Krooked Kings’ Oliver Martin sits in a nondescript room, wearing a shapeless, oversized sweatshirt and an unstructured cap. The space is devoid of character—the paint and décor indeterminate. I hope this isn’t where the Utah-based group created their latest album, In Another Life, as the setting is uninspired, to put it politely. But then I spot three analog cameras hanging on one wall. They lend the room some visual interest, as does Oli’s wispy mustache, which provides a focal point during our conversation.
“You know a lot of people are like an onion and you have to peel the layers?” he asks. “My mom, she says I’m like an egg: you crack the egg a little and it’s all yolk. I like the deep stuff.”
Scanning the lyrics of In Another Life, I don’t doubt him. On the group’s fourth album in six years, there are songs about doomscrolling, drinking, drugs, and self-loathing—alongside themes of breakups, addiction, and the yearning for a different future. Music is how Oli conveys his thoughts; in person, it takes at least 45 minutes before he offers the yolk analogy. The more he talks, the more I realize that at 28, he is still quite young. He maintains a protective barrier, and I suspect the neutrality of his environment reflects a similar guardedness in himself.
In Another Life’s producer, Yves Rothman (Blondshell, Yves Tumor), first worked with Krooked Kings during the recording of their 2024 album, Shiver. Oli says the band “kind of had a crush on him after that. He’s handsome, he’s cool, he’s stylish. He’s a Hollywood producer.”
Oli credits Yves with pushing Krooked Kings musically, and especially lyrically, by challenging the group to get specific with their messaging. Previously, the band wrote quickly and without edits, primarily due to a lack of time. According to Martin, “Once we hit a vulnerability, Yves’s inclination was to dive into it instead of skipping over it and getting to the next idea. There were verses we spent hours on compared to the previous records. He reminded us to really focus and tap into that side.”
Speaking over the phone some days after my conversation with Oli, Yves says, “I want to hear a good story. I want to hear words that evoke my own story. What makes every artist unique is their own story. You’re always hearing songs about New York, L.A., London, Paris, but you’re never hearing stories about other places and smaller-town upbringings. It felt interesting to have a voyeuristic view into a group of guys growing up in Utah.”
Before recording officially began, Yves set Krooked Kings up in his Los Angeles studio as he would for a band practice. They played for two weeks, and in the process, it became apparent that musically, the album was going to be the sound of the band playing live together. Lyrically, for Yves, In Another Life captures the heart of who Krooked Kings are.
As they worked together, he observed the band grow more comfortable around him and eventually loosen up. “I just kept chipping away at any facade or any insecurities they had and got straight to the heart of who they are and what they’ve been trying to say over the last few records,” he says. “I feel like we finally started to crack that with this album. They took it seriously and that compelled me to push as hard as I could to get the best out of them. Not everyone I work with is willing to open up and share on that level. We were punching in and revising lyrics and melodies all the way up until we were mixing. It came full circle where musically and lyrically we were able to harness this energy of truth.”
When discussing songwriting, Oli consistently uses the word “we,” emphasizing that everyone in the band “chimes in” and “leans on each other,” especially during unsure moments. This collaborative practice is particularly vital when he struggles to translate personal experiences into direct lyrics while under the spotlight. Yves noticed this hesitation, specifically identifying a deep-seated self-criticism that Oli was afraid to verbalize—a breakthrough that Yves eventually brought to his attention.
“Once [Yves] said that, it made me so emotional I could almost cry,” says Oli, who is wary of imposing his points of view on the band’s collective identity. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I don’t know what the fuck is going on. And Yves was like, ‘Write lyrics that scare you.’ I went home and wrote the verse to ‘My Friend Max,’ which is about taking drugs, stealing, doing all these things I really despise, that my parents taught me not to do, but then saying, hands up, this is me. Even the relationship songs…we were not writing cutesy love songs, but what hurts about it, what’s happening in your brain while it’s happening. What’s the unfiltered version of what’s going on? Yves really tapped into that. Once that happened, it was cathartic.”
Of the 10 to 15 songs the band arrived with at Yves’ studio, only the title track survived intact. Some were axed immediately; others were rewritten and re-recorded, keeping Oli’s voice pure, stripped of the vocal doubling that had been his signature on previous records. Yves cited Coldplay and Radiohead for their singular, personality-driven voices, convincing Oli that not hiding behind doubling would push the vulnerability of the songs. Other influences referenced during recording included Fontaines D.C. (specifically 2024’s Romance), the Shins’ Wincing the Night Away, and Third Eye Blind—naming the song “Jumper” as an example of an uncomfortable track to write due to its subject matter of bullying and suicide.
The band members have left their Latter-day Saint upbringing behind, but Oli doesn’t downplay the difficulty of that decision. “I wish I was able to believe honestly,” he says. “I hated that I couldn’t. I think it broke me as a person. Even on this record is maybe something that still lingers in my soul. Having friends and family with such a structured life, they’re all doing things that I grew up thinking I was going to do, then fucking none of it happened. There are so many people that have had this fabricated life they imagined and it came crashing down.”
While “flawed and confused” is Oli’s catchall term for the band—and the concept to which In Another Life is pinned—he remains hopeful about the connection the music creates. “What we want to get across is: You’re not alone. These experiences happen to everyone. We don’t have the answers. We’re asking the questions in songs, and maybe there’s no answer. We’re just figuring it out.”
Catch Krooked King on their North America tour now.
