mind
It’s some other kinda girl
I don’t care
It’s solidica babe
She’s on the phone
It’s some other type of way
Of way, of way, of way
Of way, of way, of way
It’s overrated
Of way, of way, of way
Of way, of way
You say there’s 7 circles of my mind

In that final verse, meaning gives way to motion. Words blur, phrases repeat, and coherence becomes secondary to sensation, as if the song itself is slipping out of Genevich’s grasp even as she continues to sing it. References to other people, other thoughts, other “ways” surface and dissolve without explanation, mirroring the mental clutter that arrives when certainty finally collapses. It’s less a closing statement than a fade-out of consciousness – the sound of a mind circling itself, unable to land, unwilling to force resolution where none exists.

The refusal to tidy things up is what makes “untitled freak” so striking as a whole.

The song doesn’t build toward catharsis or clarity; it lingers in the ache of not knowing, trusting that honesty alone is enough. It’s raw without being theatrical, intimate without feeling performative – a document of feeling rather than a display of it. Genevich isn’t trying to explain herself here. She’s letting the moment exist exactly as it is, unresolved and unguarded.

In that sense, “untitled freak” feels less like a debut than a release valve – a necessary exhale after years of working inside structure and expectation. It’s the sound of an artist letting go of control, trusting intuition, and allowing uncertainty to speak for itself. And in doing so, Genevich doesn’t just introduce a new project; she opens a space where feeling comes first, answers come later, and vulnerability is allowed to exist without apology.

“This project feels like a rebirth for my musical identity,” she shares. “Maybe I understand what I’m doing a little more, and I think I’ve found more confidence in my musical abilities. Understanding an idea or skill is very different than putting it into practice. I’ve come to realize that 7 circles was a meditative exercise in letting go of my preconceived notions about creating music.”

That openness doesn’t end with a single song. In mid-January, Genevich unveiled untitled freak’s second single, the beautifully dreamy “birthday,” further expanding the emotional and sonic language of the project. Where “untitled freak” lingers in unease and self-questioning, “birthday” drifts inward, tracing memory, time, and creative origin with a softer, more reflective touch. “After I made the track and first listened back, I realized I had successfully transported myself back in time to when I was 19,” the artist says. “Maybe the song had always existed and was buried deep inside my head. I don’t remember writing it. I think it already existed somehow.”

Taken together, these first two songs frame the upcoming 7 circles EP as something closer to a creative experiment than a traditional debut – a body of work shaped by flow state, instinct, and emotional excavation rather than revision or control.

Melody and feeling lead, words arrive as they will, and meaning reveals itself slowly. As Genevich puts it, the project became an intentional surrender of structure in favor of trust.

Fans of Laveda might argue that untitled freak feels less like a full-scale departure from Genevich’s past work than a deepening of it – a bold, brutally honest, breathtakingly radical act of self-trust seen to its inevitable, impossibly raw conclusion. With 7 circles set to arrive March 13, 2026, the project stands as an invitation to listen differently: To sit with discomfort, to follow intuition, and to allow feeling to surface before understanding catches up.

Speaking with Atwood Magazine, Genevich opens up further about untitled freak, the making of 7 circles, and what it means to create without protection.

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A CONVERSATION WITH UNTITLED FREAK

untitled freak: Hello to all the new freaks out there, thanks for listening.

untitled freak: I’m excited to be sharing a rawer side of myself and my writing. Laveda is mainly a collaboration between Jake and I, and now Joe and Dan are artistically contributing a lot more too, so it’s a slightly more filtered version of my writing. On our most recent record Love, Darla our sound really evolved into something angrier and more confident, there’s more of a no-fucks given mentality when it comes to the overall energy, but the sonics have to sit together exactly right. I think it represents where we’re at in our career as a band. untitled freak almost feels like the opposite. It’s a place where I can lean into the darker emotions sonically, and take it even further with lyrics. I’m not thinking so critically about the music in any way. It’s pure sporadic emotion.

untitled freak: God there are a ton. My mains would have to be Liz Phair and PJ Harvey. PJ especially, after I heard Rid of Me a few years ago I was forever changed. Olivia O is also someone who has inspired me – both her solo stuff and Lowertown are gut wrenching.

untitled freak: “untitled freak” the song came first, I named the project after the song. It felt like a good introduction to the project for this reason. I was feeling particularly doubtful about Laveda’s recently finished record, Love, Darla. Two of my friends, and professionals in the music industry, had given us some pretty critical feedback on how the record sounded, and although I knew I shouldn’t listen to them, I did let it get to me a little. I was already starting to develop a bad case of imposter syndrome and that seemingly made it worse. Inside I was hypersensitive and outside I was desperately trying to remain unbothered. I didn’t have plans to start a solo thing, but I finished all of the songs that would become 7 circles in the same month. They felt different from anything I’d ever made before.

untitled freak: Myself and my identity can sometimes feel like they are at the mercy of someone else. How can I stay true to myself and give someone I love everything I have? Is it supposed to be easy? I don’t know. Maybe I should think less about everything.

untitled freak: It’s beautiful that humans have the capacity to feel so deeply. Life is beautiful ever changing insanity, so create things and connect with others, always choose to stick around. I’d much rather cry to Ghosts of the Great Highway than be dead.

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