Kilometers

Hailing from Astoria, Queens, Kilometers is the not-so-solo project of singer/songwriter Connor Waage. Kilometers’ conception dates back to 2015 — then, songs written as fodder for jam sessions during Waage’s time at SUNY Purchase College — but what would be “Hear Thy Neighbor” really began to take shape in 2017. Waage revived the years-old songs in the album’s drummer James Palko’s apartment, played a few gigs, took a stab at some exploratory recordings — and those songs stayed dormant in Palko’s voice memo library until they began recording again in 2019. This time, they fully embraced the sounds of the building’s tenants, the airplanes overhead, and the spontaneous monotony of daily life that surrounded them — and Kilometers found its legs. Each uninvited sound that (under normal circumstances) would ruin a recording session became a challenge to see if they could be revamped to live in the mix. The final result is an experimental bedroom-folk ensemble drawing influence from all corners of the musical spectrum. Hands, lips, and lungs were lent from an ever-morphing circle of lifelong friends to breathe life into the skeletons of songs that had been long collecting dust in Waage’s closet. “Hear Thy Neighbor” is an apartment-fi “foray into the fleeting highs and precarious lows of relationships and getting by in the modern day.”