Sana’s “YOUYOUYOU” captures the difficulty of telling someone what they mean to you when every attempt seems to fall short. The narrator has plenty to say, but keeps those feelings to themselves. Meanwhile, life goes on and that person stays at the centre of every thought. The repeated “you, you, you” says what the verses cannot.
She moves between affection and fixation. She calls this feeling a blessing or a curse, then admits how much a phone call or a moment of closeness can affect them. The bridge brings a more physical desire for contact, while the outro adds a note of escape. The two impulses keep running into each other: wanting to get closer and needing to get away.
Sana draws on ’90s trip-hop, with heavy drums, dirty guitars and dreamy vocals shaping the track’s nostalgic sound. The rougher instrumental setting gives the repeated chorus a different edge from its simple declaration. The words keep circling around one person, even when the narrator cannot decide what to do about it.
For those who might not know you yet, how would you introduce yourself?
I’m SANA. I’m an artist based in Los Angeles, originally from Kazakhstan. I’ve spent most of my life expressing myself through different mediums — photography, fashion, film, and music. I don’t really separate them anymore. To me, they’re all different ways of telling the same story.Music has always been somewhere inside me, but I think it took me a long time to find the courage and the right moment to express it the way I actually wanted to.SANA is probably the most honest version of myself I’ve introduced to the world so far.
If you had to bottle up your sound into just three words, which ones would you choose?
Hypnotic. Melancholic. Cinematic.
Which artists (not only music-related) or moments have left the biggest mark on your music?
I’ve always been drawn to artists who create entire worlds rather than just individual works.Musically, Portishead, Massive Attack, and Björk have had a huge influence on me. But I think my visual influences are just as important as my musical ones.In cinema, Alejandro Jodorowsky, David Lynch, and Stanley Kubrick. I love the surrealism, psychological tension, symbolism, and the way their films can make you feel something without necessarily explaining it.I’m fascinated by Googie architecture, especially here in Los Angeles. That strange, futuristic optimism of the past. There’s something incredibly beautiful to me about a future that people once imagined but that never quite existed.In photography, Mario Testino and Elizaveta Porodina. Two very different visual languages, but both have influenced how I think about beauty, composition, and storytelling.I think all these influences somehow find their way into my music. I’ve never really separated sound from images. When I hear music, I see things. And when I see something beautiful, I almost always hear something in my head.
When you hit play on your songs, what kind of feeling takes over?
Nostalgia for something that might never have existed.I think there’s a certain sadness in my music, but I don’t necessarily see sadness as something negative. Sometimes it’s the most beautiful and honest emotion we have.I want my music to feel intimate, almost like you’re listening to somebody’s thoughts when they’re completely alone.
If you could team up with anyone in the world, no limits, who would be that dream collaborator?
Probably Björk. Not necessarily because I would want to make something that sounds like her music, but because of the freedom in the way she thinks and creates.I admire artists who aren’t afraid to be completely themselves, even when what they’re doing doesn’t fit into any existing category.I’d also love to work with filmmakers and visual artists who approach music as part of a larger cinematic experience.
What are you working on now, and what are your plans for the future? Anything exciting you can tell us about?
*YOUYOUYOU* is the beginning of a much bigger body of work.I’m already working on more music, and I’m especially interested in developing the visual world around it. For me, the images, the films, the atmosphere, and the sound are equally important.I want to create something that exists beyond a streaming platform. Something you can watch, listen to, experience, and perhaps even physically enter one day.I’m not in a rush to define exactly what SANA is supposed to become. I want to allow it to evolve naturally.
Can you walk us through the story or emotion behind “YOUYOUYOU”?
*YOUYOUYOU* is about the way another person can completely occupy your mind. That strange space between love, longing, obsession, and memory. When somebody becomes part of your internal world, whether they’re physically present or not. The repetition of “you” is intentional. It’s almost like a thought you can’t escape. The same words returning over and over until they lose their original meaning and become a feeling instead. Musically, I wanted something hypnotic and emotionally restrained. I love when a song doesn’t tell you exactly how to feel, when there’s enough space for the listener to bring their own experiences into it. The track was produced by Raman Kamahortsau, and mixed and mastered by Andrei Babrouka. Visually, I’m drawn to the language of cinema rather than conventional music videos. The world of *YOUYOUYOU* is built around isolation, intimacy, repetition, and the contrast between beautiful spaces and complicated emotions. I’m interested in images that feel like fragments of a memory, where you don’t necessarily know what happened before or what will happen next.I don’t want to explain everything. I think some things become more powerful when they remain a little mysterious.
