The Story So Far… (TL;DR)

Fleece Kawasaki is the musical project of Kiazi Halpern, an NYC born, Brooklyn-raised, singer-songwriter who currently resides in Los Angeles. From his early childhood Kiazi knew his dream was to be an artist, although he didn’t quite know what medium. He in fact dreamed of being one of the first black manga-ka, or possibly writer of young adult fiction. Always harboring a strong sense of musical self, owing to growing up in a household where Lauryn Hill, Courtney Love, Tupac, and Billy Joel were held in equally high esteem, it wasn’t until his early teens and the coalescence of early 2000’s emo met his own burgeoning angst that he realized his dream: he wanted to be a musician. He was at this time thirteen, and living with his grandmother and siblings in Woodstock, NY, an experience that would further his exposure to guitar music and fill his nights with premonitions of himself onstage performing in the cool bars on the Lower East Side he was too young to ever have gone into.
When he finally moved back to NYC for eighth grade he would tell friends that he already played guitar (he did not), but he did in truth begin writing songs, and at night he would steal his older brother’s iPod and draw his manga, make little song ideas and poems, and listen to the likes of My Chemical Romance, She Wants Revenge, and The Beatles. Flash forward to high school and he’d made a group of friends who also had musical ambitions. At the end of his freshman year he bought his first acoustic guitar, and began a prolific run of songwriting, having finished at least two hundred songs by the time he’d finished high school, going through many eras in the meantime, like folk, emo, alternative rock, pop, in addition to songs he’d write with his friends. After graduating high school he and his friends formed different amalgamate bands and finally began playing shows at the cool Lower East Side bars he dreamt of, in fact becoming early contemporaries with NYC psych-indie duo, Blac Rabbit, among others. At twenty two he fell deeply in love and with that felt a pull towards a new project (Fleece Kawasaki) where he’d write at truthful and authentic love songs about the arc of falling in love, and unbeknownst to him, what would be the arc of falling very much out of love. These songs would go on to become the seeds of his then untitled first album (Fake Frowns From Happy People), and as he wrote and recorded and demoed these songs and realized their scope, he came to the conclusion that he needed to progress in every facet in order to deliver the songs as they were meant to be heard. After his relationship not only ended, but died, crashed and burned, he was able to write a second round of songs (effectively a double LP of heartbreak), and after the bands that he was in dissolved he realized there was nothing holding him to NYC anymore. He began busking, and within a week was able to formulate a plan to move to California, and proceeded to do so just before his twenty fourth birthday. In LA he hit the ground running as a busker, forming the super group Fleece Jones, and getting corporate work from the likes of Urban Outfitters and GT’s Kombucha early on into his stay. Also through busking he would meet Layne Smith (now guitarist/producer for indie darlings glass beach), and together they began work on a newer batch of songs The Desert Flower EP, which released in 2020. Also during the pandemic he finally made headway in demo’ing the songs from his debut album. In 2021 he opened for glass beach on the first date of their first national tour at The Roxy Theatre, as well as worked with Layne and the rest of the band on the early stages of Fake Frowns. In 2022 his band opened for personal heroes of his She Wants Revenge, on a few dates of their first shows in half a decade, culminating in a sold out performance at the legendary Fonda Theatre. In 2023 he laid low, and despite this while busking and performing their hit song ‘Starlight’ encountered Matt Bellamy from Muse and was featured on his social media and KROQ, in this time he played a homecoming show opening up for Hotel Mira, as well as being featured on KCRW for the first time. In 2024 Fleece Kawasaki joined Arcadia Grey opening up for glass beach on an 18 city sold-out theatre tour around the country, as well as had the first single from Fake Frowns ‘I Want More’ premiered on Jason Kramer’s Sunday Playlist (KCRW). Since 2024 he’s been working with Emerson Harris of The Toxhards on completing his debut album, having finally found someone with savvy to make the bombastic arrangements he’d been hearing a possibility, in 2025 their most recent release ‘Sakura Matsuri’ (another album cut) also featured a music video from Too Lemon, Emerson’s production company.