SPELLLING: 'Walk Up to Your House'

The Sunday Music Drop is a weekly radio series hosted by the KQED weekend news team. In each segment, we feature a song from a local musician or band with an upcoming show and hear about what inspires their music.

Oakland singer, songwriter and musician Chrystia Cabral (who goes by SPELLLING) began writing songs at a young age, but didn’t start to pursue music seriously until she was attending UC Berkeley. As a student, she worked on a project with friends to create a score for an experimental film from Maya Deren and Alexandr Hackenschmied at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive called Meshes of the Afternoon.

The film’s surrealism inspired her and also reminded her of a Three Six Mafia song called “Walk Up to Your House.” She later created her own original composition and song with the same name.

“I guess [the song “Walk Up to Your House”] kind of felt to me like that moment where I felt for the first time, like, this is the art that I wanna do,” said SPELLING. “It’s one of the earliest songs I created that I felt like, this is special to me.”

She says her process of songwriting is about surrendering control to the process.

“I just started to naturally learn that each thing that I’m doing every day is a part of the songwriting process and just to treat it like … just like existing as a part of the writing instead of sitting down and trying to chip away or force or mold anything to happen,” said SPELLLING.

Around the time she graduated from UC Berkeley’s undergraduate program, SPELLLING became interested by the DIY (do-it-yourself) music scenes in Oakland and Berkeley, and was introduced to using a synthesizer. Her self-released debut album, Pantheon of Me debuted in 2017, followed by Mazy Fly two years later. She released her third album, The Turning Wheel, in 2021.

SPELLLING was born in Sacramento and has been living in Berkeley and Oakland for the last decade. She says the Bay Area is calming and matches her pace as an artist.

“I’m more stimulated in slow progressions, and so I feel like being in the Bay Area, it’s really nice to be able to be more observant and have the beauty. … I go on hikes all the time and go to the redwoods and spend a lot of time in the forest and with my dogs,” she said.

SPELLLING’s new album, SPELLLING & the Mystery School, came out on Aug. 25 and is a collection of creatively re-envisioned songs from throughout her discography.

The band for her song includes Giulio Xavier Cetto, Wyatt Overson, Patrick Shelley, Jaren Feeley, Divya Farias, Toya Willock, Dharma Moon-Hunter and the Del Sol Quartet. SPELLLING will be performing live at the Through the Looking Glass festival at Children’s Fairyland in Oakland on Sept. 16.