Karina Rykman Expands Her Sound on New Album Late Checkout

Karina Rykman has spent the better part of a decade building a reputation as one of the more restless bass players on the jam and indie rock circuit, and Late Checkout, her second studio album, sounds like an artist stretching that reputation into new shape. Out September 25 via Karina Rykman/High Rotation Records, the record’s third single, “Shoegaze Summer,” arrives with an animated video, and it captures a band pushing a dreamy, reverb-heavy sound toward something heavier and more explosive by the end.

First Habits, Big Stages

Born and raised in New York City, Rykman started playing in bands in her early teens, forming her first group, False Arrest, and playing early shows at the Knitting Factory and other downtown clubs while she was still attending as many gigs as she was booking. Her bass playing landed her a run of unlikely early gigs, from a spot on America’s Got Talent to backing pop singer Julia Michaels on NBC’s TODAY. While studying at a School of Rock afterschool program, she caught the attention of Ween bassist Dave Dreiwitz, who invited her to play guitar in his side project, then later recommended her as his own replacement in pianist Marco Benevento’s band. Rykman took the gig, and by the time she graduated NYU, where she studied invention and distribution in contemporary music, she was a fixture in Benevento’s lineup, playing alongside acts including Vulfpeck and Dispatch.

That road experience fed directly into her own project. Rykman built her namesake band around guitarist Adam November and drummer Chris Corsico, and the trio spent years earning a reputation as a live act, releasing a run of singles and building a following well before Rykman released a full album of original material. Her debut, Joyride, was produced by Phish’s Trey Anastasio, a longtime friend and admirer who offered to work with her after the two reconnected at a festival. The album marked her arrival as a songwriter in her own right, anchored by the title track’s guitar solo from Anastasio himself, and it established the template Late Checkout now works to expand.

Back at The Barn

Late Checkout returns Rykman to Anastasio’s studio, The Barn, in Westford, Vermont, the same space where Joyride came together, with additional sessions at LCD Soundsystem’s DFA Studios in New York. She again worked with longtime collaborator Gabe Monro, and the record features November and Corsico alongside a newly expanded touring band.

“Shoegaze Summer” was the first song the group tracked at The Barn. Rykman says it was written instrumentally in a room with her band during a 72-hour lock-in the previous summer, before she finished the vocal melody and lyrics on her own. It has been a fixture of the band’s live sets ever since, and Rykman points to its ending as the moment the studio version finally caught up with the song’s live intensity, a shift from ethereal drift into what she calls pure adrenaline.

The single follows two earlier previews from the record. “Easy Rider” opened the campaign with a sun-drenched, bass-driven story of a coastal escape, and the bouncy, propulsive title track, “Late Checkout,” arrived soon after. Both came with their own official videos, part of a rollout that has leaned heavily on video as a companion to each new song.

Independent, Not Alone

Late Checkout arrives through Karina Rykman/High Rotation Records, a release structure that keeps Rykman in control of a record she has described as her most personal to date. That independence tracks with how she has built her career from the start, choosing side projects and sit-in slots that expanded her range rather than chasing a single genre lane. She spent much of the past several years touring behind Joyride, sitting in with the 8G Band on Late Night with Seth Meyers, and turning up onstage with acts across the jam and indie spectrum, including Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Nels Cline, and Warren Haynes. Most recently, she gave a well-received set at the Hoochenanny Festival in Upstate New York, then joined Jim James and My Morning Jacket for four songs during the band’s headlining set the same weekend, the kind of guest slot that has become a routine part of her calendar rather than a novelty.

Widening the Aperture

Rykman has described Late Checkout as a widening of her musical world, pairing the road-tested energy of her touring band with a sharper focus on lyrical storytelling than Joyride attempted. Where the debut leaned into exploratory jamming, the new record moves through more defined pop and rock shapes without losing the loose, improvisational feel that made her a draw on stages built for extended jams in the first place.

The album’s back half carries some of its more pointed songwriting. “Riverside Drive” reads as a kind of love letter to the grind of a working musician, while the tender “Where You At?” and the darkwave-leaning “Balcony” push her sound in directions Joyride never touched. Rykman has singled out a lyric from “Balcony” as close to a mission statement for the record as a whole, one that frames the destination as beside the point next to the journey itself.

That range across the tracklist mirrors the range of rooms Rykman has played in over the years, from arena stages behind other artists to headline club dates under her own name, and Late Checkout sounds like a record built to hold all of that at once rather than pick a single lane. It is a record made by someone equally comfortable stretching a groove for a festival crowd and writing a three-minute pop song with a clear hook, and the album’s best moments are the ones where both instincts show up in the same song.

Rykman will support Late Checkout with a hometown record release show in New York City, followed by a fall and winter run of US dates that stretches into December, taking the new songs from The Barn back out to the rooms where they were built to be played.