SAYRYN is a Nashville-based musical duo comprised of Bryn and Saya. They blend folk, rock, and emo influences into their distinctive sound. With emotionally charged lyrics and powerful vocals, their music dives into themes of personal struggle, emotional growth, and complex relationships. SAYRYN continues to gain attention in the Nashville scene for their evocative, introspective style.
Photos by GC Moorman
How did you get started?
Bryn: Well, we’ve known each other since college, so we went to school together, and we both met freshman year in 2017. And so we were just friends at first, and kind of throughout the entire college experience we lived together and we were friends; and then it was in 2020 when the lockdown happened and the pandemic happened that we were like, “Oh, we should try writing together and seeing what happens. And we, I mean, we liked that experience.
Saya: Yeah, it went really well.
Bryn: It went really well. And we kind of just kept writing together, but we didn’t have any plans on being like an official kind of group yet, we were just kind of both doing our solo things. But we were like, “Oh a lot of artists will do side projects, right?” So, we were like, “Oh, this will be our side project!” or whatever, where we’re writing this music together. We always planned on putting out an album, but then we moved here—we graduated in 2021 and moved here—and we just started playing together out on open mics. You know, it was—it’s when you’re somewhere you don’t know anybody, and it’s kind of difficult now that you’re out of school to know what you’re doing. I think it just made us feel better and more comfortable, like, “Oh, if we kind of join forces, we can help each other and create something that we do really like.” So that’s kind of how it started; and that was three years ago, officially in two weeks. March 16th is our anniversary. So, it’s been—there’s a timeline there—you know, some lore.
Can I ask where you guys moved from?
Bryn: Yeah, we’re originally from New York. But different parts of New York because I’m from Queens, the city.
Saya: I’m from Westchester outside of the city. Kind of upstate but not super far upstate.
Bryn: But we went to school in Boston. We went to Berklee. So we just so happened to be from the same state in the same 30-minute range.
Saya: Yeah, Just coincidental.
What is the meaning behind your name?
Saya: Yeah, I would say there is kind of a double meaning there because we originally came up with it kind of as a joke. We were just like, “Oh, how can we combine our names?” and the first combination was “Brya” which didn’t sound good.
Bryn: Yeah, and then siren, which sounds better, but also we were like, “Oh, that’s actually a word that invokes like the, you know, mermaid who’s singing, right? And it’s luring men to their deaths, which is ideal, right?
Saya: Yeah, Ideal dark.
Bryn: And the kind we like. So we were like, “Oh, it actually does have that double meaning!” But it’s totally unintentional, you know? But I think it does speak to what we really like to do.
You describe yourselves as a “best friend duo”. How do you think that presents itself in y’all’s music?
Bryn: Ooh, That’s a good question.
Saya: I guess honestly my first thought is like, because we have known each other for a long time and, like, developed a friendship where we’re comfortable with each other and like, comfortable sharing things. I think that’s like a really important part of why we’re able to write well together just because we write about kind of serious topics that are introspective and things that—that you would talk about with a close friend. So I don’t know if that answers your question, but I would say that definitely the musical collaboration kind of goes hand in hand with how we’ve known each other and developed trust. By the time we started working together, there was enough trust where it was going really well and we knew we could make the serious musically.
Is there anyone in the local scene you’d like to shout out?
Saya: Yeah!
Bryn: So, some people who have been like, so really, really supportive. There’s Brent Heflin, Claire Steele, Jung Minho, Seth Gunter, and Mandy Moon. They’re some people that we, off the top of our heads are like, “Yeah, you know, they’re always there and supportive and just doing a lot that we don’t expect, you know.
How do you think that the Nashville scene and the scenes that you’ve engaged in contributed to your work?
Bryn: I don’t think we would be able to be here right now if it wasn’t for so many of the people that we’ve met; first we were doing open mics and even doing it separately. We had people who were like, “Oh, I love your stuff!” and they were so encouraging about us doing it together when we started doing that, and they were like, “Oh, you sound even better doing that you should keep doing that.” And it evolved from there, we just kept doing more live shows, we met people who were like— “I really like your music and I want to help you,” and that has always been a really crazy foreign concept. Because you’ll hear a lot about other artists, you know. You read their Wikipedia or something and it’s like, “Oh, like this person saw them,” right? And then they wanted to be their manager, or they wanted to do these things for them; and it’s like, how does that happen? It’s truly that it happens because you’re engaging with people. You’re also being nice, not trying to dismiss anybody. We always try to talk to people and we want to be as genuine as possible and appreciate the people who have been supportive and wanting to help us, either monetarily or we’ll do things for each other; whether it’s taking photos and being there for their acts or being there for them and trying to make it more about friendship than a transactional thing. With some of the artists that we’ve met, too, it’s really helpful to like, meet people when you also really love their work and it’s inspiring to you; and you can talk about that journey together and feel like you aren’t alone in that. So yeah, it’s been I feel like the community aspect has been really amazing.
What are your plans for the future?
Saya: Yeah, we do have plans. We do want to continue doing tons of shows in Nashville, but we also—this year specifically—are trying to play outside of Nashville because we haven’t explored that yet, and it’s been harder to set that up. We definitely just want to see what’s out there, who we’ll meet, just because I think the community here is really tight, but there’s different scenes around. We’re just curious who we’ll draw or connect with, especially in the Southern area because that’s where we would start. In terms of future plans—like recorded music—we are planning an EP, and it’s going in a darker direction from the album. We just want to focus on a few songs that we are currently working on, and we want to make something we’re really proud of.
Bryn: Yeah, overall, I feel like the big goal, right, is we’re working towards being as involved in the Nashville scene as we can be, but also, we do want to be touring artists. We do want to do that and make it our way of making a living while being nice to people. I feel like that’s the major goal. Also, I think this year, while we’re doing all those other things we’re working on trying to solidify who we are. We’re working on how to make our “us” as a unit better, in all aspects. We’ve been calling it “the revamp.”
You express yourself very creatively and use a lot of different media for your promotions. How do you feel like your image plays into what you want Sayryn to be?
Bryn: We do plan the visual stuff together.
Saya: She’s really good at, like—I’ll just say it for her—she is really good at thinking about how to apply our music to visuals, and how to match those two things, and is maybe a little bit more visual art oriented than I am. For me, I’d have to think about that, but she definitely brings a lot of ideas to me, and then we discuss it. It’s also great for me as well because then, you know, since it’s a bit harder for me to come up with those things, we can brainstorm together, and it really helps to have that sort of help.
Bryn: I feel like we’re kind of like—it sounds really simple, but we really like art, you know? We really like a lot of different forms of it, and things that are really creative and really outside the box; and it always feels like a really fun challenge to try and see how you can take this one medium that you do well, and you can apply it to another medium and ask “How does this kind of cross over?” Especially for what we did for our album and stuff, it was a lot more like “We’re thinking about these concepts and the the abstraction of what the meaning is of that song.” and it was a lot of fun to put together. Also—so this is going to sound really crazy and I’m admitting it now—we both like K-pop. I’ve listened to it for a really long time and I’ve engaged with it for a very long time. One of the ways that I think it has influenced me is that they’ve always been very good at their visual concepts and the way they promote things, and a lot of times they’ll have with their albums a world they’re creating, and they’ll put short films that go with that concept and go with each song. And so, you’re kind of creating this world around it, and I think that that, really does speak to me; and even in our very DIY way, it’s like, “Oh, how can we do that? How can we kind of draw people in and like into our vision of this?” Really, what we were trying to do is very artistic, but also grounded in like the universe of that concept of the album; or, you know, whatever, whatever we feel like Sayryn is—the concept of Sayryn.
It took four years to complete your debut album “Cautionary Tales”, how was that timeline reflected in the work?
Saya: That’s a good question. Where do we start?
Bryn: Well, the first song on the album was the first song we ever wrote together. I mentioned before, but we always kind of knew that we wanted—we had a concept of this album, this project, and we kind of had all of these songs. There were some that were written in the first like year, and then we were talking and we were like, “Ph, we should write a song about this. We should write a song about this!” so we had like, almost like a list of songs with those ideas, which weren’t all written right away. We just had this outline. It was the outline of it. And I think because of the whole shuffle around of “We’re in school, we have this one vision of how this is going to go.” We thought we were going to do the album really quickly in that year. We also had the—the cover art is a physical painting that we have, and so we had that commissioned like that year. Yeah, so we thought everything was going so quickly, and then we left school and we were like, “Oh, wait, everything is actually very different from how it works in school, where we’re surrounded by other musicians, producers, whatever, and it’s very easy to just kind of put something out without it costing an arm and a leg. So we had we left school and we were like, “Okay, we’re gonna move.” So it was kind of like I said, we had only a few songs written, and we had all these other ideas, and we had the concept. We’d been writing those songs up until even the middle of us recording the album. The last song on the album, 30, we finished writing while we were recording. So it’s truly been a very long process, and part of that is just because life happens when your full-time job is not making art, you know? Which, like, it really sucks, but at least we were able to get to that point and were able to finish it and release it. We also just take a long time to write.
Saya: It’s a process.
Bryn: Yeah, It’s a process for us.
Listen to “Cautionary Tales” on Bandcamp or Spotify.
Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
Bryn: I think we talked about this, but we’re trying to relay what we want our music to kind of do in a way—like what we want, why we write about certain topics. We really like to just feel you’re slowing down life and trying to think about all these things that a lot of people can’t necessarily think about or really process themselves. Which is what I think is also really cool about art in general. The average person can consume it and then think about how that relates to themselves in their own life. I feel like what we try to do is just give our perspective on processing our life and the world at large—the time period we live in. However that connects to people, it’s about wanting people to slow things down and think a little bit more about their own life and stuff like that. Don’t have an existential crisis but just think a little bit more about your life and your relationships and all that.
Saya: Appreciating things in the moment and all that just so you can kind of sustain your sanity in life. I don’t know if that sounds too intense, but I would say that that’s a part of it too.
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One response to “SAYRYN: Artist Interview”
What a great interview! Love these gals. Such a great sound. Can’t wait to see what comes next.
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