Leaving Pentatonix to launch a solo career wasn't easy for Avi Kaplan. The formidable task even brought a bout of depression, he acknowledges. But he sings about overcoming that in the title track of I'll Get By, his second EP, whose video is premiering exclusively on Billboard today (Feb. 28).
"I had just left a very successful career, and in general I had a lot of hurt and a lot of healing to do, so that's where a lot of it came from," Kaplan -- whose debut EP Sage and Stone, as Avriel & the Sequoias, came out in 2017 -- tells Billboard. "And just to figure out where I'm trying to go next and how that's going to work out -- it was a lot. I knew I wanted to do music, but leaving such a successful career one would think I'd kind of shot myself in the foot. I knew I made the right decision, and at the end of the day it's up to me to get where I want to go, but it's a lot to take on."
"I'll Get By," Kaplan says, is "very, very true to where I was at," but he went to great lengths for the song to be about getting past his situation. “It's really important for me that the people who listen to my music get something that can hopefully help them get through whatever they're going through,” he says. “Music is the only thing that's able to help sooth my soul in that way, and my goal is to always put things out there that that do the same thing for other people."