Jesse Kloos Turns an Unrepeatable Desert Voice Memo Into Cinematic Debut Single “Psilocybin Elephant”

The Manitou Springs musician, filmmaker, and composer builds his debut around a single raw take recorded alone in Sedona, later finding an unexpected home for the song inside the documentary Dante: The Man Running 500 Miles on Psychedelics.

Sometimes the version that was never supposed to leave the phone is the version that contains everything a polished studio recording cannot reproduce. For Jesse Kloos, that realization became the foundation of “Psilocybin Elephant,” his debut solo single and a cinematic folk recording whose story began three years before its official release with nothing more than a guitar, an isolated night in the Sedona desert, and an iPhone voice memo.

Kloos did not enter that night intending to capture a finished song. According to the official release, he was alone in Sedona with a guitar, a tent, and mushrooms when something began to take shape as he played. He reached for his phone and recorded the performance in a single uninterrupted take. There was no audience, studio setup, or expectation that the recording would eventually become part of a professional release. What remained was simply the sound of a moment occurring before it could be analyzed or recreated.

When Kloos returned home, his instincts as an audio engineer initially led him toward the conventional next step: record the vocals again properly and construct a cleaner version. He tried. Then he tried again. Each attempt may have offered greater technical control, but something essential disappeared in the process. The vulnerability and spontaneity captured in Sedona could not simply be reproduced because the circumstances that created it no longer existed.

“What felt honest about the song was the moment, not making this a song for the radio,” Kloos explains. “I used the voice memo from my phone and produced the track around it.”

That decision changed the entire direction of “Psilocybin Elephant.” Rather than replacing the imperfect original recording, Kloos treated it as the emotional center of the production. Cello, slide guitar, percussion, and backing vocals were gradually arranged around the voice memo, expanding a solitary acoustic performance into a fuller cinematic folk composition without erasing the raw quality that made the first take worth preserving.

The finished track develops patiently. Kloos points listeners toward the first major drop around 1:27, while the bridge at approximately 2:23 remains one of his favorite sections. By 3:33, the outro enters the portion used in its documentary placement. Those structural changes give “Psilocybin Elephant” the feeling of something continuously opening outward, beginning in intimacy before gaining enough scale to sit naturally against moving images.

That cinematic quality makes sense considering Kloos’ larger creative life. Based in the mountains of Manitou Springs, Colorado, he works not only as a musician and composer but also as a filmmaker, audio engineer, and sound designer through Eagle Mountain Media LLC. His experience moves across documentary production, directing, scoring, and post-production, giving him an understanding of the relationship between sound and image that reaches beyond traditional songwriting.

That relationship became unexpectedly literal when “Psilocybin Elephant” found its way into Dante: The Man Running 500 Miles on Psychedelics. The independent documentary follows an ultrarunner attempting a 500-mile journey from Colorado Springs to Moab, with Kloos serving as assistant director. His debut single plays over the documentary’s title card, connecting the song’s unusual origin story to another project centered on an equally unconventional journey.

The connection became even stranger through details Kloos could not have planned. According to the press materials, Dante’s father unknowingly quotes lyrics from “Psilocybin Elephant” during the documentary, while the song itself had referenced a documentary before this particular film even existed. Those coincidences give the collaboration an almost circular quality: a voice memo created years earlier ultimately becomes part of a film that seems to echo pieces of the song back to its creator.

The documentary also gained visibility through Eventive. In the promotional screenshot shared with CYNX Magazine, Dante: 500 Miles on Psychedelics appears among Eventive’s “Hot screenings to pre-order (Top 20),” placing the project alongside a selection of anticipated independent screenings ahead of its July release. The film began streaming July 16, 2026, the same date connected to Kloos’ press campaign for the single.

For Kloos, however, the significance of “Psilocybin Elephant” appears less connected to rankings than to what the recording taught him about his own process. As someone experienced in audio engineering, he possesses the technical ability to polish, replace, and manipulate a performance. His debut required him to recognize when those abilities were not the answer.

That tension between craft and instinct gives the song its identity. The additional instrumentation brings dimension and production value, but the foundation remains something that was never recorded under professional conditions. Instead of correcting the past, Kloos created an arrangement capable of protecting it.

“Psilocybin Elephant” therefore introduces Jesse Kloos as a solo artist through imperfection rather than presentation. It is a song built from the belief that honesty can sometimes survive inside rough edges, room noise, and performances that cannot be repeated on command. What began privately in the Sedona desert now exists across major streaming platforms and inside an independent documentary, carrying the same first take all the way from an iPhone recording to the screen.

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