Tiny Habits is having a growth spurt

The Boston Globe | April 13, 2023

Cinya Khan, 21, and Maya Rae, 21, first bonded over shared confusion about how to disconnect their dorm’s toilet paper holders at Berklee College of Music. Khan posted about it on her Instagram story, and Rae swiped up, saying that she also didn’t understand how they were supposed to work. Khan had figured it out by that point and helped Rae — a random interaction that sparked their friendship.

At the same time, Rae was chatting with Judah Mayowa, 20 — also over Instagram — and they decided to meet in Rae’s dorm room to sing together. Rae had admired Khan’s talent from her musical posts and invited her to join.

“So she came over, and it was the three of us,” Rae said. “We just started singing together in my dorm room, and [we’ve] been singing together ever since.”

In the two years since, their band Tiny Habits released its first EP, opened for Gracie Abrams, and played with Lizzy McAlpine. Now they are preparing to headline their own tour, warming up with a date Saturday at Somerville Theatre.

The trio’s meeting felt “cosmic,” Rae said, because students weren’t allowed to go into other dorms — it was spring of 2021 during the pandemic — so the fact that they happened to live in the same building made singing together possible.

Rae said they immediately felt comfortable with each other. “It just feels like we’re siblings or something,” Khan added, “and the way that we just naturally fall into [singing] parts is something that felt really special.”

Before they started playing gigs, the trio posted videos on their Instagram stories of them singing in a stairwell, covering songs with their own arrangements.

“We maybe posted like four videos,” said Rae. “Every time we did, people would love it, and that would always get the most engagement of the stuff we would post.”

The last video they posted was their original song “tiny things.”

“Then we went home for the summer and were like, ‘Why didn’t we sing more together?’” said Rae. “And then we came back and formed the band.”

So Tiny Habits — an acoustic folk-pop trio — was established on Jan. 31, 2022.

“Initially, I didn’t even like [the name]. I was like, ‘What does that even mean?’,” said Rae. “And [Khan and Mayowa were] like, ‘No, no, trust us, I think it’d be good.’ and I was like, ‘OK whatever.’

“I love it now.”

The trio’s first time playing together for an audience was at House of Blues in February 2022, when Rae and Mayowa joined Khan onstage to open for Clairo. But Mayowa said their first “official” performance as Tiny Habits was a 30-person house show at a friend’s apartment.

“Our name was written out in fairy lights on the wall. It was really sweet,” said Khan.

The bandmates describe themselves as having a musical and emotional connection that transcends most groups’. That applies to the band’s seamless singing in unison, Rae said. “It’s so trippy because when we’re all singing, it sounds like one person. I’m literally like, ‘Is there sound coming out of my mouth?’ It’s actually pretty crazy.”

The band just finished touring with headliner Abrams. “We’re gonna miss her. She’s literally an angel,” said Rae.

Performing at House of Blues during Abrams’s tour stop in Boston last month was an emotional experience for the band. “We were definitely on the verge of tears the whole time,” Kahn said. “All of our friends were in the balcony and screaming, and it’s just really special to have met there and see ourselves grow.”

Khan also knew singer-songwriter McAlpine from her first year at Berklee, and during one of McAlpine’s visits back to Boston, Tiny Habits met up and sang with her.

McAlpine later invited them to perform with her at her NPR Tiny Desk Concert in November.

“It was honestly kind of bizarre. They don’t really show it in the videos, but you’re just playing to an empty office space. But it was a lot of fun,” said Khan. “In the middle of it, I realized we were filming a Tiny Desk, and I couldn’t stop smiling.”

Tiny Habits will be joining McAlpine’s “The End of the Movie Tour” through Europe at the beginning of June.

The band had another recent milestone: Their first EP, “Tiny Things,” came out this week with five original songs and a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.”

“We made it with Philip Etherington, who is a genius. He just brought every idea to life and created new worlds for some of the songs that we would have never imagined without him,” said Khan. “I’m really excited for people to hear them.”

The title track, “tiny things,” describes “the little things you love about someone,” said Mayowa.

“All we have is all I need/ All the love and tiny things,” the trio sings.

Tiny Habits’ other songs on their EP include “one more,” “delay,” “some things (i’ve learned),” and “hemenway.”

“Hemenway” was originally Khan’s “Songwriting 2″ class assignment — her professor asked students to write a song based on a street name. She wrote the song about a breakup, which technically happened on Commonwealth Avenue.

“But Commonwealth doesn’t sound good, so I said that it was on Hemenway, “ she said.