Out of the bedroom

Kelly Rosenthal’s bedroom personality is I Am Strikes. Which is kind of a paradox, given that I Am Strikes is Rosenthal’s stage name and public persona.

“I never want my presence to seem like a facade, because it’s the opposite of that,” Rosenthal says. “It’s almost like it represents everything that I am that I can’t be.”

Regardless, I Am Strikes—or Rosenthal—is a new solo artist that’s quickly become a force in Sacramento’s music scene.

I Am Strikes is dark. She usually wears hoodies, jeans and tennis shoes and wants to challenge society’s assumptions about female singer-songwriters. She makes songs with titles like “Whatever Makes You Want to Die Less” and “Bitches.” She doesn’t wear makeup. She embraces contradictions and likes taboos.

Her recent EP, Low Standards, comprises two well-crafted, synthy alternative tracks. One of them, “Love Is Just Another Way to Die,” was featured on The Vampire Diaries season finale and heard by 1.61 million viewers.

“All my vulnerability is in my music—it’s my blood, heart and soul,” she says. “I’m really trying to put everything out there that makes people uncomfortable.”

Rosenthal’s more common persona— the one her family and friends see, for example—is warm, approachable, smiley. But the 22-year-old experienced a tumultuous past few years, and her mind is still reeling from it all—I Am Strikes was born in the emotional stress.

After graduating high school, Rosenthal found two Maryland teenagers on YouTube singing with the most beautiful voices she had ever heard. With a webcam and guitar, Rosenthal already had earned her own YouTube following. She reached out. They met. They bonded. At age 19, Rosenthal moved to Baltimore, and they formed a bluesy pop band called Say Chance.

The trio of new best friends nabbed huge gigs, great press and were quickly becoming a “band to watch.” Their cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” racked up more than a million hits on YouTube.

Two years later, Say Chance broke up. Heartbroken, Rosenthal moved back to Sacramento. Her break from music didn’t last long, though.

“I have so much to say, and if I don’t say it, my head’s gonna explode,” Rosenthal says.

The problem? Rosenthal had never sung before. She thought her voice was awful. Needing to create again, she tried to sing anyway.

“I sat there and thought that maybe I don’t need to be great at this, maybe I don’t need to be a self-proclaimed wonderful singer by most people’s standards,” she says. “Maybe if I could say what I want to say the way I want to say it, that could be enough.”

Onstage, I Am Strikes shows zero hesitation about her voice. She manipulates it to her alternative sound, adds gruffness and doesn’t try to create anything pretty. It works.

Now Rosenthal is running around town, set on paying her dues. She’s focused on her live performance and performing for as many people as possible—in doses. At this point, she says she’d rather play for two people in a bar than for a 5,000-person festival audience.

“I can’t say I’ve ever felt like this before in my life,” she says. “Everything feels new, even if it’s not.”