SKI TEAM INTERVIEW: "Knicks Suck" and Indie Artistry
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My alarm buzzed about an hour before I sat down to talk with Lucie Lozinski, the woman behind the bubbling indie/pop project Ski Team. An irritating amount of chilled late-summer air had snuck its way into my room through a window that I neglected to shut the night prior, so I had already been forced up for some time prepping for our call. For the most part, though, my natural interest in Lucie’s up-and-coming career limited any need for prep — I just wanted to know how she was making such outstanding music without a label.
Her latest single, “Knicks Suck,” was independently released in August and it had quickly become one of my favorite tracks of the year. “Knicks” wasn’t my first foray into Ski Team, however. She’d been on my radar for a month or two, and I initially discovered her music in July through a paid promotion while scrolling through a desolate mid-afternoon Instagram feed. The post was relatively unassuming: a mounted iPhone, a Neumann mic, and a singer’s reverberated crooning accompanied by an acoustic guitar. No one waved to get my attention, nothing was being sold; it was just a genuine performance that made me stop and listen. After some exploring, I learned this was a quick live take of Ski Team’s second single, “Don’t Give Up (Yet).” Not only was I blown away by the songwriting and production of the track, but I was instantly drawn to the modesty of the ad itself — it was endearingly low-budget and accessible, free of any graphics or instructions on what to do with my time after scrolling past. I wanted to know the story behind Ski Team, and that brought me to chat with Lucie on the phone about her latest release and her many responsibilities as an indie artist. The pandemic had limited us to a virtual interview – me holed up in Connecticut and Lucie at a windy beach in New Jersey — but it was still great to sit down and get the background behind one of my favorite new artists.
With everything going on in 2020, starting with the simple question, “How are you doing?” seemed like the most palatable opener, but it’s a tough one to answer. While she hails from New Jersey, Lucie spent five years in San Francisco before moving back home. As anyone in their twenties returning to tri-state suburbia might do, she went to New York. “That’s where everybody lives,” she joked, and it certainly feels that way growing up anywhere near it. She ended up in Brooklyn by February and started releasing music to streaming services under Ski Team, but the world quickly shut down, and along with it went many of the avenues that an artist in BK would take to gain traction: concerts, networking events, bars, most studios. Resources became limited in an already limited situation, and for a true indie artist, that put a lot more pressure on the music itself.
Only three songs into her career, Ski Team has embraced a growing list of styles and genres. From the subtle indie-folk of her first release, “Brother,” to the more maximalist pop of her latest single, “Knicks Suck,” she’s avoided slipping into the monotony of a specific genre or overtly drawing from any of her influences. She truly is in her own lane. Artists like Phoebe Bridgers, Clairo (“I’m so proud of her, she’s so fun,” Lucie comments), and even Banks come to mind, but none of them fully encompass any of Ski Team’s releases thus far, and this is the result of some purpose. “If I’m feeling really inspired by someone then I try really hard not to listen to them while I’m writing. I don’t want to make a watered-down version of something everyone really loves. I’m not trying to hone my sound to sound like something else — I’m trying to peel back layers and see what happens. There has to be some sort of niche.”
Lucie has a carefree lightness — a true DIY attitude — that keeps her approach to her career spontaneous and fun. This is especially evident in both the songwriting and marketing of “Knicks Suck,” a detailed and personal break-up anthem that has amassed a few thousand streams on Spotify since its release in August. Compared to the melancholy of her first two singles, “Knicks” is a massive departure into the indie/dance-pop realm. I asked Lucie about the intention, if any, behind this stylistic progression. It sounded so different from her first release. “I was making all of [the singles] around the same time, so it might look like I’ve just started picking up speed. I just had a lot of different things that I wanted to make, and then I was sitting on them for a while. I didn’t want to release ‘Knicks Suck’ first because it’s kind of on the crazy-town end of the spectrum.”
And while it’s not necessarily crazy-town, the tongue-in-cheek songwriting and dynamic production add a layer of irony to the track that makes it perfect for the internet pop scene. From the opening lyrics, “The New York Knicks are a very bad team, but you won’t give in, like you won’t give up on me, you’re a masochist,” to the air-horn basketball buzzer that sets off the drop of the final chorus, “Knicks” has a biting personality and edge, and its origins are equally charismatic. “I was going through a break-up and recording a lot, just because I was like ‘I’ve got a lot of free time now that I’m not fighting all the time.’”
In an effort to get out of the sulky post-break-up haze, Lucie and a group of friends from Seattle decided to head to a Tenacious D concert, of all things. “It was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to,” she clarified, “and the drummer was incredible. I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’” After a little alcohol-induced research at the concert, she found Scott Seiver on Instagram, an LA-based producer and drummer with credits for Pete Yorn and Ted Leo. After some back and forth emails and phone calls, Lucie, Scott, and guitarist Tim Young decided to jam on a few ideas together. “[“Knicks”] was what we made – that was from a voice memo in my phone, and I thought it was probably a throwaway song, but it got stuck in my head.”
Listening to “Knicks,” it’s quite clear that the idea couldn’t fully be incapsulated in a voice memo. Recorded in Tim’s semi-pro studio, it’s a lush track with sprawling, detailed production that opens with electric pianos fluttering over muted drums and some rhythmic guitar grooves. It quickly transforms into pumping synth-pop that accompanies an especially sticky chorus from Lucie. The production stretches even more as the song progresses, adding arpeggiated guitar chords, an organ fit for a church choir, and some driving piano chords before ballooning into an even more vibrant second hook. Lucie’s voice floats in and out of Scott’s mix with a controlled subtlety and her harmonies add a sophisticated element to her blunt melodies and hyper-personal songwriting. “This thing kind of ran away from us,” she recalls on the production. “We were all like, ‘Should we just trash this? It’s getting out of control.” While it came naturally, “Knicks” was a stylistic departure for the trio, but that organic sense of freedom in the production and writing is what makes the track special.
Lucie’s lightness carries over into the business end of her career as well. Aside from a publicist, she handles all of the promo, booking, and funding herself. I asked if she funds her endeavors as an artist with a job on the side. We all know the independent grind can be costly. “I mean, that would be a fun way to look at it,” she laughs, “but I work full-time at a tech company.” Music has always been a “lifelong thing,” for Lucie, but the timing is everything – it’s hard to know when to invest in your career. Things finally started to align in 2019 as “diary entries” and voice memos evolved into full songs with the help of San Francisco-based producer Bobby Renz. “I wanted to start releasing music as soon as I felt like there was something to be proud of,” she says, and her first releases are certainly something to be proud of.
As many indie artists discover, creating the song only gets you to the starting line – getting people to hear the song is where the rubber meets the road. Lucie has rolled out all three of her singles with Instagram posts and paid promos. Despite the simplicity and ease, my discovery of Ski Team is an example of how Instagram promotion can work. I was on the way to her Spotify within a minute of watching her ad: an ideal engagement to new fan result. “I don’t know if [the ads] actually translate to more streams or anything, but if it’s true that having followers means something to labels, or anyone that will fund it, then I’ll put $30 dollars into it if I check back in a week and it says a 20% increase — that’s crazy.” Despite the small successes, she doesn’t see herself as a social media person in the slightest. “If this were my own Instagram with my own name on it, I think I would be a little disgusted by this behavior,” she jokes, “but because it’s business, I’m like, ‘This is cool!’”
Heading toward the fourth quarter of 2020, Lucie’s plan is still single-centric. “I think albums are really cool for fans — you want to, like, ‘buy the book’ and see their story, but from a business perspective, it seems like albums are just a waste of time… It’s kind of a single world.” This perspective is growingly popular in the streaming era — albums take away from an audience’s focus, which is often quite fleeting. Record labels have made this evident in the last 3-4 years, and although Lucie is manning the Ski Team machine solo, she has an understanding of important trends in the industry.
In an effort to extend out of social media, Lucie even targeted NBA subreddits as avenues to get her name out there when the basketball season was in limbo prior to the playoffs. “The timing was kind of intentional. I’m a huge basketball fan and we [were] in this basketball drought. There was no news other than who’s entering the bubble and whose family is there,” she laughs. The track spent a day or two on r/NYKnicks before being removed for violating promotion rules, but the point was made: Lucie had some Knicks fans engaged, and being banned from a few subreddits can fit in any new artists’ budget. “It did what I hoped it would do. Knicks fans have reached out like, ‘We hate this, but we love it.’ No one is mad, it’s more like ‘Yeah, we do suck.’” (As a Knick’s fan, we definitely do.) And this is some of the magic of handling the business yourself. “Knicks” has covered some unique promotional ground that isn’t usually saturated with music, and this proved to work out as its quickly grown to be the most successful Ski Team release.
Even in our brief conversation, it’s clear how humble and modest Lucie is about her craft. I couldn’t help but reiterate how blown away I was by her latest release, especially after hearing the stories behind the production and the promotion, and she couldn’t help but downplay it. Every artist’s journey starts out as a series of coincidences, and sure, most don’t start at a Tenacious D concert, but the serendipity makes Ski Team even more fun to root for. There’s a natural sincerity to her music and her personality that is undeniably easy to latch on to, but I sensed an underlying confidence that Lucie knows she’s on the cusp of breaking through as an artist. “I’m still a very small fish,” she qualifies, “I’m just kind of winging it.”
On top of a semi-live performance video, Lucie has a few more “Knicks” promos up her sleeve that she wouldn’t reveal quite yet, as well as a new single dropping September 25th. Be sure to check out Ski Team on Instagram: @skiiiteam and check for her latest single on Spotify and Apple Music.