Spotlight On: LAURA LEE OCHOA OF KHRUANGBIN

ABOUT this week’s podcast guest + radio hour featured interview:

Our guest this week is a singer, songwriter, musician and incredible bass player for what is one of the most sonically unique and successful bands of the past decade, with an equally unusual backstory. The trio Khruangbin is a mostly instrumental band out of Houston, Texas, with a Thai name, who write and play a sonic fusion of globally influenced and genre-busting music. Their roots go back to the early aughts when its drummer, DJ Johnson, and guitarist, Mark Speer, played together in a church gospel band, met Laura Lee Ochoa, and formed a friendship that eventually led to her discovery of the bass, and ultimately, founding their band Khruangbin. Now over a decade in, Khruangbin has become a hugely successful touring band, and with that success came a need to recalibrate and reconnect with each other as the family they have become. For Khruangbin, reconnecting meant getting back to basics, and returning to their roots as a trio in the studio. The result is a fantastic new album, also their fourth full length release, with the appropriately cozy title - A LA SALA, or, to the living room. In today’s conversation, Laura Lee aka Leezy shares her journey from her own childhood living room that inspired the title, to her pursuit of visual art to picking up the bass and starting the band, the role of her alter ego Leezy and how that is evolving, and integrating her newest role as a mother into her life as a touring musician with her chosen family of Khruangbin.