Ukrainian Shoegaze: plaaaato on "Forced Adulthood" and Making Music During the War

For Kostyantyn, the shoegaze project plaaaato is a direct map of a life uprooted by the brutality of the full-scale invasion. He started the project at fifteen in the industrial landscape of Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, but those early lo-fi sounds were soon shattered by the reality of war. What followed were two years of surviving under the shadow of explosions in Kyiv and attempting to create art in a world where the electricity—and the safety to dream—frequently cut out.

What first caught my attention about plaaaato is how unique the project sounds compared to anything else in the shoegaze scene right now. While many bands lean into 90s nostalgia or “heavy gaze” tropes, Kostyantyn has created a sonic language that feels entirely his own. His latest album, brightdeadstarr, released on April 10, is sung entirely in Ukrainian to express feelings for which English “simply doesn’t have the same words.” 

In this conversation, Kostyantyn discusses the emotional and visual world behind brightdeadstarr—an album steeped in themes of identity, isolation, and transformation—as well as the challenges of creating art in the shadow of war. At its core, this is a conversation about change: personal, sonic, and geographical—and what it means to keep creating when everything around you is in flux.

It’s very hard to make music when there is no electricity and you hide from bombs.

Could you tell us the story behind the project—when and how it started?

Hi, my name is Kostyantyn. I started plaaaato in 2020 at age 15 in the industrial city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. We began as a lo-fi dream pop and slacker rock band, releasing two albums by 2022.

After a pause caused by the start of the war, we reunited in Kyiv in 2023, playing shows across Ukraine and releasing our most popular album, “Зачекай ще трохи”. In 2024, I moved to Warsaw, where I released “Vse zminylos”—a noisier, more saturated record captured earlier in Kyiv.

At the same time, I was working on several other projects, and it was very hard for me to focus seriously on plaaaato. I was adapting to a new country, looking for a job, and I had no connections. But over these two years, I managed to record this album. For now, it is the last one, because this project has been with me for more than six years, and I want to do something new.

Looking back, what was the first moment or song that made you fall in love with shoegaze? 

I remember it clearly. In Ukraine, there is a fairly popular dream pop/post-punk project called corn wave—he is a good acquaintance of mine, and through his music I discovered alternative guitar music back in 2018.

The sound was noisy, blurred, and very dreamy. I was fascinated by it and started looking for something similar. At first, I was a fan of loud garage and slacker rock, but that period ended when I heard Ovlov and their album AM. At that moment, I became interested in loud guitars and soon discovered all the shoegaze classics.

Tell us about your latest album. What were the main “scenes” or visual inspirations you had in mind while writing it?

The album brightdeadstarr is a personal album—an album of loss and crisis experienced during a difficult time in my life. I became an adult, forced into it, in another country, scared. I had never felt so much in such a short period of time. I felt myself becoming new, shining, and dying at the same time.

It’s a story about migration, searching for yourself, and confusion. It’s not very romantic—it’s more blurred. I wanted to forget many things that happened, and that’s why the album has this name. These three words often describe how I feel. I was also inspired by many films and different kinds of art. I became interested in avant-garde, experimental analog cinema and symbolism. I started noticing details I used to ignore.

The visual imagery of the album is a storm seen from underwater: you see what’s happening on the surface, the moon lights the waves, but you are relatively safe until you run out of oxygen. There are also images of an empty gray room (where I lived for a long time after moving) and fragments of creativity in the city landscape that are everywhere around you.

You sang entirely in Ukrainian. For people who don’t speak the language, can you explain what the lyrical themes are?

Ukrainian is a beautiful language, and sometimes I don’t know how to express everything I want just by translating it—English simply doesn’t have the same words. The main themes of the album are loneliness, everyday life scenes, and the feeling of being different among other people. You feel vulnerable around them and unable to connect.

There are also themes of misunderstanding and identity. Living in another country, I realized that people won’t fully understand me—not completely—because everyone exists in different contexts. So this context won’t be fully understood by everyone, but it can still be felt if you translate the lyrics. This is not loneliness because I am antisocial; it’s the difference between my life and the lives of people around me. It’s a language barrier and political realities where I have a clear position and some people don’t—and they cannot understand what I’ve experienced.

What were the musical inspirations for this album?

Musically, I was inspired by avant-pop and a large amount of music in general. I’ll name ten artists:

Oneohtrix Point Never, World’s End Girlfriend, Brave Little Abacus, Astrobrite, Lovesliescrushing, Unwound, Xiu Xiu, Aphex Twin, Fleeting Joys, and Tonstartssbandht.

I also want to say that I don’t try to copy any specific sound. I have my own language, and there are no artists similar to what I do. I was trying to create something completely new in Ukraine, searching for a unique sound of my own.

Is there a shoegaze scene in Ukraine? If so, what does it look like?

Ukraine has a great shoegaze scene. There used to be a label that gathered most Ukrainian shoegaze bands, but after the war started, it fell apart. We organized our own shows and even had a big festival.

Ukrainian shoegaze is actually different from the global wave—it is more dream pop-oriented, more reverbed, and doesn’t tend to become heavier. I want to highlight bands like Rippedd, last past., and headachee. But honestly, after me and Sasha from Rippedd left Ukraine, shoegaze activity became much smaller, and there are almost no events now.

It’s impossible to ignore the reality of the full-scale invasion. Has the war changed your relationship with music beyond the way you create it?

The war changed everything. It is the worst and most terrifying thing that can happen. It is chaos and terror. It is explosions around you and death. I lived in Ukraine for two years after the war started, and it was terrible. It’s very hard to make music when there is no electricity and you hide from bombs.

I stopped listening to artists who support the war or don’t have a clearly negative position about it. For about a year, it was hard for me to listen to music at all. Now it’s better. My process itself didn’t change that much, but my relationship with music changed a lot.

How important is it for you to reflect your Ukrainian identity in your music?

For me, it is important, even though sometimes I wish to be heard more. The Ukrainian language is very beautiful and melodic. It is soft and doesn’t sound like most other languages. Ukrainian life is very beautiful—nature, calmness, and space. At the same time, the weight of history and current events pushes and inspires me to be a Ukrainian artist and to sing in Ukrainian.

How do you feel about the 'resilience' label that the international media often places on Ukrainian artists? Is music an escape from the reality around you, or is it a place where you're allowed to be tired and vulnerable—somewhere you don't have to be 'strong' for the rest of the world?

I never really wanted to be “resilient” in music. It’s too personal and sensitive for that. But many songs have that feeling of resilience, because when I wrote them, I needed support—so I gave that support to others who might need it, like I did.

Ukraine is very big, and the war is experienced differently depending on where you are. For some people, this idea of resilience doesn’t apply because they don’t experience the war the same way as those who live near the frontlines. Ukrainian music is diverse and reflects many different ways of experiencing/processing this horror. Some people want to fight. Some want to hide. Some want nothing. It is a huge trauma, and people need to understand that we don’t have to be any specific way. But in any case, everyone needs help to deal with this.