Today is a great day to share the latest single from shoegaze artist, Zoon, called “Omni II.” On this hypnotic track that features a cameo from Chris Chu of The Morning Benders, Zoon makes a significant mark on the indie scene. The song comes from Zoon’s new LP, Happy Thought School, that will be released everywhere on June 19th via Paper Bag Records.
Where does the title of the album, HAPPY THOUGHT SCHOOL, come from?
Happy Thought School was a very strange place for me. Before that, I went to Sargent Tommy Prince School, where everyone around me was Indigenous — the students, teachers, principals — so I felt understood there. But when I transferred to Happy Thought School, it was the complete opposite. I was one of the only Native students there. My mom didn’t want me placed in the special needs class, so I was put into regular classes where I dealt with racism almost every day. Students called me racist names, but what hurt most was the teachers. Some wouldn’t help me when I asked questions, and I overheard one teacher say they thought I had lice because I came from the reservation. That stayed with me for a long time.
Eventually I stopped wanting to go to school. My dad, who was a residential school survivor, understood that pain in his own way. He would let me stay home, watch movies with him, or play guitar. Looking back now, that’s really where I started learning chords and melodies and where music became a safe place for me. As I got older, I realized how damaging that experience at Happy Thought School really was, especially because the name itself felt so contradictory to what I lived through there. I carried a lot of mental pain from that time and turned to substances to cope with those memories.
Then, when I got a 24-track recorder, I started recording those emotions instead of burying them. At first it was hard to write about that school, but as I got older and became more confident in songwriting, it became easier to finally put those experiences into words. A lot of HAPPY THOUGHT SCHOOL came from confronting that pain directly and turning it into something honest.
You describe “OMNI II” as “tape childhood, love, loss over and over until it becomes melody—chaotic memory turning into structure.” Can you expand on that idea and what it means to you creatively?
“OMNI II” really comes from having to completely rethink the way I make music. For most of my career, the guitar was my main form of expression. It was how I processed a lifetime of pain — from being profiled in stores to being mistreated in schools by both students and teachers. The guitar became a way for me to release emotions I didn’t know how to talk about otherwise. So when my spinal arthritis got bad enough that I couldn’t hold a guitar upright anymore, it honestly broke my heart. I felt like I was losing a huge part of myself and the one tool I had relied on for so many years to express what I was carrying inside. That was one of the lowest points in my life creatively and personally.
But out of that pain, I found the Omnichord, and it completely changed my relationship with music. It gave me a new way to communicate emotionally while also expanding the sound of ‘moccasin gaze.’ I fell in love with the instrument almost immediately. Every day felt like discovering a new sound or texture I had never heard before. It reminded me of the excitement of finding a new guitar tuning or writing a riff that feels completely outside of what you hear on the radio.
When I talk about ‘chaotic memory turning into structure,’ that’s really what I mean. I was taking all these fragmented emotions — childhood memories, heartbreak, trauma, addiction, loss — and looping them over and over through music until they transformed into melody and atmosphere. The process became a way of organizing emotional chaos into something tangible. I think it takes a certain amount of vulnerability to explore sound that way instead of chasing something more simple or commercially digestible. But without the Omnichord, I honestly don’t know if I would have kept making music at all. It arrived at a moment when I truly needed a new path forward creatively and emotionally.”
You teamed up with Chris Chu of 2010s indie band The Morning Benders for this track. What about his sound or approach influenced the direction of “OMNI II”?
When I started using the Omnichord more, it really expanded the way I approached sound and songwriting. Around that time, I began collaborating with Chris Chu, whose album Big Echo was a huge breakthrough record for me back in 2010. I never imagined we’d eventually work together. When I sent him my song “Vibrant Colours” from Bleached Wavves, he immediately responded saying it reminded him of old-school shoegaze and that he wanted to be part of it.
By the time I was making my third album, I had gone even deeper into experimenting with the Omnichord. I would send Chris these 30-second fragments layered through wild chains of effects pedals — some custom-built for me and others I had collected over the years. Through that process, I started discovering textures and sounds that felt completely new to me, especially in the way the Omnichord could interact with shoegaze and ambient music.
One moment that really stayed with me was working with Laraaji. The day after our session together, he emailed me and said, ‘You have given me hope with your talent on the Omnichord. I have never heard those sounds before.’ Hearing that from someone I respect so deeply made me realize I was creating something genuinely different with the instrument.