BOK SUNA Unveils a Glitchy, Gut-Wrenching Reality Check With “honest person”

Photo by Kara Balicanta

BOK SUNA is not here to smooth things over. In her latest single, "honest person," the Seattle-based artist leans into discomfort with bare honesty and haunting vulnerability. This isn't a love song. It's a confrontation. A self-examination. A quiet unraveling.

Set against minimal production, the track feels like an open wound. There is no dramatic build or sonic payoff. Just a soft, steady ache. Her voice trembles with intention, each lyric delivered like a truth she has no choice but to say out loud. It's tender but never fragile. This is what emotional transparency sounds like when it isn't curated for comfort.

What makes the song hit even harder is the accompanying visual. Directed and animated by BOK SUNA herself, the video is a surreal, glitched-out experience that feels like watching someone's internal world crack open. Faces blur. Colors bleed. Time bends. It mirrors the emotional state of the song perfectly; distorted, heavy, and hard to look away from.

"honest person" marks the beginning of a new chapter leading up to her album CARNATE, releasing August 29. Based on this first glimpse, it's clear she's not aiming to make easy listening. She's building an honest archive of feelings most people try to avoid. It's vulnerable without being weak. It's painful without being pitiful. And most importantly, it feels real.

Something is refreshing about an artist who resists polish in favor of truth. BOK SUNA's work is deeply rooted in community, care, and creative expression. With support from Play Dead and Softseed Music, and longtime collaborator Oliver Hollingshead, she's carving a space for listeners who crave art that reflects the complexity of lived experience.

This is not a single you'll casually scroll past. It's a moment worth sitting with. A signal that CARNATE will be more than an album. It will be a raw, transformative journey.

Photo by Yuri Arakak

What was the emotional core behind writing "honest person"?

I have often felt persecuted socially for my sensitive nature, and I wrote "honest person" as a reflection of this phenomenon in my life. In a "dog-eat-dog world," or rather, an American society built on the premise of competition endorsed by a capitalist system, existing in radical empathy can sometimes appear foolish or unrealistic. "Honest person" was in some ways a call to action for a more compassionate world to inhabit. 

How did your background in visual art shape the concept for the music video?

I use visual art as a way to take the unseen (emotion, memory, etc.) and recompact them into some kind of tangible representation of those things. In other ways, I use visual art as a way to reprocess my life experiences somatically in creating animation for "Honest Personas," simply documenting what was happening in life while writing the song, symbolically through various 5-second. It was as if I were keeping journal entries in the form of animations, just as I write music, and I thought it would be suitable to combine both the song and the animations as a way to represent a small piece of my life that I carry with me. 

What does healing through sound mean to you as both an artist and a person?

When I write music, I tend to draw from the most painful parts of my inner psyche. I'm not sure if I will continue to do this as I move forward as an artist, but in writing "Honest Person," I took a lot of painful memories and difficult emotions and turned them into a song. Once it became a song, it was no longer a representation of pain, but rather a representation of everything the song had become for me. It has become a reminder of all the people who came together to make the song a reality, of all the happy memories I have from performing the song, and of all the lovely people I've met through my music.

How do collaboration and community influence your creative process?

I could not have made "honest person," let alone this upcoming album, without collaboration and community. I have been fortunate to work alongside Oliver Hollingshead (Hillsboro, ACAB Rocky, etc.) in creating "Honest Person," and my artistic process has changed forever since then. As a solo artist, music has always been a solitary pursuit for me, and I often felt limited by the loneliness that comes with it, as well as feeling locked into my personal skill level as a musician.

While working with Oliver, however, the kinds of songs I could create suddenly became elevated through Oliver's ability to incorporate more complex drumbeats and mixing, and my musical horizons expanded almost immediately. I was also able to build rapport with labels such as Play Dead and Softseed Music, which have helped substantially in promoting and distributing my music. Having the opportunity to collaborate and develop a sense of community keeps me motivated to continue making music. 

What do you hope listeners carry with them after hearing this song?

I have no expectations for my music or how it is received. I encourage listeners to find their meanings as they apply to them. I love hearing all the different interpretations of my music and celebrate how unique everyone's experience is with sound.