To say that this year so far has been eventful would be a massive understatement.

For much of my teenage life, I've been something of a social hermit. I never had many friends in high school and most of my socialization was online. Over the course of my second semester in college though, I've learned to overcome that. Joined two clubs and met a lot of people and was given the opportunity to properly express myself in a way I never could in high school. I'm in one of the best spots I've ever been in life, and I think the music I've been making reflects that.

It would be irresponsible and misleading of me to summarize these past couple of months without mentioning the second love of my life: Bea. We met because of music club and it took us a couple of months to hit it off, but when we did everything clicked and felt right. It feels like every time we meet up it's exciting and eventful and makes me feel alive like I've hardly felt before. She was a huge driving force for many of the songs on this EP, not to mention she plays bass on most of them.

The name of the EP comes from the fact I recently started wearing striped shirts. I was directly inspired by Bea's tendencies to incorporate checkerboards into her outfits, with the idea behind it being the synthesis of a "character design", like a cartoon character whose outfits follow some sort of visual motif. I went to Goodwill with my good friend Jess and we ended up getting me a couple striped shirts as I proudly declared "stripes will be my thing" over and over. I've decided to not repeat myself much on this EP for the sake of offsetting that.