Ninth Key's Ekoh + Lo Spirit Open Up About New Music + More

On Tuesday (Nov. 3), the two guys behind one of the most exciting bands of 2026, Ninth Key, joined Loudwire Nights to dive into their music and what's next.

Listen to the full conversation in the player near the end of this article.

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Ekoh and Lo Spirit, also known as Joshua Landry, were very honest about how excited they are about Ninth Key — and how this band saved them from getting burned out from the ups and downs of the music industry.

"I was in and out of bands in high school and in my 20s, but most of the time between 16 and 27, I was producing and writing for other artists," Landry shared with Loudwire Nights host Chuck Armstrong.

"I was cutting my teeth on the other side of the fence in the business."

After starting his project Lo Spirit, Landry started to see a bit of success that, as he put it, "quite literally changed the trajectory of my life."

"I hit [Ekoh] up to kind of like cover a song and do a short-form cover, which is what I was doing on TikTok for quite awhile," Landry continued.

"I ended up making my own version and then him and I kind of made a collab together on the Lo Spirit side of things."

Ekoh, who came up in the independent hip hop scene, was overjoyed when Landry reached out to him to collaborate.

"I was a fan of Josh for everything that he was doing," Ekoh said.

"I'd seen him online and loved his voice. I didn't know that he was a writer as well and then once I found that out and I dug into his discography and the things that he had written, I was just like, 'Oh, this guy's absolutely incredible.'"

From there, their friendship developed and they started to work more together eventually deciding to embark on the journey of creating Ninth Key.

"It was kind of eye-opening in the way that it was like, oh, we kind of stopped having fun making music awhile ago," Landry admitted.

"It just sort of became a chore and a thing that we did to keep the ball moving. But it was like anytime that we got together and made stuff, we actually had fun and it was exciting and it was different. I don't know, I feel like in a serendipitous way, we sort of saved each other from the loony bin in this business."

The music that Ninth Key have tapped into — with Landry's musicianship and Ekoh's hip hop sensibility — has struck a chord with fans of nu-metal. Their song, "Happy Feels Like," has been a mainstay on the rock radio chart for the last 20 weeks and they were recently announced as the support for 2027's Rise of the Roach tour with Papa Roach and Ice Nine Kills.

"If people see it, they'll get it," Ekoh said.

"I watch what [Josh] does and I'm like, I know people are going to go crazy when he does this or does that ... I've never thought that about my music, that felt too like a 'cool guy' thing, but it's different with the band. I can look at it objectively and be like, 'Okay, this is really cool.'"

Ekoh's excitement didn't stop there.

"If this doesn't do anything, I quit," he expressed about Ninth Key.

"Like, literally I'm done because I must be so off. My ear must be so wrong that I should just not do this anymore, you know? I'm like, to me, this is the shit. This is the coolest thing ... I've been excited about it since day one."

What Else Did Ninth Key's Ekoh + Lo Spirit Discuss on Loudwire Nights?

The future of Ninth Key's debut full-length album: "We're not afraid to say that [it's coming]. We have a whole album. And to be honest, Ekoh's probably going to spill the beans live anyway at some point. But there's quite a bit of songs. There's like literally 13 right now and we love every single one of them. They're all very different. I think we're used to albums where it's like maybe you've got three or four singles on it that people really dig and then you have maybe 10 that are just kind of like album tracks. But to us, we didn't write this to be an album, so I don't think we were thinking about that. We were just writing songs and so every song, to us, is basically a single. We are so excited about every single one of them that I think we're basically just going to be trying to put as much focus on every single one of them as we do the other. We won't tell you when it's coming out, because to be fair, we're independent and we don't know."
Lo Spirit's appreciation for Papa Roach: "A lot of people from the outside, if they're not paying attention to what they're doing, they're like, 'They're an older band, they've had a 30-year career.' I'm just like, no, they're bigger than they've ever been. Not only are they playing to the fans that they've always had, the fans that have grown up with the band, but they also have teenagers and people in their 20s, younger people that are loving what they're doing now. You can't say that about basically any other band from that period that had a hit like 'Last Resort.' They've always inspired me and they still inspire me now where I'm just like, damn, they're honestly some of the smartest and nicest dudes ever, despite how much success they've had. They're such normal people, too. Just a great band, man."
Ekoh's appreciation for Lo Spirit: "I think his Lo Spirit project never did what it should have because I think it was so good. I feel like if we can package what Josh does in a different way and push it over here, then people can see how good he is."