Basslines & Blood Memory:Lark’s Voice Against Silence

“I Loop What Hurts Me Until It Sounds Beautiful”

Los Angeles artist spiralteeth is a Deaf, nonbinary artist and dancer from Los Angeles turning pain into sound and survival into movement.

Spiralteeth is not just making noise, they're creating movement. A deaf non-binary artist and dancer based in Los Angeles, Lark (they/them) is one of the only artists in the scene today doing what they do: choreographing in silence, composing through sensation, and transforming survival into sound. Their debut album Pain and Solace was just released yesterday (10/03/25), and it pulses with the kind of vulnerability that could only come from someone who’s lived every lyric.

In this conversation we talk about passing out on buses, learning to feel their voice, falling in love with the goth scene, and why Silver Skies is the track that won't leave my mind.

Interview by Vivian Villa-Caratachea | Photography @houseofvivian

Vivian: So when did you realize you were going to start performing?

Spiralteeth: Probably around the time I started passing out in public for no reason. That was... like, the first signal that something was wrong, but also weirdly when I got more serious about making things that felt like me. I found out I had POTS, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. It's a stupid illness that messes with your blood pressure and nervous system. You stand up, you pass out. I carry pickles around to stop myself from collapsing. It’s dumb but it works.

Vivian: What was your first show like?

Spiralteeth: I went with my ex, we hadn’t even dated yet. It was in downtown LA. They were screening Pee-wee’s Playhouse episodes in one room and playing Sloppy Jane in the other. I was like really close to the band. Like, almost inside the music. I felt everything.

Vivian: You’ve mentioned before that music was a survival thing for you.

Spiralteeth: Yeah. Especially during school. I had to sleep on a friend's apartment floor because my dorm situation was unsafe. I stopped performing. I failed all my finals. But I kept writing. One of my teachers was the only one who cared. She was trying to figure out why I kept blacking out. She'd be like, "Are you okay?" and I wasn’t, but I didn’t know how to explain it.

Vivian: Let’s talk gender and voice. You’ve been open about your transition and how it shifted your sound.

Spiralteeth: Yeah. I went on testosterone to change my voice. That was the one thing I really wanted. I couldn’t recognize myself before, not with how I heard myself. I don’t hear high soft sounds, so I just couldn’t feel my voice. After the drop, it was like… finally. I could feel it vibrate. It became mine.

I thought I was transmasc for a while, then realized I’m nonbinary. That was around 2019. It was a slow understanding. I came out of it more myself.

Vivian: You said your new album came out of a car crash?

Spiralteeth: Literally. I wrote a poem after I crashed in SF. I was alone on the train home. I had my bass and my laptop. I looped the bassline and built the whole song from there. That’s Collision. It’s on Pain and Solace. The album came out yesterday.

Vivian: How does songwriting work for you?

Spiralteeth: I loop what hurts me. Sometimes it's poetry first, sometimes it's just a sound. I keep a long Google Doc of poems and shit that’s too gross or too much to say out loud. I like when music feels like it bleeds. I want people to make up their own stories when they hear it. I don’t need them to understand me, but I want them to feel something like I did.

Vivian: Who were your early influences?

Spiralteeth: Hooked Ring, that was my first band. We made one song. It didn’t go anywhere, but it mattered. Later, I saw Creux Lies live and I was like oh this is what music should feel like. They woke something up in me. After that, I was going to every show I could. I still am.

Vivian: Do you still feel like music saves you?

Spiralteeth: Yeah. I’m still Deaf. I still don’t hear most of it. But I feel it. I feel my voice now. And that’s enough.

Vivian: What do you want people to feel when they listen to your music?

Spiralteeth: I try to make it so that it can be ambiguous, so that people can feel and create their own meaning out of my words. I don’t necessarily want people to know the story behind everything I write, I want it to be their own experience. Music is just as much about what you bring to it.

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