Buzzy Lee

Buzzy Lee crafts off-kilter adult alternative pop that blends introspective lyrics with atmospheric soundscapes and subtle sonic experimentation. The project functions as the recording alias for actress Sasha Spielberg, who accumulated more than a dozen screen credits and issued several tracks under her own name prior to unveiling the Facepaint EP in 2018. Following the 2021 release of her first full-length effort, Spoiled Love, she expanded her reach by appearing on rapper Denzel Curry’s single “John Wayne,” which accumulated millions of streams before the close of 2022. Her sophomore album, Internal Affairs, surfaced in 2023 and upheld her characteristically unconventional sensibility.

Born in Los Angeles in 1990 to actress Kate Capshaw and filmmaker Steven Spielberg, Sasha Rebekah Spielberg made sporadic early screen appearances, frequently in her father’s productions, before enrolling at Brown University. Additional supporting parts followed in 2010’s The Company Men and The Kids Are All Right, after which she earned a Literary Arts degree in 2012. That same year she teamed with fellow Brown graduate Nicolas Jaar for a pair of tracks issued under the indie electronic duo name Just Friends, among them a version of Leonard Cohen’s “Avalanche.” The pair performed at South by Southwest in 2013, the year Sasha also issued the EP Brother/Sister with Wardell, a retro-styled pop partnership involving her brother Theo Spielberg. Wardell delivered its debut album, Love/Idleness, in early 2015. Throughout this period she continued accepting occasional roles in limited series and independent features. Having appeared as a teenager in her father’s The Terminal, Munich, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, she took a small part in his 2017 release The Post.

After signing with Future Classic, Spielberg issued her first material as Buzzy Lee in April 2018: the Facepaint EP, a collection of intimate, stylish adult alternative pop songs. A year later came the idiosyncratic three-track set Close Encounters of Their Own Kind, which applied a chopped-and-screwed approach to ’70s Tommy Mandel compositions while incorporating improvised lyrics. Produced by Justin Raisen of Tall Hands and realized with Mandel’s approval, the EP ultimately incorporated original material from the songwriter himself. Returning to a more conventional yet still distinctive aesthetic, Buzzy Lee’s Jaar-produced full-length debut, Spoiled Love, arrived on Future Classic in early 2021. That year she also appeared in a minor capacity in the Oscar-nominated film Licorice Pizza.

Buzzy Lee attained her widest exposure yet in 2022 via the featured turn on Denzel Curry’s single “John Wayne.” She followed that success in March 2023 with the album Internal Affairs, recorded alongside producer Gabe Wax, known for his work with Soccer Mommy and Palehound.