While the mayor boasts about Vogue World as a win for the local “creative community,” one thing’s never been more clear: A healthy art scene can’t depend on politicians or wealthy donors.
Between 2022 and 2024, Oakland electronic musician Kashika Kollaikal, who performs as Flung, released two albums on indie labels, performed at venues like Rickshaw Stop and Thee Parkside, and received a glowing review on Pitchfork for her record Apricot Angel.
But when she began shopping around her new music in 2025, the worst part wasn’t the rejection emails: It was the silence. It especially stung, she says, to not hear back from a label with which she had a prior relationship.
“It’s such a demoralizing, soul-crushing, ego-death process,” says Kollaikall in a recent video interview. “You put so much care and love and all of your damn heart into this thing. It’s so intimate and vulnerable, and then you send it out into the void, and people can't even be bothered to respond.”
One year later, Kollaikal has launched an effort to ensure other independent artists don’t feel so alone. Oriented around trans and queer experimental artistry, Names To Love You By is a new DIY label that Kollaikal founded to offer the support and community artists deserve.
The label’s first release is a compilation that drops Sept. 24, and reflects the network that Kollaikal, who’s from Seattle originally, has built over seven years in the Bay Area. It features demos, alternate versions, covers, and previously unreleased pieces, including works by critically acclaimed artists Maxine Funke, Sen Morimoto, and Sui Zhen. They’ll celebrate with a show at Wyldflowr Arts on Sept. 25 with performances by Sachi’s Mirror, Cheflee, and Flung.
Cheflee playing bass with Toro y Moi. (Sophia Sem)
Two names on the label’s inaugural compilation will stand out to local music lovers: One is Maria BC, an ambient folk singer who has shared bills with Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Hot Chip co-founder Alexis Taylor. The other is Cheflee, a Bay Area-born-and-raised artist who has collaborated with Salami Rose Joe Louis and Saba and currently plays bass for Toro y Moi.
As an electronic music producer and bassist who produces and self-releases his own music, Cheflee values creative autonomy. But he also values artistic community. He says he appreciated Kollaikal from the moment he saw her play at Bottom of the Hill in 2023.
“The musician-label dynamic is typically pretty exploitative,” says Cheflee. “So I’m not necessarily excited to be on a label. I’m more excited to work with Kashi because Kashi’s a good person and is an inspiring artist in their own right. When an artist like that has an idea to combine a bunch of people who they also value artistically, then nothing but good can come from that.”
Stories of fraught relationships, abuse, and legal disputes between artists and record labels are commonplace in the music industry — just ask any fan of Prince or Taylor Swift. And in 2026, when anyone can write, record, produce, release, distribute, and market music all by themselves, one might wonder what purpose a label even serves anymore.
For Kollaikal, the answer is simple: It’s about human connection. Sure, artists can do it all themselves, but the process is often lonely and isolating.
“When you’re a solo artist or you’re just starting out, it’s really valuable to have someone in your corner to bounce ideas off of and help shape the vision,” says Kollaikal.
The label founder touts her own “logistics brain” as a strength for the new label, which aims to offer support (when requested) in the traditional areas of art, sequencing, mixing, mastering, and press. She wants Names to Love You By to be a label that organizes and connects musicians and helps them grow in their artistry.
It’s a ripe time to build something new. Recent years have been mixed for local musicians and fans, and shuttering venues always capture headlines — Slim’s, Starline Social Club, The New Parish, and Bottom of the Hill have all announced closures since the pandemic. But people closer to the underground say they’ve been witnessing a music renaissance. Across club party promoters, cross-genre labels, community radio stations, and multidisciplinary art collaborations, it’s practically impossible to keep up with everything happening across the Bay Area’s many scenes.
Given the rise of generative AI tools that can fully produce music, the unpolished recordings featured on Names To Love You By (Vol. 1) are even more compelling. Kollaikal says they reflect her interest in the human creative process in all its messiness and beauty.
The compilation features minimal meditative piano on “Sister, Sister (Extended)” by Melbourne artist Sui Zhen, African rhythms on “Nyaradzo” by Anzanga Marimba Ensemble, and ambient saxophone on “Ordinary Magic” by Cleo Cole (aka Cole Pulice). There’s a cover of k.d. lang’s “Constant Craving,” and the collection’s final track is a lo-fi mbira cover of Aphex Twin’s "Nanou2.”
Though influenced by her own background, Kollaikal isn’t seeking to establish a label that only releases “experimental music” or “music by trans/queer artists.” She’s more focused on strengthening ties between artists and supporters: “It feels more important than ever to be bound up with one another.”
Kollaikal balks at talking about the label as a brand, which feels overly capitalistic, but she is interested in creating a cultural marker “that people can trust.” She hopes people will take a chance on artists who they might not already know because they respect the curatorial and community aspect of Names To Love You By.
She also shares Cheflee’s suspicion of labels, particularly in regard to their tendency to tokenize marginalized groups. “Queerness and transness are more than just identities,” says Kollaikal. “They are ways of thinking, being, feeling, and listening.”
“To be truly fluid in your creative practice you have to be willing to accept yourself fully,” Cheflee says. “And for many of us, that also includes embracing our own queerness.”
Kollaikal aims to have the label embody an ethos of “queer imagination.” On the label’s first release, this manifests through the liminal spaces of experimental and “unfinished” work, which may represent how our identities are always in flux.
Most of all, Kollaikal wants to run a label that always responds to artists.
“Even if I can't put out your record, I want to write back,” she says. “I want to tell you that I listened to it and appreciated something about it and connect you with someone else.”
Names to Love You By’s compilation release show with Sachi’s Mirror, Cheflee, and Flung takes place at 6:30pm on Sept. 25 at Wyldflowr Arts (809 37th St., Oakland). Tickets ($10-25, NOTAFLOF) and more info here.
Ronny Kerr is a San Francisco-based writer and the founder of White Crate, a platform dedicated to covering the Bay Area music scene. He grew up in Daly City and still loves the fog.
