Until recently, we weren’t familiar with Rose Haze. Yet, stepping into her artistic universe has felt a bit like discovering a pot of gold, of musical gold, if you will. The Ohio-born, Los Angeles-based creative shares all of the features that would attract us to the project: a deeply alternative and hazy ethos, a keen and nostalgic dream-pop allure, and a touch of leftfield and otherworldly sheen that’s always welcome.
Known as Kate Ramsey by day, the talented songstress drives the Rose Haze outfit fiercely and with purpose, historically being heavily influenced by Cocteau Twins, The Cure, and other like-minded acts. On this occasion, we find a darker version of the project, yet one that still preserves a heightened spiritual allure and ethereal charge. ‘They Are Here’ is exactly that, a comeback single steeped in sci-fi lyricism and psychedelic imagery, all treated to a retro glow that’s a joy to listen to. The piece anticipates a larger album set to be released in the near future.
Intrigued by the Rose Haze universe and Ramsey’s peculiar artistry, we caught up with the American talent to learn more about her journey… Interview below!
Hey Kate, thanks for chatting with us! I have dived into your online presence and existing catalogue, and it’s safe to say that we share a deep appreciation for Cocteau Twins. Crucially, your upcoming record ‘They Are Here’ feels a tad darker, perhaps more akin to The Cure, boasting some goth features. What were your primary influences for the new single?
It actually started from a completely different angle. I was aiming for a blend of heavy, progressive, psychedelic, doomgaze track inspired by bands like King Crimson, Yes, True Widow, and Blackwater Holylight. Initially, I wrote the chord progression on guitar with a different vocal melody. Later, I decided to take another approach and demo’d a bassline and remapped the vocal melody and had my collaborator and friend Ruben, who was still alive then, put his natural Robin Guthrie meets John Dwyer guitars around it. We went down to see Jeff Schroeder (formerly of The Smashing Pumpkins) to track the song at his studio, as he was producing the album.
But we only got so far; we tracked The Möbius Oblivion, which is already out, and then They Are Here. So this track is the last work I recorded with Ruben, who passed away suddenly from a pulmonary embolism caused by cancer complications just a few days after we tracked it. Anyway, Jeff put down a basic placeholder goth beat and suggested leaning into the overarching sound we were going for across the record, channelling, yes, very much the Cocteau Twins and The Cure. Together, we shifted the production in the studio to embrace that darker, goth-rock feel while keeping the song’s original heavier progressive roots intact. Then Russ Arteaga, another Cocteau Twins / The Cure fan, came on board to execute the actual drum programming and final co-production needed to finish the song.
‘They Are Here’ closes a year-long hiatus, kickstarting a new creative era that will then bloom into a new album. How does it feel to release music again?
It feels absolutely amazing, but being concise is tricky when talking about a journey like this! Especially since this record was fully demo’d and should have been finished by summer of 2024. Ruben and I already took the demo’d album to Jeff Schroeder in early 2024, but as mentioned, we only managed to track two songs (The Möbius Oblivion and They Are Here) before everything changed.
When Ruben passed just a few days after that session with Jeff, my entire world stopped. I couldn’t even touch a guitar for the longest time. In the middle of all that grief, I released Love from Death completely on my own as a direct tribute to him, written on his guitar. But to survive the pain, I had to step away from Rose Haze entirely. I took a long mental hiatus, grieved, and immersed myself in a completely different world—creating ambient space music with my harp. I even moved to Mexico at one point.
Eventually, I came back to Rose Haze in late 2025 and looked this album up and down. I kept what I knew was sacred. I got Russ Arteaga and Jon Chinn on board—who were absolute gems, putting in endless hours while being so conscious of how sensitive and raw everything was for me. The three of us ‘Postal Service’ styled this entire album together between the Bay Area, New Jersey, and LA. We salvaged pieces and parts of the original demos Ruben and I made; I kept his guitar tracks where I could, along with some of his rhythm programming. Then I wrote new songs, guided the project, and produced this album myself. This is my album. Russ and Jon were incredible with the technical co-production, which is the role Ruben used to play. This album really was a somewhat gruelling undertaking, but from an emotional and logistical place, not a musical one.
To now have this record ready—featuring ten fresh tracks with They Are Here leading the charge, plus our four previously released singles as bonus tracks at the end—is monumental. Musically, if Ruben were still here, we would have finished this in early 2024, put it out in 2025, and I’d already be on to the next thing. Creatively, I’m actually past this album in my head—I have three or four future records ready to go right now. But emotionally, it took three long years of processing, grieving, and rebuilding to get here. This album deserves every bit of attention and care I’m giving it, and I just hope it resonates with people the way it is meant to.
Let’s focus on the intricacies of ‘They Are Here’. Besides its alternative production, the song draws heavily from modern chaos and the continuous descent into quasi-dystopian territories. In particular, the song sees you wondering about extraterrestrial presence, using it as an excuse to introduce this idea that reality is, in fact, a simulation. We’ll get to how this relates to our current reality in the next questions, but for now, I’d love to know if the ‘alien’ angle comes from a personal interest you have in the topic?
I’ve gotten completely obsessed with the whole UAP conversation lately—it’s just endlessly fascinating to me! With everything happening right now, like the ongoing release of the PURSUE documents that started back in May and dropped another tranche on October 23rd, this topic feels so hyper-relevant to our current cultural paradigm. Everyone interested in it has an opinion, whether they’re listening to government whistleblowers, independent researchers, or full-on alien theorists. I recently posted a series of thought-provoking concepts from all these different talking heads online because I’m so endlessly curious about it.
I’m also endlessly curious about the timing of releasing these documents. Personally, I lean on the side of it being some kind of political distraction—just more chess pieces in this greater overarching political scam and war machine. Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past the current administration to stage an alien invasion.
For me, the song lyrics and the accompanying visual animation aren’t necessarily a direct translation of what I literally believe or think is going on. It’s not a strict literal statement. Instead, it’s about taking all those different concepts people throw around and drawing heavily on apocalyptic themes from the Book of Revelation, which were ingrained into my psyche from my very religious upbringing. So many people in general are living in fear of something right now. When I went to write it, I didn’t even know where the theme fully came from—I was just like, ‘The world’s quote-unquote ending again… let’s make an alien song!’ Because it was just so visual for me. The animator killed it TBH. Plus, Ruben and I were really into this stuff and were digging deeply into it together, so it was just something really fun for us to explore and dive into.
The song introduces the heavy realisation that reality is or might be a simulation. Do you think that humans would still have free will in a simulation scenario? Or would we be all ‘puppets’, so to speak, with a pre-determined destiny?
This is such a great question. I really have to think about this one, honestly.
It’s funny you bring this up, because right now I actually have a temporary album cover placeholder set aside, but I have a new direction I want to take the final cover artwork, and it leans heavily into the puppet theme.
As for whether we’d have free will in a simulation or if we’re all just puppets: if I had to guess how that scenario realistically plays out, the default setting is probably that everyone starts off as a puppet. We’re running on pre-programmed tracks, guided by whatever or whoever is running the simulation, whether that’s an advanced AI or a UAP or The Architect. Then free will is something you have to figure out how to claw your way into. If we’re bound by an algorithmic, mathematical reality, how do you actually bust out of that puppet state on your own?
To break out through pure chaos moves, you have to completely throw your habits and feelings out the window and delegate every choice to absolute randomness, like rolling a die or tapping into quantum decay to make your decisions for you. Algorithms and code rely on pattern recognition to predict what you are going to do next based on who you have been. But when you move on pure nonsense randomness, the system’s predictive path drops to absolute zero. It cannot calculate your next move, so the predictive code starts buffering and tearing open, leaving a glitched-out seam in reality that you can walk right through.
To break out through an emotional buffer overflow, you channel an overwhelming flood of raw, unfiltered human noise, like screaming through intense grief or pouring yourself into pure creative expression, forcing every neural pathway to fire at maximum capacity all at once. Math handles cold logic really easily, but it cannot quantify the sheer weight of raw human emotion. By injecting that much noise into the space around you, you overload the local server memory buffer until reality drops frames and time completely freezes, letting you step clean out through the unrendered void behind the curtain.
To break out through a paradox crash, you physically or mentally force an unresolvable logic loop into existence by holding two completely opposite, absolute truths in your mind with total conviction at the exact same millisecond. Since a code-based system cannot process something as being true and false at the exact same time, that contradiction triggers an instant system panic. The whole simulation crashes into a pitch-black blackout, and in that split-second reboot before the program restores itself, you open your eyes outside the machine.
I don’t know. I’ll be thinking about this all day now and wormholing. So I should move on. Haha!
‘They Are Here’ also refers to the end of times, a concept that has been popping up a lot in the past couple of years or so. What is it about the current world that makes you think we are on a path of no return?
This is such a great question. Again, this song is not a literal translation of how I feel personally. It is more of an assessment of how hive-minded people who don’t think critically and live in a constant state of anxiety and fear perceive what is going on. But I too suffer from anxiety and fear at times, but only so slightly these days. In recent years, my end-times fears only arose when I got baby fever. I used to have waking visions and nightmares of post-apocalyptic nuclear winters, zombie scenarios, and all the classic dystopian tropes you see in films or read in stories foretold by incredible writers. Science fiction is fun until it becomes a really boring version of that in reality. Where’s the fun part of the science fiction future? Anyway, my strong “this doesn’t look good” visions made me not want kids. Why would I bring a baby into this? But honestly, after making this record, I feel completely fine with having a baby. I’ve overcome the last waves of the fear of the world ending.
This track is an assessment of a world trapped between order and chaos, with the themes of UAP visiting these fearful sheep who’ll do anything a religious or government official tells them to do. Right now we are clearly in a period of chaos, a modern dark age. At the most baseline level, the people in power are disgusting and reckless, and humanity is constantly destroying resources and fighting to conquer. There is this massive religious and spiritual war in the Middle East that keeps cranking up. Today is November 3rd (date of the interview), the midterms are happening right now, and there is current real speculation around nuking Iran. That sort of fear-mongering stuff just keeps people in a controlled state. I feel like a lot of people are not exercising their free will. If all of this doesn’t feel like the end times, I don’t know what does.
In recent months, even with how insane everything has been, I have had a real shift in perspective, and honestly it might be because I wrote this record. The alien theme in this song is just one piece of a much larger puzzle, but the album as a whole is ultimately one of hope, resilience, and blasting unconditional love vibrationally into the universe. It is about finding that love in ourselves on a day-to-day basis despite what the external world is doing. From a first-world perspective, sitting here in California making records, I am not trapped under rubble in the Middle East, so my daily experience is very distinct. I am endlessly grateful for the life I have, and I want to inspire people.
The reality is that things are really grim, but you shouldn’t feel like you can’t have a family or seek a beautiful life. It is also about not having guilt. We can’t fix the whole world. We can fix what we do in our day and in our locale. Everyone has to find that balance for themselves, but fundamentally it comes down to not living in fear, putting your sword of light forward, and staying completely resilient through all of this. I don’t actually think it is the absolute end. I think it is the end again. It ends with every single generation. History shows that humans do gnarly things and we never seem to learn, so here we go again.
What I love about ‘They Are Here’ is that despite its heavy lyricism, the song still feels quite ethereal and otherworldly, the perfect fusion between layered songwriting and expansive production. What would you like listeners to feel when approaching the record? Give us a brief listening guide in terms of when and how to consume ‘They Are Here’.
I think that this track should just make you feel cool when you listen to it. I want it to feel cool and funny. This track is hilarious if you really zoom out, if you really get it. I want people to feel the juxtaposition of light and heavy all at once, where new fans think, “oh yeah, this band is fucking cool”. You hear this track, and you think maybe the record is going to sound like that, though I do not know if it actually does. They Are Here is the heaviest song on the record. I wanted the rest of the album to be this way, but Ruben died, and I changed course sonically. So anyway, everything else kind of expands more into that dark gothic folky dream pop world, but this is the doomgaze cut. If you think of just that word, which is kind of funny because I do not really like genre labels, I actually kind of love doomgaze. It just sounds cool to me.
I want people to be able to just bob their head, close their eyes, and completely put themselves into space, kind of laugh off the heaviness, or even just become the alien and fly around in a cool spaceship. Or if you feel like you are one of the sheep on your phone all the time, it is time to stop doomscrolling. Quit watching this horse manure waste of time propaganda on your phone, get off your rear and go do something with your life, and start doomgazing instead. I mean, what if you were under rubble? Just go live. The people that can live should. We are so free here in America, even if it feels like there is always this impending collapse. Maybe it’s coming. But right now? Go DO something. Be accountable. Live while you can.
Take us into the creative and recording process behind the single and the upcoming album: do you focus more on the lyricism or the overall aural mood? Do you prefer to work alone or with others?
I like to work alone on the songwriting and development. I’ve gotten stronger at producing since Ruben passed, so I did this album mostly alone.
When I was working with Lisa Bella Donna, the acclaimed face of Moog (which, by the way, I’m the one who named her “Sonic Sorceress”…) I used to just bring the songs, and she would then produce them.
Then I met Ruben. Ruben was the only one I wanted to work with in a serious way in the song development. We became one in the music. Well, then he died, and that was that. Fucked me up.
Russ showed up, and he wanted to help me. He liked what we did, and he understood death. He had similar sonic ears and technical abilities to Ruben. Sorry to compare, but I told him that to his face and he liked it. So now Russ is my co-ideas guy. Jon Chinn, who is amazing, is there for the rest of the hard stuff and literally any instrumentation I need that I don’t want to mess with.
But I work alone, then I pass off the hard technical stuff or the things I don’t want to do to Russ and Jon. But that is on the production studio side. Maybe the process will evolve now because I have an all-girl band that’s going to play this record, which is sick AF.
Lastly, what’s the timeline on the album? Is there anything we should know about Rose Haze’s future?
I’m shopping to labels. But I may just start my own. I’ll announce the official album release once I decide where to land. But early 2027. Spring. If a label picks it up, they may want to bump it. But I’ll be releasing 2-3 more singles as the months progress, with really cool videos to accompany each of them. I’ve never been so frontloaded. But this one is my last hurrah. It better make a print, or I’m going to the woods to play for the birds and be at peace that I kicked ass in the indie scene for a while.