MANILA, PHILIPPINES—New music alert! Punk rock young blood Ligaya Escueta releases a new single titled June, a dreampop love song that sonically reiterates the ache of young romance in a soft, almost ethereal melody. The song is now available on all digital streaming platforms.
Coming down from the high of her previous emotionally-charged album “Dollweb” (2025), Abigail Escueta, better known as her stage name, Ligaya Escueta, pulls yet the heartstrings of her listeners with the release of June.
“Love songs have always been hard for me to write. I just feel like so much has been said about love that it kind of feels so overwhelming to try to sum it up in a song,” shares the 19-year-old musician, expressing her difficulties creating such a vulnerable track. However, for June, Escueta remarks how fast the flow came naturally to her the moment the idea came to mind. “A lot of lyrics came easily to me. I got the choruses done quickly, but was only able to finish the verse lyrics in the car on the way to a gig, which is a funny story.”
Inspired by the transcendental gloom pop melodies of slow-guitar bands like Wisp and a generous dose from iconic shoegaze group Cocteau Twins, June was a product of Escueta’s day-to-day reality and experiences as a young musician that embraces both the mundanity of being a student and the petuliant woes of admiration and feelings while having a heart like hers. But the teenage singer gives flowers to asian shoegaze bands as influences for the newly released track. “My influences for this song are Summer’s Gone by Honeydip and Feverfew by Megumi Acorda,” says Escueta. “I really love how you can get lost in the heaviness of their music, but still feel the emotion through the chord choices and lyrics as well.”
Production wise, June was made piece by piece: starting from the melody and then the lyrics started to eventually write itself, but what really got Escueta going was her creating the instrumentation, being the main person to arrange the tracks, and seeing it come to life. “My friend really liked the song too, and started jamming to it on bass one day at school – and that’s how we got the bassline of June,” she shares. The song continued to take shape as each of her bandmates added their own parts as they played the song live prior to its initial release. Eventually, The track was produced by Mikey Amistoso of Ciudad, long time mentor and music producer of Ligaya Escueta.
June by Ligaya Escueta is out now and is available for streaming everywhere. You can catch her live on April 9 at Mow’s for FUZZY 4EVER’s Scott Pilgrim night!
About Ligaya Escueta
Ligaya Escueta is an 19-year-old singer-songwriter from Manila, Philippines. She released her first song in 2020, then put out her debut album “Laughing In Milk” two years after.
In 2023, she was signed under Offshore Music Philippines and wrote and released the singles “Novelty”, “12 Steps”, and “Blue General, Come Home” under the label. Ligaya then put out her second album, Dollweb, on all streaming platforms in January 2025.
Moreover in the same year she released her sophomore album, the punk rock prodigy were invited amongst other Filipino musicians at the coveted South by South West (SXSW) Sydney where she performed her songs along with her bandmates on the global stage. Right after, Ligaya was featured on Youngstar PH, PhilStar’s youth-focused print section, describing her approach to punk as “deliberate” and “graceful”—adjectives one may not even think to associate with the genre, but those are what makes her definition of the style uniquely hers.
Ligaya has been performing at small gigs since she was 15, and has opened for many artists including Ely Buendia, The Itchyworms, and Grrrl Gang. Inspired by artists like Mitski, Radiohead, and Weezer, she writes catchy rock songs, exploring earsplitting sonic landscapes with diary-like lyricism.
