k.

Karla Schickele anchored the rhythm section for the New York City outfits Beekeeper and Ida, contributing essential ideas to their songwriting and serving as a core creative partner. Following Beekeeper’s dissolution, she launched her own project, simply called k., in 2000 while Ida’s audience was expanding rapidly; she stepped forward as lead vocalist and principal songwriter. Maintaining a collaborative approach, she enlisted Retsin’s Tara Jane O’Neil and His Name is Alive’s Warren Defever for several singles, one of which was the split release Those Girls alongside the Duluth, MN trio Low. The two tracks k. contributed stood apart from her earlier material—lean, sharply focused, and starkly beautiful—signaling the arrival of a songwriter hitting her stride. She kept performing and tracking material with Ida and, together with former Ida drummer Michael Littleton, opened the Brooklyn shop Big Deal Art Records Junk while finishing the first k. album. That debut, New Problems, arrived in summer 2001 and fulfilled the understated promise of the Those Girls EP, documenting Schickele’s marked growth as a writer and recasting the Laurel Canyon aesthetic for a new era.