SINGAPORE — She’s best known as the guitarist for Singapore’s fuzz-pop quintet Obedient Wives Club (OWC), but Cherie Ko will tell you that she’s more than just someone who can wield a guitar and churn out those smooth licks.

Indeed, on the surface, it may seem a little difficult to pin down who Ko really is. Even before she joined the band in early 2012, Ko was already somewhat of a sensation online. Her YouTube channel, where she performed covers of popular songs and originals on acoustic guitar, garnered more than three million views. Even after joining OWC, Ko wasn’t averse to doing other musical projects. Within a year, she hooked up with Panther Lau and Orestes Morfin of seminal American post-rockers Bitch Magnet to form a rock trio Bored Spies; and she also started a side project called Pastelpower.

“Cherie Ko is like a character and Pastelpower, Bored Spies and Obedient Wives Club are different sides of me,” Ko said about her multiple musical personalities, although she seems keen to distance herself from her early YouTube persona. “I started out when I was 17, posting music ... I was just testing the waters. Those YouTube videos are of the past me. I don’t intend to bank on my past identity (to promote Pastelpower); I even have a separate YouTube channel for Pastelpower now.”

You could say Ko has gone further than many indie musicians in Singapore in the last two years, literally, by playing gigs both in Singapore and overseas: With the OWC, for example, she played the popular Malaysian music festival, Urbanscapes, last year; with Bored Spies, she played several gigs in Spain, England and America; and this year, Ko did solo jaunts in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.

She has also released tracks with all three entities, including Murder Kill Baby with OWC, Summer 720 with Bored Spies and Pastelpower’s Sparkling Demo EP. The music is decidedly different in each incarnation, even if they all share a similar vibe. For now, though, Ko is focused on her latest Pastelpower project: An EP called Pastelpower Broadcast, featuring two songs and their accompanying videos that are ’60s-style synth pop tunes that don’t feature any guitars at all. She said Pastelpower Broadcast is a precursor of sorts to an album that is slated for release next year.

“The reason why I came up with this EP is because, over the years, I’d written quite a few songs,” said Ko. “Right now, the instrumentation is all electronic. For the album, I’d like to have a bigger sound, with more organic instruments (and) live musicians playing.”

Interestingly, although Ko made a name for herself as a guitarist, the keyboards-driven songs on the EP are a return to her musical roots as the piano was the first instrument she learnt to play. “I started learning piano when I was a kid ... and whenever I write songs, I think of them in piano format first.”

For her, Pastelpower isn’t just about a musical change. “It’s like a step back to simpler times. As we grow up, we have this pressure to be more adult. But in some ways, I still feel the same way I did when I was 14. All of us are kids at heart. With Pastelpower, I just want to let loose and break all the barriers to allow that primitive child to get out.”

And get out is something that Ko will do. Tomorrow, she heads to Penang for the weekend to promote the EP, including one show at the Penang Buskers Festival, before she contemplates shows back home. “I think (performing overseas) is very important. You get to really see how people overseas do things. If you just stay in Singapore, you limit yourself. On tour, I had different experiences with different organisers and promoters and you can see which ones are dodgy or more trustworthy. You also get to understand the audience more – which ones are more receptive to your music.”

It’s all part of the learning process, she said, and the experience adds up to form the entity that is Cherie Ko. “I feel like I’m like a Russian doll – a me within a me within a me. The outer me is like, the one who plays for the Obedient Wives Club. So those who only know me through that may not know that I have another side to me that is more quirky or cutesy. I like having different hats to put on. It feels like I don’t have to fit into this mould that people perceive me to be.

“I know that I am a lot of other things, not just the guitarist for the band. With these different projects I can show people the different sides of me.”

For more information about Pastelpower, visit Cherie Ko’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Pastelpower).