Alum Kevin Rivers Releases Debut EP, 'Balloom'

THE PIONEER (CSU EAST BAY) -- Kevin Rivera, who goes by his stage name Kevin Rivers, is a Bay Area native who spent the last year putting together his first five song EP, “Balloom.” The album dropped December 3. After graduating from SFSU with a major in Communication, he went to City College of San Francisco to pursue music. At the time, his ideal job was to score music for movies. It wasn’t until he took a composition course that he realized he really wanted to dive into creating music. In the composition course Rivera took, he was assigned weekly to compose different types of music. “It was during synth-pop that I wrote my first pop song, “Diamond Ring.” I wrote it two hours before class, and it was just one those things where everything came together. My teacher had no critique and she told me, ‘Kevin this is a hit,’” Rivera said. After that week in class, he realized that he wanted to put out a pop-synth album. This was the beginning of his commitment to making music.