LI's Matthew Koma signs with major label

Matthew Koma says he's happy to finally get his shot to swing for the fences.

The Seaford native -- you may remember him better as Matthew Bair from local heroes Bandcamp -- was signed to Interscope Records last month by the label's chairman, Jimmy Iovine, and he hopes to release his debut early next year.

After years of working toward a major-label deal, Koma signed quickly with Interscope. One day in May, he was house-hunting in Woodland Hills, Calif., with his brother when a call came asking him to go to Iovine's Los Angeles home.

"We drive over and it's Jimmy Iovine, Babyface, Rodney Jerkins, myself and my manager and we're sitting on the couch watching 'American Idol' and eating dinner," said Koma, calling from the Los Angeles recording studio where he's working on his new album.

They talked about some of the songs Koma had written recently with Jerkins' artist-producer Jukebox and then Iovine asked, "So what else you got?" "So I pick up an acoustic and played a song from the record called 'She,' " Koma said. "Two days later, we had an official offer from Interscope, and 10 days later the deal was closed."

One of the first songs Koma and Jukebox wrote together was "Novocaine Lips," which will be in the upcoming Taylor Lautner movie, "Abduction." Another song they wrote together was "Birthday Dress," which will be released next month by rapper Lil Playy, featuring Koma on vocals.

The video for "Birthday Dress" already has received more than 600,000 views on YouTube, strictly from word-of-mouth and from a single appearance on BET, since the single was just released to radio this week.

"It's super-exciting, especially because it's a song where I got to work with Jukebox in a super-creative place," Koma said. "It was great to not just be the songwriter, but to also be at the helm and help make sure it became something I wanted it to be. It's also cool to see all the hype . . . Diddy tweeting about it and Brandy tweeting about it. It's crazy."