Monikered as keshi (stylized), a phonetic play on his name, Casey Luong is an artist’s artist. He commands a large and loyal fan base, who finds deep, meaningful connections within the universal themes of his music. With nearly 3.5 billion listens worldwide, keshi has gone on to become a streaming force with his latest debut album, GABRIEL, and acclaimed trilogy of EPs —skeletons (2019), bandaids (2020), and always (2020).
Released March 2022 via Island Records, GABRIEL is keshi’s magnum opus, where for the first time, the 27-year-old singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist finds himself as the main character of his sonically articulated world. “GABRIEL is a record that turned out much more personal than I intended from the beginning,” keshi shared. “It ended up being a means for me to process the experience of having transitioned from a much less public life to another I’m having a little more trouble navigating recently. I thought about success, purpose, family, pressure, and failure; how time is my only commodity and how sex is just skin; how little I care for what people have to say and how important it is at the same time. I was reminded how fun making music is supposed to feel, and that it’s just as much listened to as its lyrics are heard. It’s an album that I hope is candid, varied, and one you can come back to again and again.” GABRIEL was made in one summer between Houston, where keshi is from, and Los Angeles with Baltimore producer and songwriter Elie Rizk, who co-produced the album with keshi.
Until GABRIEL, keshi has been a self-reliant artist, who wrote, produced, engineered, and played all the instrumentation on his projects. His initial success includes making his first Billboard appearance when skeletons EP hit #59 on the Top Album Sales chart. With GABRIEL, keshi reached #4, which became the highest charting debut album from a new artist in 2022. On Spotify alone, keshi has generated 5.5 million monthly listeners and his single, “GET IT,” landed on VIRAL 50.
