You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe.

On September 5th, I'm going to be doing a special live Song Exploder event in Los Angeles with Boni Vair.

Justin Vernon and producer Jimmy Stack are going to be joining me on stage to tell the story behind one of the songs from the new Bonie Verre album, Sable Fable. So if you've ever wondered what a full, unedited Song Exploder conversation is like, this is your chance to be in the room. This is going to be a live event only. It's not going to be live streamed or repeated on any other night, so I hope you can make it. It's going to be at the beautiful Palace Theater in downtown L.A.

You can get tickets to this special Song Exploder Live event with Bonnie Vair at

songexploder.net slash live. Again, it's on Friday, September 5th in downtown L.A.

And you can get tickets at Song songexploder.net slash live.

J-SOM has a new album coming out on October 10th called Belong, which is pretty exciting,

if you're a fan like me, because her last album came out six years ago. This new one features

guest appearances by Haley Williams from Paramore and Jim Adkins from Jimmy Eat World.

And I've been really enjoying it, so I thought it would be nice to revisit her Song Exploder episode, also from six years ago, November 2019.

Since the episode was published, Malina's done a lot. She was part of the Grammy-winning Boy Genius album that came out in 2023, and she's produced and mixed a bunch of albums for other folks. I've been

lucky enough to work with her a few times, including a duet that we did together for a song

of mine. And I consider a friend now, and that all started with this episode. So here it is.

Melina Duterte, who goes by the name J-SOM, is a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. She's released three albums under the name J-SOM, and she's produced, engineered, and mixed, each one.

Her third album, Anakou, came out in August 2019, and in this episode, Malina breaks down a song from it called Tenderness.

I'm feeling like we just begun.

Nothing said a good enough.

Tenderness is for a come. I'm Melina from J-Sahomber.

I started writing tenderness the summer of 2018.

I just moved to L.A.

And I was doing a lot of like production work for other people.

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