Q&A: Ski Team Breaks Through the Glass Ceiling in Debut Album ‘Burnout/Boys’

MusicQ&A

Jan 21

INTERVIEW

SKI TEAM WRITES TOWARDS THE MESSY MIDDLE — Ski Team, the project of songwriter and vocalist Lucie Lozinski, returns with Burnout/Boys, a sharply observed and emotionally attuned debut album that captures the unease and hard-won self-trust of early adulthood.

At its core, Burnout/Boys grapples with emotional responsibility. Lozinski doesn’t romanticize burnout, nor does she reject desire. She studies both, letting their coexistence shape the record’s emotional core.

Across the album, Lozinski returns to questions surrounding the value of what we create. Burnout/Boys reflects a desire to remain fully human while navigating a world that demands optimization, productivity and curated experiences, both in work and in romance. Rather than offering solutions, the record dwells in the tension of wanting meaning without burning out in the pursuit of it. The writing holds everything together, acting as the album’s emotional throughline even as the sound shifts and expands.

One standout moment arrives with “Music For My Family,” a song Lozinski describes as being “about family and destiny, or fate, or dreams or something.” She adds, “I’ve been rewatching The Fast and the Furious movies, which might be related. It’s a song for my family, and the honesty and dedication that go with dreaming about something.”

Sonically, Burnout/Boys showcases a wide spectrum of textures and moods. Under Philip Weinrobe’s guidance, the arrangements feel alive and unforced, allowing each song to breathe while still contributing to a cohesive whole.

Following the album’s release, Ski Team will bring Burnout/Boys to the stage with a live partnership with KCRW in Los Angeles on January 30, followed by a New York City release show in February.

Burnout/Boys doesn’t ask to be solved. It invites listeners to sit with uncertainty and to keep moving anyway.

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?

SKI TEAM: I still don't have a good answer for this, because I feel like it's probably everything I've ever listened to and so much of it is my parents and people I grew up with playing music. I guess off the top of my head, I was a huge Britney Spears fan growing up, Outcast, Jimmy Eat World, The New Pornographers, Air and Led Zeppelin. Anything rhythmic has always drawn me.

LUNA: What kind of atmosphere or emotional space do you aim to create for your listeners?

SKI TEAM: I clearly am driven to make music, but why? What's in it for the other people? That's easier to answer when you're making a product, but for music, it's like, does anyone really want or need more music? I'm not totally sure. There's something live that happens and where you're on stage and the audience is all really in it together, and you're sharing this borderline romantic moment. Everyone is so engaged and you're sharing breath. You feel like you're all on the same beat together. Once in a while, I zone out, like I'm not really there anymore. It's like I'm connected to space or God or something and I totally black out. Then I come back, and it feels so good. I come back and see that it looks like everyone else has gone there too. People will come up and say they cried, but that is the space that I'm trying to make. Especially during COVID, when this album was starting to be more of a goal, something I was seriously doing, it was really lonely in my apartment. I'm sure everyone had a really lonely time. And to be able to experience that feeling, or give that feeling to other people, let them know that I'm feeling that, and it's a one to many kind of thing where we're all just being honest with each other. That felt really important to me.

LUNA: You just released your debut record and a huge congratulations is in order! What sparked the initial idea for Burnout/Boys? What themes or feelings felt most urgent for you to explore?

SKI TEAM: The main motivation for making the album was just that I like albums. I like a whole record. I like to buy the whole story that someone has created, especially at the time when all the advice for musicians is to churn out singles all the time which doesn't feel that thoughtful. That's the main motivation. I had a lot of music and I wanted to stitch it all together. I talked to a mentor of mine. I was applying for grants and trying to figure out the themes. He was like, do yourself a favor and just drop that thought today. You don't have to think about what it's all about, or how it's going to make sense and package it up to other people. These all came from you.

I didn't sit down and labor over them. They just came out, so there will be a natural through line. I followed that advice that day and stopped worrying about it. I am delighted to see after it was all recorded that it feels like a cohesive world with a lot of different themes, which ended up being about work, glass ceiling, burnout and questioning, ‘Is this all there is?’ ‘Is this as good as it gets?’ Being a grown up in America is just a lot of trial and error in relationships as a young grown up.

LUNA: Have you taken any risks or experimented more, whether that’s lyrically, emotionally or sonically, with Burnout/Boys compared to your previous releases and what does that look like?

SKI TEAM: Across the board sonically, I gave up a lot of control. This was my first time working with Phil [Weinrobe] as a producer, and days before the session, he was like, ‘how are you going to play it for the band?’ We just listened to the demos I made and I had to learn how to play them all on guitar to show the most bare bones version of each song and was not able to communicate through scratch pad demos, which means nobody got to hear the full ideas in my head. Everyone got to hear what they were hearing, so it was much more collaborative, and that felt a little risky. I think having a tiny bit of fear or maybe a good dollop of fear is a good thing when you're making some art. Lyrically, these were the first songs where I didn’t really know if I wanted my parents to hear these through family or close friends, people at work, and thankfully enough, time has passed that it just is what it is now. I was thinking a lot about going into the studio and showing people songs, “New Boyfriend,” which is more on the nose, or that's just not a sentence that I would really say out loud in my real life. “Thirst Trap for Diego,” I was a little worried about because a lot of them are really personal, so I was worried whether people would recognize themselves in the songs.

LUNA: Do you have a personal favorite song on Burnout/Boys — one that feels closest to your heart or most revealing of who Ski Team is right now?

SKI TEAM: I like “Plan A.” That one just felt really special. It was the quickest one we did. I had just written it right before we went into the studios. My relationship was falling apart during that time and we were all just really hungry. We literally got hungry, so we had to get this take before we could eat. There's this desperation and it's a live vocal that we didn’t touch or edit it, so that one still makes me cry if I'm in the right mood.

LUNA: What were some unexpected lessons you learned during the process, and how might those lessons shape the way you approach future projects?

SKI TEAM: I learned so much from Phil. I keep learning so much from him. I don't know if I'll ever not track live again, and it's just so fun and so efficient getting a bunch of people together, and the end result is that it feels more like photography where you make something really special in this room. And if you can't do that, don't record it. But as soon as it feels special, capture it. You've caught this moment and that room is inside this master forever, which is just so cool compared to painting or writing. Anytime if I feel like a song is lacking authenticity or soul, I think that's the way through. I learned so much from all the players too. I never studied music, so I had to go home and learn after the first session how to translate the letter notes into number notes, and just so that I could keep up in the studio with all these people who are brilliant musicians who studied it.

LUNA: How do you hope listeners — especially your femme audience — can connect with or find power in this new era of music from you? What emotions or messages do you want to leave with them?

SKI TEAM: I hope it connects in that I think some of these are probably familiar experiences. They're my experiences as a young woman, and I am hoping that, for better or worse, I think a lot of people have experiences that are similar and trying to figure out what you're supposed to do in this world.

The side closer to my heart is Burnout, rather than the Boys side of that. We've seen the Boys side a million times, but on the Burnout side, it’s a different story. I went to a women's college, and there was so much empowerment and glass ceiling stuff like making sure that we knew how to jungle gym our way through anything we wanted to do out in the world in our careers or lives. I felt pretty well equipped going into the workforce.

I joined tech as an industry when I had a 200 person team, and there's one other woman and we’re super outnumbered by men. It didn't seem that challenging. I didn't feel like I was going to hit the ceiling. I had this really quick ascent in my job and then I just plateaued, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. I wasn’t going to assume it's sexism for a long time, and no matter where I wiggled to, to get over this like block, it seemed like it kept coming back to that, and it was just really hard for me to shake this feeling of I think I found the ceiling and watching my male colleagues not hit that. Then something interesting happened, which was all of the women I worked with and came up with, they all quit. They just left the industry.

It felt like the numbers of women in these male dominated industries and getting to the leadership positions, it wasn't necessarily that they weren't getting these opportunities. It was that they didn’t want to play this stupid game anymore, and they would all leave and go do something that they actually really loved and were passionate about — start a family, try to become a therapist or go to grad school. People sprawled out and did really wonderful things, including me, but it felt weighted to me because I didn’t want to not hit the ceiling, I wanted to break through it. I wasn't happy. Watching the people who were breaking through, it just seemed really boring and the values got weird over the top. So that's what “Up The Wall” is about, which is the last song on the record, and the last lines of that are, “I've been chewing on this idea for a while now / It's not their fault if I'm still here / It's mine.” I started to feel bitter toward people I was working with, and then realized I don't have to be here, so I left and started doing music full time, and I feel pretty happy, but it's complicated.

LUNA: What is fueling your fire right now that’s pushing you into this next chapter in your career?

SKI TEAM: I don't know where it's coming from. The fire is ablazing. It just feels like if your hair is growing really fast and you're like, I just got to cut it and keep putting it somewhere. The songs are coming and they have to be let free. Being in New York, I'm constantly inspired here. There's just so much good music, especially music that no one really knows about. Sometimes there's no one else in the room and the music is the best show I've seen all year, so constantly creatively inspired and fulfilled.

LUNA: How are you planning on celebrating the album release?

SKI TEAM: We have two shows that I'm really excited about. One is in LA, and one is in New York after that, like a homecoming show. I'm just so pumped up that this project is complete and is going to be released into the world. I've been really heads down for two years working on it, just not really doing anything other than that. It feels like I get to return and take a breath and celebrate with all these people that I haven't really gotten to spend that much time with over the last few years. Sequins, disco, ordering a cake, probably throwing a little party in my house. I got matches made the other night. I was up in the night, couldn't sleep, feeling stressed. I had the idea of getting some Burnout/Boys matches burning and I woke up in the morning and was like, ‘did I really do that?’ And I checked and I had ordered them.

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?

SKI TEAM: I feel great. I feel relieved. This isn't always seen as a positive feeling, but I feel proud. I feel really excited, even if no one heard it, I would still feel really excited about this album. The fact that people now can hear it and might like it is thrilling to me.