Win Tickets ($64): Jay Som w/ Sea Lemon @ Aladdin Theater | Indie Rock

We are giving away a pair of tickets to Jay Som w/ Sea Lemon @ Aladdin Theater on December 20. To win, comment below on this post why you’d like to attend. Winner will be drawn and emailed December 15.

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From our sponsors:
Jay Som w/ Sea Lemon
December 20, 2025
7pm doors, 8pm show | $32.18 | All Ages
Purchase Tickets: etix.com

Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave, Portland, OR 97202

Where, you are almost certainly asking, has Jay Som been?

Six years ago, in 2019, Melina Duterte released Anak Ko, the expansive third album from the project that had quickly grown far beyond its so-called bedroom pop origins into something resembling an actual band. Duterte still wrote and produced that Jay Som record, but her friends now surrounded her, playing parts of their own. But when a shuttered touring industry scrapped Jay Som’s ambitious 2020 plans, Duterte realized she had long needed a reset from the road after several years of constant pivots between touring and writing, anyway. She decided to splurge on herself and her lifelong interest in recording, funneling her government stimulus check into a piece of dream gear she’d repeatedly seen advertised—a vintage Neve console. She committed herself to manuals and online tutorials, peppering experienced friends with questions about becoming more than her own home-recording engineer. Five years later, she’s got a rich résumé of album credits, guest spots alongside the likes of Troye Sivan and beabadoobee, the centerpiece of the I Saw the TV Glow soundtrack, and a Grammy for her work on The Record by boygenius, the band she subsequently joined as a touring member. Yes, Jay Som itself has been on a bit of a break; Duterte, however, has perhaps been busier than ever.

When Duterte reckoned the time had come to revisit Jay Som, she did not pretend to be hidebound by the project’s past. Instead, she let the half-decade of life she’d lived and work she’d done since releasing Anak Ko filter not only into her songs but also her process. The new friends she’d actually had time to make in Los Angeles now that she was off the road—especially Joao Gonzalez (of Soft Glas) and Mal Hauser (a collaborator to Mk.gee and Illuminati Hotties)—became key partners, as Duterte opened her music to others like never before. But she also opened up her music to herself and her memories, writing songs that revisited the sounds of her youth with the benefit of her experiences as a musician, producer, and performer. She was neither shy about her influences nor limited about where they might lead her. And so no previous Jay Som album sounds quite like the new Belong, a gripping 11-song set about self-definition and, well, belonging, that floats between supercharged power-pop hits and hazy ballads, between electronic curiosities and lighters-up anthems. It is a map of the first 31 years of Duterte’s life, all leading to the present that is Belong.