The cover of Tiny Habits’ debut album ‘All For Something’ captures the trio in motion, twirling upon splintering tarmac in unison, only slightly too quickly to be captured in stillness by a camera shutter. As a singular image, it captures the unity that exists as the Boston band’s central power – one that most blatantly manifests in the vocal harmonies that catapulted them to viral fame only two years ago.
When Cinya Khan, Maya Rae and Judah Mayowa’s voices intertwine, it sounds almost familial, as if their musical connection was honed from a lifetime singing together on road trips in the back seats of a rusting car, or above the crackling static of the radio between mouthfuls of cereal at breakfast. Unapologetically emotional and exuding a hazy sunshine-soaked sense of comfort, Tiny Habits’ musical output recalls the vocal congruence of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and the dreamy, modern folk-pop of Tommy Lefroy or Kaleah Lee.
Though individually skilled songwriters, together they share a penchant for cherishing the small details — apt, considering their band name. One of their first singles, ‘Tiny Things’ romanticises the mundane, transforming simple acts like folding linen or doing dishes while gazing at kitchen tiles into romantic reveries, while their debut album offers intimate musings on heartache and new love.
Listening to their music conjures a feeling that they’re fated to sing together; yet, Tiny Habits’ bond doesn’t stem from childhood, but rather from a dorm room floor in the murky depths of lockdown. Their paths first crossed in 2021, when they all enrolled at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. Credited as a catalyst for the success of many major contemporary musicians, the university boasts an impressive alumni that includes both Adrianne Lenker and Laufey (the latter also happens to be a friend of the band).
“Life is hard. People just want to hear music they can connect to” – Maya Rae
Unlike prior generations of Berklee students, though, Tiny Habits’ college experience was marred by the pandemic, with the first semester spent entirely online. When they finally moved into their dorms, months after starting the course, they had to quarantine for 10 days. After they were declared Covid-free and safe to mingle, Rae invited Khan and Mayowa — who up until then had existed purely as pixelated figures on her Instagram feed — to sing with her in her dorm room.
At the time it was a baptism of fire into college life, following a year of government-mandated loneliness. Yet while memories of the pandemic are now fading faster than the two-metre distance stickers left peeling on supermarket floors, for Tiny Habits it’s a core memory – for better or worse. “I remember when I was leaving my dorm, I spent 20 minutes figuring out what the fuck I was going to wear and then still my outfit was awful: just sweatpants and a flannel and these ugly ass tennis shoes. It was really insane,” Mayowa laughs, visibly cringing at having to recall the feeling of needing to impress his peers. “I remember just shaking, even while singing. I was really freaking out.”
The panic, though, was unwarranted, as a since-unwavering friendship quickly blossomed between over the handful of pop songs they covered that night. NME meet the group over Zoom three years later, in the middle of their first headline tour that, so far, has taken them across the US and Canada and included a performance with Holly Humberstone in Boston – with Rae having recently graduated too. Khan will follow in a few months but Mayowa has already dropped out, joining a wealth of musicians (including John Mayer, and more recently, Phoebe Bridgers) who succumbed to musical success before finishing a degree. Reaching the end of her college experience has Rae unashamedly indulging in nostalgia, she tells us, which involves scrolling through her camera roll and their earliest days together singing in the stairwells of their campus.
Yet being in a group was never part of the plan when they were unpacking their bags and blu-tacking postcards to their walls three years ago. “I just had never expected to fly across the continent and meet two people and make this band,” Rae, who joined Berklee as an international student from Canada, tells NME, a pang of sentimentality in her voice. “But now, this just feels very right. I feel like this is what I was meant to do with my music, you know?”
Tracing Tiny Habits’ journey to date draws attention to just how rapidly things have accelerated. Since officially forming in 2022, they’ve toured with Gracie Abrams and Noah Kahan, backed Lizzy McAlpine for her Tiny Desk performance and received praise from Elton John and the late David Crosby. On their first night singing together, cross-legged on the floor, they covered ‘Happy and Sad’ by Kacey Musgraves. Two years later they were harmonising with the Grammy-winning artist on her tour bus. Of all the highlights shared together thus far, it’s this that Mayowa quickly names the pinnacle. “It was one of those moments I did not process, and then two weeks later, I was like, ‘Oh, that happened!’” he laughs.
With upbringings scattered across the North American continent, each of Tiny Habits brings a set of cultural differences that subtly manifest in their varying vocal styles. Mayowa’s mother was a worship pastor in Birmingham, Alabama, meaning his early exposures to music were in church. For Khan, songwriting began as a form of teenage rebellion when her parents moved from drizzly New Jersey to the Sunshine State of Florida. It’s where she joins the call from today, a country-distance apart from her bandmates who are recuperating from the US leg of their tour in Boston, before they head to Europe. Rae grew up in Vancouver, Canada, where she spent her adolescence singing jazz standards alone in the city’s grassroots venues.
It’s why, when their harmonies made their way onto TikTok through a string of sentimental, slowed-down covers (everything from Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call Me Maybe’ to A-ha’s ‘Take On Me’) they were received with rapturous acclaim, thanks to their unique ability to transform even the most ubiquitous pop songs into something entirely new. Though the virality of those early clips is now an integral part of their origin story, with the commenters being the ones to encourage them to release original music together, Tiny Habits are wary of the labelling of ‘TikTok Artists’ that’s been attached to many who came up through the platform post-pandemic.
“We’re not social media people at all. We’re not influencers, it’s really difficult for us to find the motivation to be consistent [with posting],” Khan explains, the ceiling fan behind her buzzing as it slices through the thick Floridian heat.
“It’s just such a blessing to be able to sing with each other” – Cinya Khan
The band admit, however, that their relationship to the app is evolving from despair at its insatiable hunger for content to an appreciation of the real people behind the usernames in their comments section. “I’ve realised that that’s how people find you. That’s how you create a community,” Khan says. “To recognise that makes it less of an obligation and more of.. I don’t want to say it’s an honour, but it is an honour because all these people are taking time out of their day to watch it, to comment, to share it. And I think that’s really beautiful. So I’ve changed my perspective, because I used to hate [TikTok], but now I’m a fan.”
Now on their first headline tour, the real-life moments of connection forged through their music are all the more prominent anyway. At a recent gig, Mayowa witnessed a proposal from the stage — a friend of his college friend who had soundtracked simple moments of his relationship with their song ‘Tiny Things’. He decided if the song was played, he would propose to his long-time girlfriend.
“It was insane, they were holding each other while slow dancing and he whispered it,” he says, beaming while Rae and Khan, who were unaware of this particular anecdote, gasp. “Since then, every time we sing that song, I look out to see who is slow dancing and holding each other. We wrote a lot of the songs in stairwells, just sitting with each other, so it’s really cool that they have an impact on people that we don’t fucking know.”
This speaks to the vulnerability that runs through Tiny Habits’ music like a golden thread — one that subtly defines ‘All For Something’. Produced by Tony Berg [Taylor Swift, Boygenius], their debut album often feels like a series of heartfelt confessions. On ‘Wishes’, they take turns to delicately vent the things they’d like to change about their lives, from their relationships to parents to self-image, while ‘Flicker’ deals with an unrequited, toxic love.
“Man oh man oh man,” Mayowa laughs, leaning back on his bed and recalling the latter song’s conception. “I was really going through it. I was being put through the wringer by someone that I had feelings for. And I was like, ‘I need to write about this. I need to get this out. Because what else do you do when you’re a singer-songwriter?’”
Recording and releasing an album only two years on from establishing themselves as a band speaks volumes of Tiny Habits’ immense popularity — perhaps something that can be partly attributed to a wider folk-pop boom currently sweeping the US. Noah Kahan’s ‘Stick Season’ recently topped international charts, and fellow Berklee student Lizzy McAlpine’s ‘Ceilings’ was one of the biggest tracks of 2023.
Rae suggests this newfound hunger for folk is part of a collective longing for softness, following a tumultuous few years of global history – the same turbulence that pushed Tiny Habits into a post-lockdown singing session all those years ago. “I think people find comfort in connecting, and I think the folk world is a little bit more lyric and story-based,” Rae says. “Life is hard. I think people just want to hear words that maybe they can’t necessarily say, coming from another person that they feel they can connect to.”
Tiny Habits are perfectly poised, in that case, to deliver these much-needed doses of comfort. “We are very sensitive, vulnerable humans,” Mayowa says. Though they admit it’s the support of one another that’s made space for openness within their music. “When it’s someone’s song that they’ve written and we’re singing with them, it just feels like we’re having a conversation and holding their hand,” he continues. “Harmonising is like, ‘Hey, girl, we got you. We’re here. We got your back.’”
It’s why, above all, an unconditional friendship exists at the core of Tiny Habits – from the half-serious covers they sang, homesick and grappling with life in a new city three years ago, to the songs that now make up ‘All For Something’. And it’s something they’ve vowed not to lose sight of. “It’s just such a blessing to be able to sing with each other,” Khan says. “It feels like we’re just chatting with each other, and to sing a harmony on somebody’s story – with your best friends – is just the sweetest thing ever.”
‘All For Something’ is out now on Mom + Pop
Listen to Tiny Habits’ exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify and here on Apple Music
Words: Laura Molloy
Photography: Sam Williams
Label: Mom + Pop