SAYA GRAY RETURNS WITH QWERTY III, OUT TODAY FROM DIRTY HIT
BUY / STREAM QWERTY III HERE
“Gray has already built a world we felt lucky to be let into – and she’s a protagonist worth rooting for” - ROLLING STONE
“Gray has crafted songs that feel lived-in and raw while maintaining the boundary-pushing that has made her so intriguing." CBC MUSIC
“a fresh and uncompromising artistic voice” - DAZED
“Saya Gray Is Remaking Pop in Her Own Image” EXCLAIM!
“[An] alt-pop innovator” - NME
“the Japanese Canadian songwriter and producer … collaging R&B and alt-rock into interdimensional pop.” - PITCHFORK
“an alt-pop force” - STEREOGUM
Photo Credit : Jennifer Cheng // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Singer-songwriter, producer, and instrumentalist Saya Gray returns with QWERTY III, the third installment in her series of EPs that offer an unfiltered look into her creative process. Out now via Dirty Hit, the seven-track project finds Saya diving headfirst into her artistic impulses, fusing new sounds and textures that highlight her penchant for effortless worldbuilding.
While her debut album SAYA highlighted her singular approach to songwriting and ear for production through a collection of melody driven songs, her QWERTY series offers a different perspective to Saya’s artistry, capturing the breadth of her musical curiosity and the unconventional ideas that shape her work. Across the series, she pushes beyond familiar structures, revealing new dimensions to an artist whose creative instincts rarely follow a predictable path.
Speaking of the new EP, Saya shares:
“Q EPS ARE EXPERIMENTS BETWEEN PROJECTS. THE THROWAWAYS. THE CATHARTIC MOMENTS THAT DON’T FIT BETWEEN ERAS OF CHANGE. LIKE THE FOLLICULAR PHASE. THE FERTILE VOID. OR THAT SLIM JIM BETWEEN MYSTIC AND MAD.
I FEEL WEIRD BECAUSE WE’RE LIVING IN A WEIRD WORLD, AND THESE LIL MIXTAPES ARE MY DOCUMENTATION OF THAT FEELING. A REFLECTION OF EVERYTHING. I’D RATHER MAKE HONEST SHIT THAN SOMETHING THAT FITS IN SO THESE ARE LITTLE OFFERINGS FROM THE IN-BETWEEN SPACE. TRANSITIONS OF A FERAL WOMAN. NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS.”
BUY / STREAM QWERTY III HERE
MORE ABOUT SAYA GRAY + QWERTY III
Saya first introduced herself with her 2022 EP 19 MASTERS, a collection of dissonant electro-rock sketches recorded largely through her iPhone's Voice Notes app. The project established her as an artist unafraid to follow her instincts beyond traditional songwriting conventions, earning recognition from TIME, The New York Times, Pitchfork, NPR, and more. She followed it with QWERTY and QWERTY II, the latter featuring “AA Bouquet for Your 180 Face,” which ranked No. 22 on The New York Times' Best Songs of 2024 list. With QWERTY III, Saya returns to this space of sonic freedom, documenting the ideas, feelings, and musical experiments that emerge along the way.
In 2025, she released her debut full-length album SAYA, a 10-track body of work shaped by personal transformation during a retreat to Japan and a journey toward a more cohesive expression of her songwriting. The multi JUNO Award nominated and Polaris Music Prize shortlisted album was praised by numerous publications including Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, DAZED, Stereogum, NME and Paste Magazine, among others, and also saw her debut performance on NPR’s Tiny Desk. This fall, Saya Gray opened for Turnstile at Toronto’s Woodbine Park on September 12th, where she debuted QWERTY III track “SPOOO0OOOOF.”
Across her work, she continues to move between genres with instinctive fluidity, drawing on her background as a bassist, her musical upbringing – nurtured by parents who are both classically trained musicians – and an expansive musical imagination that resists easy categorization.
UPCOMING LIVE DATES
11/7 - New York, NY @ Knockdown Center (OUTLINE Festival)
11/8 - New York, NY @ Night Club 101 (SOLD OUT)
11/9 – New York, NY @ 526 W 114th Street
QWERTY III TRACKLIST
1. YOU??? HUH???
2. GUANYIN 06/10/25
3. SPOOO0OOOOF
4. 4LL MY LOVE ( WASN'T ENOUGH )
5. FERAL CHILD ;-0
6. .. I LUV YOU P A U L !!
7. 2 2 BABOON..