Gripping a microphone, a figure emerged from behind a curtain and stepped onto the stage, into the spotlight. Her eyelids, adorned with striking glitter, matched her shiny, rouge lip gloss.
Hofstra University student Rylie Kelley’s music echoes her. It’s vibrant, multilayered and undeniably human.
“I’m bad at understanding how people perceive me,” Kelley said. “You spend so much time with yourself, but then you consider how you might appear to other people. I hope that if they’re getting something wrong about me, it’s that I’m cool and amazing.”
The Lawrence Herbert School of Communication is where 21-year-old college senior Kelley found a mash-up of writing and technical skills. She is working toward a Writing for the Screen major, a communication degree that involves writing scripts for film, television and video.
Throughout her time at East Bridgewater Jr/Sr High School – located in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts – Kelley wrote feverishly. Writing later seeped into an adoration for storytelling, which eventually evolved through a developed interest in visuals and audio. She also toyed with GarageBand – a music production app – making instrumentals and beats.
Since 2022, Kelley has been making music on her own. Her tunes are largely pop because the genre encompasses various sounds and styles, granting her creative freedom.
“I’m not involved in music at Hofstra because it’s such a passionate hobby for me,” Kelley said. “I feel like if I studied it on top of it being a hobby, I’d burn out badly. So, I stay away from music academically.”
She has two albums on Spotify: “SATURN” (2024) and “PINKHEART” (2025), and one single, for a total of 33 songs. Both albums take her lived experiences and make them danceable through melodies and fun instrumentals. Their overarching theme is girlhood, her focus on femininity stemming from her journey as a transgender woman.
“I want me as a transgender person [to be] releasing art and putting my perspective out there and being different, just because I am different,” Kelley said. “Music is my way of promoting transgender visibility by just being visible. It’s me screaming, ‘I’m visible, I’m here!’”
Recently, Hofstra student Emma Eitel took on the challenge of producing a music video for Kelley’s most popular song, “THOSE HANDS.” Eitel approached Kelley after watching her perform at Hofstra Danceworks Productions last May.
“It was a lot more intense, but in a good way. It was the first time I’d ever done something of that scale related to my art,” Kelley said. “I felt fortunate that people considered my voice, my art and my songs in a big enough way that they wanted to work on a music video for one of them.”
For Kelley, it was a whole new world. The music videos for songs on “SATURN” were filmed using just her iPhone on a gimbal. Kelley and her friend went out into the woods and just hit record. With proper equipment and a cast of extras, the “THOSE HANDS” music video was a lot more involved than her previous work.
Bryana Neff, sophomore public relations major at Hofstra, was an extra in Kelley’s music video. “I see the passion that [Kelley] puts into everything she does, and I think the world needs more people like her who are unapologetically themselves,” Neff said.
Kelley is a college student with a multitude of interests that all play a role in her talent for making music.
