Biography
Cuushe is the recording name of Mayuko Hitotsuyanagi, a Japanese singer-songwriter and producer from Kyoto, Japan. Her music combines dream pop songwriting with electronic production, often layering her voice into the surrounding instrumentation.
She learned piano as a child and began making her own music around 2008. Her debut album, Red Rocket Telepathy, appeared through flau in 2009. Recorded largely at home, it brought together songs, electronics and field recordings. Periods living in London and Berlin followed her early years in Japan.
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The three-disc EP set Girl You Know That I Am Here but the Dream (2012) paired new songs with remixes by artists including Julia Holter and Teen Daze. Cuushe recorded her second album, Butterfly Case (2013), in Berlin, working with producer aus. The Night Lines EP followed through flau and Cascine in 2015; its song “We Can’t Stop” later appeared in the television series Search Party.
After a recording hiatus, Cuushe returned with Waken in 2020. Her voice took a more prominent position in the mix, while tracks such as “Emergence” and “Not to Blame” incorporated UK garage and drum-and-bass rhythms. Waken Remixes followed in 2021, with contributions from Yu Su, Iglooghost, Kate NV and Loraine James, among others.
Her work outside Cuushe includes Neon Cloud, a collaboration with Geskia, and the project FEM. FEM’s 2020 single “Light” features drummer Evan Dorrian of Tangents.
Cuushe released “Faded Corners” in 2024, commissioned for a project by Daughter and photographer Kazuhei Kimura. The song draws on the medieval Japanese song anthology Ryōjin Hishō. In 2026, she appeared on “Scene” and “Lights” from Snive’s album As If It Were Recent.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.