Q&A: Luisa Wilson Lets Songs Breathe on “Love & Oxygen (Live in Bushwick)”
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
Heronima Valledor
INSIDE LUISA WILSON’S GENRE-FLUID UNIVERSE — Love & Oxygen (Live in Bushwick) captures Luisa Wilson in motion. Memphis-born, NYC-based singer, guitarist, songwriter, and pianist shaping songs in real time rather than preserving them as fixed forms. The EP doesn’t frame performance as documentation. It treats it as transformation, where arrangements loosen, expand and recalibrate in front of an audience. Wilson moves across classical motifs, modern pop structure, folk storytelling, and R&B phrasing without treating genre as separation.
Recorded live with the Dali Rose band, the EP allows space for improvisation without losing structure.
“Mars (Live in Bushwick),” the EP’s deluxe track, sits at the center of that balance. Built on a classic jazz structure, the song shifts under Wilson’s interpretation into something more immediate and contemporary. The harmonic framework stays intact, but the delivery pulls it forward. Her vocal phrasing moves with a conversational clarity, marked by timing that plays against expectation rather than settling into predictability.
“I'm just excited for [listeners] to be maybe a little bit surprised, because I tend to write a bunch of different songs and say things in new ways,” Wilson says to Luna. “I think it's really fun to do new interesting things like vocal productions over some pretty standard beats and incorporate more live jazz elements into more soul-pop music. I think that's just really fun and witty and exciting.”
Love & Oxygen (Live in Bushwick) positions Wilson in a space where composition and performance remain inseparable. The songs adjust, respond and expand in real time. That approach keeps the EP in a constant state of becoming, where structure never overrides spontaneity and intention never limits range. Wilson holds classical discipline, pop immediacy, and jazz fluidity within the same frame without flattening their differences.
Lily Beth Senkowski
LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what inspires your artistic style and sound?
LUISA: So many people, Raye right now is a huge inspiration to me, just because of how bold she's being and her album and her performances. I'm inspired by a lot of blues, a lot of jazz. I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, so I got lucky growing up there and being influenced by just a ton of amazing artists there. A lot of Prince, a lot of Al Green. I love Olivia Dean, and just the soul and the bluesy pop music is the lane that I really want to go down for the foreseeable future. Artists like Raye, Olivia Dean, Al Green, and Etta James, there's so many, but I'll keep it concise. I'll keep it there because I keep going.
LUNA: What inspires you to push boundaries within your sound? Are there any specific experiences, artists, or moments that have encouraged you to explore new musical territories?
LUISA: I started listening to everything which I think is really beneficial for me and figuring out the sound and the genres and the lane that I want to go down. But a lot of jazz, a lot of big band instrumental albums are really inspiring to me. Raye just did that entire thing, and it's completely genre bending. Rosalia is very, very inspiring to me too, just to hear people in the mainstream and who are charting right now are really taking a lot of risks, and not really staying in one box, which to me, is very inspirational. Music is super saturated right now, and that's amazing and there's so many opportunities, and I think it's really cool to find the pockets that exist right now of experimentation and live instruments, but also electronic music. All of that's really pushing me and inspiring me right now.
LUNA: You just released the Live in Bushwick version of your Love & Oxygen EP and huge congratulations is in order! Love & Oxygen (Live in Bushwick) feels immersive and transportive. What drew you to revisit and capture this body of work live rather than in a studio setting?
LUISA: Because these songs, the studio version, is a collection of songs that I made that I really loved while I was in college, and it was my first body of work, so they felt very safe to me. I wrote pretty much all of them completely, 100% by myself, except for “Body.” They all had a very distinct sound in my head. When I thought of something else that I could do just for fun, I saw Dali Rose perform at this school event, and all of those instrumentalists are the instrumentalists that I had on the live EP. I just knew that I really wanted to play with them, because they're all very just soulful, authentic artists and instrumentalists. Dali Rose's music, in itself, is just really, really inspiring. I wanted to take the studio versions and put them in a completely different context and live; they just sounded a lot more like home to me. It was just fun to get to have two different versions of a body of work that I loved. I just wanted to see what it would sound like. I'm lucky that it sounded as good as it did, and it was so fun to work with all of those people, just because I'm a performer first, and so singing live is where the music really comes into itself. I wanted to capture that.
LUNA: In a live setting like Live in Bushwick, do certain songs take on a completely new life compared to their original versions? Was there one in particular that surprised you the most?
LUISA: “Lies” was really, really surprising to me. I almost liked the live version better, just because of how different it felt, because I made that song first strictly over an Ableton beat that I made in the class two years ago, and it was an easy, R&B pop groove. Live, the key changed. It turned into a major song instead of a minor song, which was interesting, and it was just so much more dynamic. “Salt of the Earth” left me surprised. I fell in love with it instantly. I remember I was listening to the voice memo from the first rehearsal over and over again, and showing all my friends because it blew my mind. That song in particular was pretty surprising to me.
LUNA: Do you feel like any track finally “clicked” for you in the live setting in a way it hadn’t before?
LUISA: “Body” really clicks when I perform it live. That one also takes on a different context live. It's almost more yacht rock, instead of like yacht R&B, almost beachy, which I thought was really funny live. It pushes me more, especially playing with a rhythm section, really keeps me locked in and pushes me to do more with my voice and my guitar playing. All around, I feel more energized when I'm playing with musicians around me than just singing over a track.
LUNA: What are you most excited for listeners to experience with the newly released songs?
LUISA: I'm just excited for them to be maybe a little bit surprised, because I tend to write a bunch of different songs and say things in new ways. I want listeners to find the humor in the music that I'm releasing soon, and also just something to blast and bump to. I think it's really fun to do new interesting things like vocal productions over some pretty standard beats and incorporate more live jazz elements into more soul-pop music. I think that's just really fun and witty and exciting. I'm excited for everybody to hear that.
LUNA: What is fueling your fire right now that’s pushing you into this new chapter in your career?
LUISA: The time that I have on my hands is really golden. I am working with a small team, and so it's really on me to push the next projects forward myself and really dig deep into my own life and experience and what to draw from. Time and listening to just a ton of music right now, and learning more about who I am as a person, and putting that into the music is really pushing me right now.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like that you would like to share with Luna?
LUISA: I'm feeling really good. I'm feeling very open ended right now. I'm in the very early stages of new projects, and so I get to just play and experiment. I have two sessions today where I'm just excited to go in and see what happens and carve out from there. The next couple months in the foreseeable future is really just me writing as much as I possibly can and experimenting and playing as much as I can in the studio. That's the dream, so I'm feeling good.
Heronima Valledor
