Sam Casper first made waves in the indie scene with her debut EP Red As Love back in 2019. The ethereal, melancholic, and lyrically daring project turned heads immediately and slowly began putting the songstress on LA’s local radar. Now, years later, the California native has had a music video featuring the iconic Angelyne, achieved niche online virality, and is releasing her second EP.
As Sam begins to talk, her eyes float up to Canter’s stained-glass ceiling tiles; she’s been here too many times to count, which is no surprise to hear from a singer who lives and breathes the city’s bygone decades. Unlike most artists who now rush, half-heartedly, to co-opt the latest aesthetic trend, Sam’s anachronistic looks and sensibilities are completely her own. There is no persona, no pretense here—just a woman, her music, and her tales from her unseen world.
At 16, it became clear to Sam that music would become her life. “I think it was when I listened to David Bowie for the first time that I just started crying, and I was just like, wow, this is beautiful. How can I convey something like this?” says the “Two Guns” singer. “I think I always just loved the idea of a fantasy world quite a bit because I grew up in an environment that just wasn’t very, uh, comfortable, and so I just saw safety in fantasy… how can I create a world that doesn’t exist in this physical realm and invite people into it? I just thought music was a great outlet.” It wasn’t until two years later, when she had moved to New York City for college and subsequently dropped out, that her road toward music began to reveal itself.
So you dropped out of college. What was the next move?
So I moved to Salt Lake City for nine months before I moved to Santa Monica.
Why?
I was living in Brooklyn, and I was partying a lot. I was so broke. I was just like, if I keep doing this, it’s not going to end well.
What was your time in Salt Lake like?
I got a studio apartment; it was in this old witchy house… I just thought, I’m going to live here for nine months. I’m just going to lock myself in this apartment, I’m going to write, I’m going to study all my favorite musicians, I’m going to study music, just no distractions. I’m here; I fell in love, so that was tough. That was a big distraction, but I had a producer out there; his name was Jimmy.
So you’re in Salt Lake City, you’re working with this producer, in this witchy cabin…
Oh, it was so much fun… I had my rotating cast of very artistic friends come in, and we would write songs and shoot videos. And then I lived right down the street from this old dive bar, and I met this bartender; we fell in love (she sighs jokingly). I think a lot of my writing is about that relationship, even though it was nine months. I’m a pretty intense person, and so is he… I still draw a lot of inspiration from that experience. But I was like, I can’t live here. I gotta come back to LA.
Upon returning to LA, Sam would go on to meet Miles Singleton and produce her first released project, Red As Love. “I knew that I wanted to write, and I knew that I wanted to perform and be on stage and be in front of an audience. So I just kept at it. I just kept writing. And as I was doing that, I met different musicians and people who wanted to work with me,” says Sam, who shortly after releasing Red As Love met musician Nate Merli of Chemical Therapy, with whom she has been collaborating and recording ever since.
What’s your recording process with Nate like?
Nate has this big warehouse space, and we record in there and I scream, I cry. There’s always tears in the recording process for some reason with me, but I learn something every single time… when you create, you have to be open to the idea of, well, maybe this isn’t supposed to be in here, and just be open to the idea of what the session is bringing in. Nate taught that to me.
You’ve been trudging this path for a while, your numbers are growing. Do you think you would ever sign with a label?
No… they’re looking for someone who has built up a whole thing by themselves and done everything themselves. So why would I put all this hard work in just to have some big machine be like, “Oh, now we control you?” It just seems like a trap.
100%. What do you think is next for you then?
I’ll be releasing an EP next year, which I’m so excited about— that and releasing my single “Pray For Me” and the music video for it.
Speaking of which, you’ve grown a lot through TikTok due to your retro videos and music videos. Out of all the projects you’ve shot, which one’s been your favorite?
Definitely my “Death Proof” video… It’s in the realm of dark fantasies, lust, sex, glamour, you know. A director, Gabriella Kashi, reached out to me. I was like, okay, I have an idea. I worked with a whole team of people that I’ve never met before, and for me, that’s really rare because I work with all my friends, so it just felt like me stepping out of my comfort zone and just trusting the process.
Angelyne is featured in your “Good Luck” music video. What was it like working with an LA icon?
I felt lucky because I grew up seeing her pink Corvette on the 101 when I would drive into the city. It was somewhat of a good omen when you saw her and here she was in my music video. She told me she got a good vibe so she would be in the music video. It was fairly quick the day of the shoot; she seemed very private and slightly out of touch… in a good way. I told her next time we go to Musso’s and get martinis.
Where does your visual world come from?
Like I said, my environment. I was alone my whole life. No, that’s not fair to say. I wasn’t alone my whole life. But for a good portion of it, I was left alone. So I just watched a lot of movies, and I think I loved classic cinema, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s was my first movie that I was just like, oh my God, this is so beautiful. How can I live my life like this every single day?… But a lot of it does come from a dark reality that’s parallel to my current reality. I always feel like there’s this other world going on right beside me, and so sometimes I tap into it, sometimes I tap out of it.
Would you say there’s a Sam Casper kind of entity, or is Sam Casper just one person?
No, there’s not. They’re pretty much very similar, very much so, because I’m me. I’m so authentically myself, and I have not changed for a long time.
What’s your favorite song of yours at the moment?
“I Should Know Better.” I think that’s definitely— I mean, “Two Guns” as well, even though I sound so small. That was my first track recording with Nate, and we were in Palm Springs… we were drinking a lot of tequila, and we watched some movie. Oh, it was about this Argentinian jewel heist. I guess it’s my favorite because it’s very dreamy and chaotic, but “I Should Know Better” is more of the adult direction that I’m going, so it’s almost kind of like a spiritual successor.
What was your first show like?
My first show was in New York City at an underground club called Berlin… I flew out there when I lived in Salt Lake to sing at my friend’s magazine launch, lit some candles, and hoped for the best on stage.
What was a turning point for you and your path in music?
I met a man from Craigslist who said he was a producer, which was true. I drove out to his place in the Valley after my first shift at the Rainbow, took Coldwater Canyon, and made him meet me at a Starbucks first so I could see if he was a serial killer or not. My brother ended up waiting outside his place while I was inside, and that’s when I realized there was no need to search so hard for work and to just start putting myself out there. That’s when I first started releasing music. I played at the Rainbow, which is where I waitress.
How has Downtown Los Angeles inspired your music?
I used to live at the top of a very big hill in Echo Park that overlooked Downtown, so the skyline was the backdrop to my life for three years. My first EP was recorded while looking at all the tall buildings and the pink sunsets that dipped into the ocean that you could see on a clear day. You could see the US Bank Tower from my bed, and I always felt like an angel up there looking down onto my own version of heaven… even if it holds a lot of darkness. I think most of my early songs I’ve written, and some I haven’t released, were inspired by my version of Downtown LA that I would look at every night on my balcony.
Sam Casper’s sonic world is not unlike her visual one, which she has become known for. Her love of soul music and Old Hollywood glamour seeps into the songs. Listening to Casper’s catalog is like being transported to the back room of the Roxy in the 70s or the height of a mob-run Las Vegas. Her sultry and raspy vocals help to paint a fantasy world filled with dazzling characters living out their last days or darkest fantasies, an auditory noirs, filled with mystery, always leaving the listener wanting more.
Leaving the deli and our table, which is now covered with glasses containing the remnants of black coffee and pink lemonade, Sam points out a book lying at the checkout: Reckless Road: Guns N’ Roses and the Making of Appetite for Destruction. She asks me if I have read it. I haven’t, but she has. It’s a natural remark that again points to the dedication she holds for her craft and its history. Parting ways, her tall, waifish figure disappears into the racket of Los Angeles. Her black retro dress and classically blown-out hair waft in the wind, and I am hit with a distinct realization: for the last hour of my life, I somehow lived in a world that existed only in the bygone hollerings of the Orpheum or the heyday of the Morrison Hotel, a feeling I’m sure Sam Casper is very accustomed to.
