KING JAYMES is the debut album from Stephen Jaymes, the folk punk hero hell-bent on saving the human race. It contains a number of tracks that were released as singles over the past 22 months to critical acclaim, and a brand-new song called When I Was Young. 

As such, King Jaymes represents the culmination of two histories: the history of Stephen developing as an artist, and the history of Stephen tracing a path of unique singles and standout videos across two years to arrive at his debut album’s release already firmly established as a gifted songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.

The journey from the summer of 2023 to the summer of 2025 chronicled the birth of the Stephen Jaymes persona, the establishment of a unique and artful music video style, and the ongoing development of a sound.

As this development progressed, Stephen and his mixing engineer, Zsolt Virag, continued to hone and define what they agreed would become the sound of King Jaymes. It’s a folk-rock album with a pristine shine and a standout vocal performance, shaped and perfected with a few iconic records in mind, the most prominent being the Gordon Lightfoot and Lenny Waronker collaboration Gord’s Gold.

Those who listen to Stephen’s 2023 and 2024 singles will find all new mixes of them on King Jaymes. For example, the song Chief Inspector, released at the outset of this journey, feels like a whole new beast, its piano and guitar dialogue shining with new details and a wide open aural vista that defines the whole album: a carefully controlled and expansive universe of texture and rhythm.

On the way to the release of King Jaymes, Stephen’s fans got an unusual opportunity to know him intimately. Abandoning the deliberate anonymity that defined most of his development as an artist in Los Angeles, he purposefully made his 2023 singles visual spectaculars. He collaborated with the LA-based director Ross Kolton to produce three experimental films investigating an artist coming to terms with his own emerging persona.

The 2024 singles were accompanied by slightly more traditional music videos that featured more performance and more video effects, but they were no less fearless in their experimentation, and they ultimately provided even deeper looks into Stephen’s intimate world. The culminating video, for the single Stranded, is a psychedelic romp across the wonders of the world in a style he describes as Elvis Lebowski.

Then, in 2025, a whole new side of Stephen Jaymes emerged through a project he came to call VISION2025. He launched a blog called PARTICLES and embarked on a series of popular TikTok videos to explain his vision of peace on Earth achieved in our lifetime and the cultural and spiritual questions raised by the mission to feed, house, and provide medicine to every human being on the planet. 

His thoughts on everything, from the phenomenon of time seeming to slow during crisis moments to how to shield yourself from toxic news, find an audience resonating with his calm defiance in the face of extinction. VISION2025 provides the perfect complement to and vehicle for Stephen’s folk punk attitude.

The final track on King Jaymes, When I Was Young, won’t be released as a single. You’ll have to hear the album to catch it. It is a standout work that transcends the torch song genre to lay bare the irony of growing older in an age that is refusing to allow humans to grow old anymore. 

Life is a dirty trick, and it’s sad, but in the hands of Stephen Jaymes, life is a miracle of light in the darkness, and a hint that there’s more to this particular apocalypse than meets the eye. When I Was Young is a crowning achievement of a track, lavished with mixing details that make all the dark corners sparkle. It is the wry but hopeful observation of a king who has learned humility, and who has survived through music to assume his rightful place on the folk punk throne.

King Jaymes

Stranded

Virus Vaccine

Last Predictable Summer

Chief Inspector

The Evidence Against Her

Waiting For The Drugs To Kick In

Saving Daylight

When I Was Young

Baby Can't Be Helped

Tokyo

“If folk-punk poetry had a name it would be Stephen Jaymes,” declared Kill the Music after he dropped three creatively explosive singles and music videos over the summer of 2023. It's now 2025 and SJ is about to drop his debut album, King Jaymes. A gifted multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, singer, and producer, Stephen is a self-contained artist. He might be described as Charles Bukowski ditching whiskey for psychedelic mushrooms while feverishly ingesting Rumi poetry and Phil Ochs records. He writes with a strutting, folk-punk sensibility, bringing to life dark realities in order to highlight, with literate and lacerating lyrics, the brightness underneath.

Stephen’s voice draws comparisons to Iggy Pop, Ian McCulloch, and Gordon Lightfoot. His musical style has been compared to Elvis Costello, Beck, and T Rex. His lyrical style is reminiscent of Nilsson, Phil Ochs, and Leonard Cohen.