> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://see-saw.fun/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # puzzlehead’s new shoegaze jams beyond big sniff’s shadow - URL: https://see-saw.fun/puzzleheads-new-shoegaze-jams-beyond-big-sniffs-shadow/ - Published: 2026-09-02T20:48:36.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-02T21:00:18.000Z - Description: Katayoon Yousefbigloo talks writing with a band, her adversarial relationship with solo performance, and the new EP’s “no guitar solos” rule. “I’m really maturing.” - Author: Martin Douglas - Tags: interview As a musician, [Katayoon Yousefbigloo](https://katayoonyousefbigloo.com/?ref=see-saw.fun) isn’t concerned with following traditional album promotional cycles. “I’m just such a bad career person or whatever. Like when it comes to music, it’s such a project-to-project thing for me. I always feel bad for the people that put out records for me, ’cause I’m just like, ‘Ah, I’m done’ after I send it off,” she says near the end of our interview. “I’m not like, ‘OK, now, I’m gonna go sell this record,’ or whatever.” One reason is because Katayoon simply has too much on her plate. The Persian Canadian artist is a multihyphenate to the point where her artistic identity reads like a run-on sentence. She’s a multimedia visual artist working in fine art, photography, and video. She is a published writer and poet, with her musings captured in various zines and underground literary and art mags. And—especially for the purposes of this article—she plays music, and lots of it, having participated in a smattering of projects (including the experimental pop group Big City, [who released an EP titled *Liquid Times* on K/Perennial Records in 2022](https://bigcityca.bandcamp.com/album/liquid-times?ref=see-saw.fun)), but is probably best known as the creative nucleus of revolving-door art rock ensemble [Puzzlehead](https://puzzlehead.bandcamp.com/?ref=see-saw.fun). ## Sign up for see/saw a punk and rock’n’roll newsletter by evan minsker Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. [*Big Sniff*](https://see-saw.fun/punk-this-week-podcast-ty-segall-totalitar/), Puzzlehead’s mesmerizing 2019 LP, filters an array of styles through Katayoon’s tastes and experiences. Featuring heavy lyrics sung softly and buried deep in the mix, the Puzzlehead of *Big Sniff* alternates between some of the most delectable noise pop this side of Henry’s Dress and what Polvo might have sounded like if they were from the Pacific Northwest—and were as blown away by side two of Black Flag’s *My War* as so many of their peers from the region. This past spring’s [*Chessman Hazard Codechange Household*](https://inuwanwan.bandcamp.com/album/chessman-hazard-codechange-household?ref=see-saw.fun)has a much more pronounced shoegaze flavor. Katayoon is an accomplished artist with such a singular worldview, so the four songs on it never drift into snoozeworthy territory like so many contemporary bands under that genre’s umbrella. Nor do she and her bandmates use walls of pedal-treated guitar to hide the fact that they can’t write songs; there are nothing but jams on that EP. On a Tuesday afternoon in July from her Vancouver, British Columbia apartment, Katayoon detailed her childhood musical influences, the fluidity of Puzzlehead, amd the empowerment she found in the local DIY scene. --- ![Katayoon Yousefbigloo, aka Puzzlehead; photos by Natasha Katedralis](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/ca/31caa30b-1a72-4fa1-a48d-e09f6cd6259f/content/images/2026/09/PUZZLEHEAD-07.jpg) Katayoon Yousefbigloo, aka Puzzlehead; photos by Natasha Katedralis **What is your earliest memory of being captivated by music?** Oh, wow. Heavy hitter off the top. It was watching Persian music videos on VHS when we came to Canada in the ’90s. In North America, you could get these bootleg VHSs from random Persian grocery stores that had these L.A. Persian bands doing North American Persian pop songs. And the music videos were so crazy, I just remember watching the VHSs of them and being so enthralled. I think it was partly the music, but it was also the video element. They have this very iconic style of live music video that’s staged, like a live performance on a really decked out set. I was able to replay them over and over again. So I remember getting obsessed with those VHSs. **How old were you?** Oh, that must have been age four. I think at some level it’s stuck with me subliminally in many aspects of my music and video making. **You said that they maybe subliminally influenced your style. Is there a way that it may have consciously influenced your style as an artist of any sort?** I’ve been making music videos for the past, whatever, 10 years. And then there was a moment where I was like, “Oh, I’m just doing this aesthetic that I was exposed to.” I was doing it unconsciously, and then I realized that I was able to, at least with my video stuff, meaningfully use those kinds of aesthetics. And then with my music recently, I’ve been sampling ’90s cassettes or Persian tapes by the same artist that I was watching in these music videos. I’ve been sampling different little snippets. So I think now it’s a bit more intentional with those elements. **When do you remember really getting into music? I think everyone who gets into music, whether they’re an artist or a video director or a writer, they have that one band or that one song that they really got into where it was like, “OK, music is for me.” Was there an artist or a grouping of artists for you?** Yeah, I would say probably Bowie. I went to high school in the suburbs, and there was a record store, and they had the record, and I was just like, “This person looks really cool.” I bought it and it kinda blew my mind. I didn't think that I would make music until much later, it just seemed very inaccessible, but that’s when I knew. I was like, “OK, this is my thing.” In high school, I was working at a CD store, and then I would just go to shows. Then I eventually started playing music a little bit later, like in my twenties. But yeah, David Bowie and the Velvet Underground. I remember “Heroin,” actually, if you wanna talk about mind-losing experiences. That song kinda changed everything, as far as understanding what music could be, or its purpose. When I listened to it, I didn’t know shit. That song is about stuff that a 14-year-old suburban kinda sheltered girl doesn’t necessarily have the life experience to understand. But there was some kind of experience that was beyond the song that changed everything for me. **When you started playing music in your twenties, what was the punk scene like in Vancouver? Did you get introduced to local music through the punk scene?** Yeah, I guess that I got introduced to it through a punk scene. My introduction to playing would probably be this venue called Red Gate, which, however many years later, I’m somehow involved in. I’m on the board, and I help with the booking. I literally just wandered off the street one day. There were just a bunch of weirdos sitting and smoking at a table. There was a power outage weirdly, so they were all in the dark. And I was like, “Oh, hey, you guys are really weird. Can I join?” And then that was like... “It’s like a community. It’s a DIY venue.” I remember seeing a couple things that, again, blew my mind where I was like, “You can do that?” I think there was such an inaccessibility for playing music for so long. So much of it is cultural or psychological or whatever. Pre-social media and phone suburbs was a different, isolating kind of experience. Things felt a little bit less possible in certain ways, or there was just less visibility of it. But anyways, so when I saw my first noise show or my first woman playing the guitar, I was like, “Oh, crazy. I can *do* that?” And yeah, I remember a couple very formative experiences, like Anju Singh. She was playing a crazy noise violin set, and also another lifer person where I was like, “Oh, there’s a different way of doing—being in this world that’s not commercial, not glossy, and not white male.” **Tell me about the bands that led you to forming Puzzlehead.** I would say Royal Trux, Neil Young, and weirdly, Magnetic Fields. If I’m thinking about the actual early formation, I think I was listening to some pop music essentially. But I would say Neil Young and Royal Trux are my top two forever-rotated artists. And I started Puzzlehead when I was learning how to play guitar. I was in other bands playing other instruments. I was writing songs and stuff, but it was a little bit different. I feel like the guitar had the mobility that I needed to write songs and to form narratives around the lyrics I had. I think it was driven by the writing. I was weirdly spinning *69 Love Songs* so much. What is the band that they had before that? I’m blanking right now. The Magnetic Fields, what’s the guy’s name? **Stephin Merritt.** Yeah, I guess he was in a band beforehand. I somehow had those tracks, and I was listening to them. And anyways, there was a more lo-fi version of Magnetic Fields and sketches of those songs. So I think that was like, “OK, I’ll just do it.” And Smog. I was listening to a lot of early Smog, before Bill Callahan got good at guitar. That was one of my biggest references. **How does this project that started in your head as a way for you to formulate songs around your writing turn into the band that recorded *Big Sniff*?** *Big Sniff*, yeah, that was a very special version of the band. The band was in Vancouver. We had a band; everybody’s in the band and writing songs. I’d come up with the basic structure, but it was very collaborative, and everybody's writing their own parts and whatnot. The drummer in the band, Olga, and I were the core of the project, and we had different iterations with different people. Then we both moved to Montreal in 2017, let’s say. And my goal was to just make an album. I was going through some heady stuff, and I needed to get out of town. My plan with Puzzlehead was to write this album and record it. I called it my “unofficial residency” in Montreal, and I played with some people I knew there. It was a very “rock” era of Puzzlehead. Every song on that album has a wanky guitar solo. Which is awesome. But this last EP I did, I was like, “No solos.” I’m really maturing. But that one was a lot of solos, sometimes conflicting at the same time. And then we recorded that, yeah, with Renny Wilson at his studio. And then basically I finished tracking it and then got on a plane and came back to Vancouver. **Would you mind sharing some of the where your head was at when you were writing some of the songs for *Big Sniff*?** I was just tripping out on life in some ways, and personal relationships were...I had been just touring a lot, maybe feeling like I was uprooting myself. I was touring a lot. **It’s not conducive to a healthy lifestyle.** It’s just not. It’s not. When I was in Montreal, I think I was away from those things that are, like, my markers of my identity. Just my stuff and my people. So I was able to face my demons a little bit, \[as well as\] crutches of my past self in the most dramatic way possible. I feel like at a certain point when you’re doing the same thing for so many years making experimental art and music, you’re like, “OK, I’ve been doing this for a long time. Do I up and do something else with my life and myself to be meaningful in this world? Do I double down and just go harder and in the sense of trying to make this my life? Or do I just assess what the spiritual significance of this is and hold onto that in spirit in whatever I do?” I went with that third option. I think it’s also just the end of your twenties where you kinda just trip out. Now with some perspective I’m like, “Wow, I was being dramatic.” But then also I do think it’s good when you’re making art to always just be questioning. I think for me it was coinciding with some personal psychosity, if that’s a word, that was happening. I can barely remember the songs, to be honest. I don’t play them. I play stuff from other albums, but I don’t think I play any of those songs, weirdly. **I read in an interview that you said you felt bored with playing old songs. Is that part of it? Or is the spiritual weight of what you were going through also part of why you don’t play those *Big Sniff* songs?** I think it’s both. Some of those songs I don’t remember how to play, if I’m being honest. And it’s because I was playing them with certain people. A lot of my songs have been played with multiple iterations of the band, and solo, and a two-guitar setup, and blah blah blah. Different arrangements. I would say with the *Big Sniff* songs, it feels like a different person. The iteration that I’m doing right now is me solo most of the time. Sometimes with another guitar player, like a two-guitar thing. But I find the solo set to be too earnest. I’m just singing and it’s obviously my words. There’s no drummer to hide behind. There’s no one else to make eye contact with but me. It’s too much. **Let’s talk about the new EP, *Chessman Hazard Co-Change Household*. Was there a germ of an idea that came about to inspire this? Or did you just record the songs and were like, “Now I have an EP”?** Olga, the original drummer, came to Vancouver, and we were like, “Let’s just write an EP.” And ’cause we’re always looking for excuses to fly to see each other. And so when she got here in 2022 or something, we spent a few days in the rehearsal space basically writing these songs. I had ideas. I think I had the words first. We recorded those with Josh Stevenson at Otic Sounds. I think we got him to play bass. And I think, yeah, we got him to play bass. And then Olga left. We had these few songs, and then I didn't really know what to do with them. I realized I’ve never really done it before where you just record the song right after you write it. I needed to workshop it a bit live. And so when I started playing shows again with a live band, I was like, “Oh, actually we need to change the ending or whatever.” So we ended up re-recording a few of the songs. Olga’s drumming is still on “The Hippies Won,” the last track. And which is too bad ’cause I really did love her drumming. The final session that I did was with the original guitarist Ethan, and then Giles from Woolworm, another guitarist who I have always admired. I was like, “Oh yeah, I just need 18 guitar tracks,” or whatever. Once we did that, it was basically all done. **I was almost afraid to bring up that it has a shoegaze sound, but when you mentioned there being like 18 guitar tracks, I don't quite feel as dweeby for pulling out the shoegaze reference.** Yeah, it definitely is the most shoegaze album. I had been playing guitar in [Hotline TNT](https://hotlinetnt.bandcamp.com/?ref=see-saw.fun) on tour for a couple years, and I think I was also writing those songs at that time, so I’m sure there was some aesthetic bleed there. When I’m writing alone, I end up doing a bit more of a higher range, breathy, less screamy punk vocal, then those songs end up being more shoegaze because of that, I think. In my mind, more pop than if I was trying to compete with two other guitarists or something for sound space. **You once said that playing in a band is so archaic. Do you still feel that way? And if you do, how do you reconcile that with continuing to play in a band?** I would double down on that, but now I mean it in a different way. It’s archaic in the sense that it’s eternal. A cow’s skin stretched over a metal ring reverberating sound waves when you hit it. That’s just it. **It’s my favorite sound in the world.** It’s eternal and archaic, but not in a bad way. And it’s also like some people have whatever their beer league hockey thing or their book club or religion; something to make themselves feel connected to other people. **You seem to be the type of artist who goes and follows your creative instincts. What’s next? What are you working on? What pathways are you finding in your creative life right now?** I’m working on a video right now basically, I would say is my main project. I’m not calling it a film because that would mean that I would have...it’s not quite a film. I don’t really know the procedure to make something into a film, but it’s a video. And I think I’m just trying to make something that can be experienced kind of simply. With a lot of my art projects, I’m like, “Yeah, it’s a video, but you need it installed this way, and there’s gonna be a live element, and this sculpture here, and whatever. So you have to experience it in a certain way.” Or it’s a music video, which I love making music videos for that reason—they’re just so accessible. But I also find with music videos, people watch the first 15 to 30 seconds on their phones and it’s very accessible, but it’s too accessible, so the most they’re getting out of it is aesthetic. ![Katayoon Yousefbigloo, aka Puzzlehead; photos by Natasha Katedralis](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/ca/31caa30b-1a72-4fa1-a48d-e09f6cd6259f/content/images/2026/09/PUZZLEHEAD-02-1.jpg) Katayoon Yousefbigloo, aka Puzzlehead; photos by Natasha Katedralis **Yeah, they don’t engage with it.** And I love making them. They’re so fun. That’s really been a huge part of my life. But yeah, now I’m like, “OK, what if you sat and watched something, and it did all those things that I was trying to do with those other elements that I always throw into my artworks? What if it was just able to do it through the video?” And I think that’s maybe a very obvious thing that filmmakers are just trying to do. But I’ve just never really thought of it in that way. It has a big music and sound element to it. And that’s the bigger project that I’m working on right now. Other than that, I have these ongoing projects that are kind of community projects. Or that’s just the word that is used. I don’t know. It’s such a weird way of framing it, but they’re like parties or whatever, or experimental art shows that I help with. I organize and curate part of this thing I have called Liquidation World. I had a storefront up until a few months ago, like October, I think. Now it’s more of an offsite project type thing. But I’m still doing that. That brings me a lot of joy 'cause I get to do this artwork of conceiving of the show but not have to perform or whatever. I really like that. I’d like to make some more music. I’m working on this solo version of Puzzlehead, and so far I’ve been focused on the performing side of it just ’cause I hate doing it. I hate being alone up and performing, and I’ve been just focusing on the live element of it and fleshing that out. I’ve written one song with that kind of arrangement in mind with the looper and drum beats. I’m excited to see if I can do more with that in mind ’cause it opens up a lot of things. It closes a lot of doors, but it opens up some possibilities, too. --- *You can find more of Martin Douglas’ writing over at his newsletter* [*Trick Bag*](https://trickbag.substack.com/)*.* *see/saw is a reader-supported publication. If you enjoyed this piece, please share it and* [*subscribe*](https://see-saw.fun/bullseye-wont-do-the-same-thing-twice/#/portal/)*.*