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As 2022 draws to a close, Billboard Pride is taking a look back at some of the queer indie artists who saw their stars rise over the last 12 months. Below, U.K. genre-bender Lava La Rue breaks down their big year.
It’s the end of a busy trip to New York for Lava La Rue. The buzzy, much talked-about indie artist from West London has been in and out of studio sessions and supporting their partner’s gigs around the city, but as they log onto a Zoom call from a Brooklyn hotel room, they look mildly bummed.
“It’s super rainy and gross,” they say, swiveling their camera around to show a cloud-choked skyline just outside their window. “Normally I get this very cute view of everything corny, like the Empire State. Now, it’s just kind of looking like Gotham.” But La Rue acknowledges the weather pattern is just a transitional phase. “It’s been lovely all week, just not today,” they say with a shrug. “It’ll pass.”
La Rue would know what a transitional phase looks like, considering they’ve been actively in one for the last year — throughout 2022, La Rue underwent a shift that brought about a new sound, curated a new audience, and even found the singer a new home for their musical universe. “I think because I started in music fairly young, like in my late teens, some people have been like, “Wow, you’ve been around for quite a long time now,’” they say. “No, I literally feel like I was reborn this year. It feels like starting over almost.”
At the outset of their career in 2018, La Rue was known for their chilled-out, bedroom-rap releases, where the then-19-year-old would effortlessly let their bars flow about everything from cheating lovers to self-criticism on songs like “Widdit” and “F–ked it Up.” But as their career progressed, so did their sound — slick rap verses gave way to groovier, dreamier bedroom-pop tracks, until eventually the singer was in their “lo-fi bedroom” funk-pop era with the 2021 EP Butter-Fly.
La Rue is proud of the music they were able to make for the first three years of their career, especially given their limited access to the necessary tools to make projects like Butter-Fly. But the singer-songwriter quickly points out that their limitations in budget meant a limitation to their sound.
“Before, I had to compromise with the kind of music that I made, and when you have to compromise, you become a ‘lo-fi bedroom’ artist because that’s all you have access to,” they say. “I felt pretty boxed into that label … though I really don’t mind, I have nothing against the genre. It just felt really limiting in that approach — I wanted things to sound bigger and more cinematic.”
So, when it came time to craft their next project, it felt fitting to strip that label away with the title. Hi-Fidelity, La Rue’s third and most ambitious EP yet, saw the young artist plugging in — La Rue credits extended time in the studio to hone a cleaner, sharper sound as the key factor in the transformed sound of their latest project. Put simply, “This was the first time I was making music that sounds like the music I want to listen to,” they say.
Part of what makes Hi-Fidelity such a fascinating listen is that much like the rest of La Rue’s discography, it refuses to be pinned to a singular genre. The star’s signature buttery rap bars remain intact, while they also employ elements of funk, disco, pop-punk and R&B all throughout the EP’s five tracks.
La Rue is unsurprised that genre-fluidity has become a defining factor in what their audience looks for from their music. “There is so much cross-pollination of streaming and finding new music online,” they explain. “Now, a song will just have an inescapable viral moment, and you have people who would not normally listen to Steve Lacy suddenly listening to Steve Lacy. Or people who wouldn’t normally listen to pop-punk or Paramore — if one of their songs pops off on TikTok, suddenly they’re listening to a drill remix of a Paramore single.”
But the fluidity is also the point for La Rue — the 23-year-old artist doesn’t want to be labeled by any particular genre, and instead aims to have people search for music that sounds like Lava La Rue. “I think there’s a playlist on Spotify called ‘Planet Rave,’ and it literally just came from PinkPanthress doing a whole jungle/drum-and-bass revival. I started seeing people making music like PinkPanthress to be on that PinkPanthress-inspired playlist,” they explain. “That is the goal; I’ve always strived to have the level of artistry where what I do is recognizable as a person. Like, it is first and foremost Lava. So no matter what genre you apply it on, you recognize the voice and you recognize what I’m trying to say.”
Achieving an artistry on that level requires new audiences — and luckily for La Rue, they got just that this autumn. Following the release of their EP in July, La Rue joined fellow U.K. indie-rock darlings Wet Leg on their European tour, opening for 8 dates in November across the EU.
With a new, fuller sound, and a big spot on a hotly-anticipated tour, La Rue says they got to learn how to perform with a full band in real time while on the road with Wet Leg. “The live performance now is full-on showmanship — we’ve got an acoustic drum kit, big guitar solos, huge bass riffs, two synthesizers, I’m playing guitar as well,” they explain. “When I first did Glastonbury, it was me and a DJ, and I was singing my cute little songs and rapping and jumping into the moshpit, just me being an MC with the track backing me up. I really had to test my musicality when I couldn’t just hide behind the track.”
But the tour also worked for La Rue in a way they didn’t anticipate — it turns out that getting to perform music you’ve been working on for captive audiences of 4,000 people every few nights is excellent market research. “I almost wasn’t going to do the Wet Leg support tour, because in that time, I was supposed to be going into making my new project,” they say. “But seeing how it feels in a room of people has been so inspiring in the creative process for me. It’s changed the levels in my performance style, even in the way I’m recording things in the vocal booth now.”
When it comes to their new project, La Rue is ready for a full-on rebirth. After completing a two-EP deal with Marathon Artists in 2022, the singer says they’ve just signed on as the newest member of the Dirty Hit roster.
“Dirty Hit made so much sense to me — they’re based in West London, they’re an indie, and they’ve got a lot of artists who I grew up listening to and am obsessed with. It all just fit,” they say, a grin crossing their face. “If you look at the artists on their roster, they all lead with so much creativity, whether it’s The 1975 or Rina Sawayama. It’s also ambitious enough to say, ‘No, let’s make this pop off, too.’ It’s nice to feel like you can be ambitious, but still have creative control.”
So, with a new record deal under their belt and a debut album in the works, what comes next for La Rue? The answer, much like their sound, contains multitudes. “I literally feel like I’m at the beginning of my journey, and my whole goal is to just make everything bigger and brighter and more cinematic,” they explain. “It’s gonna be a whole world-building experience — there’s simply so much to be done.”
As 2022 draws to a close, Billboard Pride is taking a look back at some the queer indie artists who saw their stars rise over the last 12 months. Below, pop singer Chappell Roan breaks down her big year.
When Chappell Roan markets herself as a “thrift store pop star,” she means that in its most literal sense. Even as she logs onto her Zoom account for an interview with Billboard, the 24-year-old singer is opening up a package she ordered online. “There is this girl on Etsy who makes rhinestoned disco cowgirl hats,” she says, tearing into the plastic wrapping in front of her. “So, I ordered one, because I’m going on tour and I have to start prep now for the outfits.”
As she finally opens the bag, she reveals a massive, disco ball-inspired cowboy hat covered in reflective panels and glittering gems. Roan’s jaw drops as she inspects it (“This is so sick,” she whispers), before looking slightly concerned as she dons the sparkling Stetson: “Ooh, that is heavy — I don’t think I can wear this on stage for long.”
Refining her tour outfits is just one small part of what Roan has been up to lately — the rising indie-pop singer-songwriter saw her hard work pay dividends in 2022. Releasing four singles throughout the year to increasing acclaim and growing her online following along the way, Roan is currently enjoying new heights of cultural recognition; her last single “Casual,” along with winding up on multiple “best of 2022” lists, boosted her profile online, with TikTok users quickly comparing pre-release teases of the track to Taylor Swift.
Looking back on her banner year, Roan acknowledges that it feels good to finally be recognized (“Last year I was working at a doughnut shop, so I’m doing great now,” she jokes), but she doesn’t feign shock at finally achieving a breakthrough. “It’s validating … but also not surprising to me,” she says, shrugging. “Like, yeah, I’ve been working my ass off for seven years! It’s about time!”
Back then, Roan was an aspiring singer-songwriter from Willard, Missouri who was simply trying to make it through high school while dreaming of a life in the music industry. After posting some of her music online, the singer traveled to New York City in 2015 for a set of showcases, where she ended up signing a deal with Atlantic Records.
Roan spent five years at Atlantic, workshopping her sound and releasing her debut EP School Nights in 2017. But after putting out what would go on to become her most successful song to date, the label decided to terminate their working relationship with the budding star, dropping Roan from their roster in 2020.
When asked about her time with Atlantic, Roan starts with diplomacy: “It was such an incredible learning experience for me, honestly.” Then, the singer gets real: “It was not great … I feel like once I was dropped, it lit such a fire and fury in me, I swear,” she recalls. “I learned that it’s just like, ‘Oh s–t, no one’s going to do anything for you — not your manager, not your label — if you don’t tell them what to do. No one can do this job for you.’ That’s when I started asking myself how much I could get away with.”
Fortunately for Roan, her time at the label did bear some significant fruit — it was at Atlantic that she first met her songwriting partner Dan Nigro, who has co-written each new release with the singer since her departure. Before he was writing generational breakup anthems for Olivia Rodrigo, the pop-rock auteur was working with Roan on her tracks, earning his first official credit with her for her queer-coded ode to stripping, “Pink Pony Club.”
Unencumbered by label expectations, the singer-songwriter finally began bringing her full creative vision to fruition in 2022. The first step, as she tells it, was nailing her presentation: Gone was an attempt at presenting a clean-cut facade, now replaced by a more effortless deconstruction of style. “Once I let go of trying to be this very well-managed, put-together pop girl, it felt like everything just fell into place,” Roan explains. “I leaned into the fact that my looks were tacky, and very obviously using fake diamonds and Gucci knockoffs. I leaned into my queerness for the first time. When I did that, the songs got easier to write, the shows got easier to design, and my aesthetic was finally there.”
While putting together a rapid-fire rollout schedule of singles throughout the year (including “Naked In Manhattan,” “My Kink Is Karma” and “Femininomenon”), Roan quickly began accruing a fiercely loyal following on TikTok. According to Roan, while she was promoting the release of “Naked in Manhattan” in January 2022, she gained over 30,000 followers in one month, with fans anxiously wondering when the song would come out.
Roan doesn’t see herself as a “TikTok artist” — not necessarily due to fears of pigeonholing, but rather out of a healthy dose of skepticism. “I go so back and forth with TikTok,” she says. “I gained a lot of speed at the beginning of the year with TikTok because I wasn’t busy; I had time to post twice a day, go live once a day, repeat. It doesn’t work when you’re busy.”
The singer knows that because she has, in fact, been busy — along with unveiling her new set of singles, Roan filled the latter half of her year with plenty of touring. After opening for Olivia Rodrigo in May at her San Francisco Sour Tour stop, Roan caught the attention of fellow queer singer-songwriter Fletcher, who offered Roan the opening spot on the second half of her Girl of My Dreams Tour. Embarking on 10 dates with Fletcher, Roan honed her live show in real time while her song “Casual” began to pick up steam online.
“I don’t even know what I discovered, besides the fact that this is incredibly hard,” Roan laughs, looking back on her time opening for Fletcher. “If I’ve learned anything, it’s that the live show is where the heartbeat of the project is. Luckily, it’s my favorite part of what I do — I like touring, but a lot of people hate it because it’s horrible and hard.”
The singer likes touring enough that she’s embarking on her own headlining tour in 2023. Spanning 20 dates through February and March, Roan will be traveling coast to coast with an ambitious performance goal — every show, she says, will be themed. “It’s already really hard to do that on an independent budget — but also coming up with that many different themes is insanely hard,” she says. “But, if the live show rocks, then everything else will trickle down.”
It’s also important to her to create a show worthy of the very queer fanbase she’s garnered — that means making tickets affordable (“College kids don’t have money!” she giggles), keeping her concert spaces safe, and donating $1 of every ticket sold to For the Gworls, a Black, trans-led organization dedicated to helping Black trans people pay for their rent and gender-affirming care. “If I can create a space where people can afford to come into a mostly queer space, and dress up and feel good and meet other queer people in a town where maybe there’s not a lot of other places to meet queer people — a.k.a. my hometown — then that is great,” she says. “That’s doing the world good.”
Her plan is working so far — streams for “Casual” are continuing to rise, approaching the 2 million mark before its second month out on DSPs. Meanwhile, the majority of dates for her headline tour have already sold out, with only a small number of tickets remaining at a few venues. “That’s actually crazy,” she says of her sold-out dates. “My numbers are not that big, comparatively, to other artists. So when things started selling out, it was like, ‘Oh, okay, this is pretty real. I did not know that I could sell out in a day.’”
Despite her building success, Roan is still trying to keep one foot firmly in reality — while being independent has its perks, she says, it’s also not sustainable for the kind of artist she wants to become. “I’m not perfectly fine with being indie, if I’m being honest,” she says. “I need money to hire more help, and I just can’t keep doing everything DIY. I cannot keep asking favors from my friends, it’s just not fair to everyone.”
But now, unlike when she was a 16-year-old signing her first record deal, Roan knows who she is and what she wants (opening for Miley Cyrus, for example, is on her to-do list). “I will not sign a deal unless it is the right deal for me, and it must be mutually beneficial,” she says. “I know that I can do it without a label, which gives me such empowerment to walk away there.”
She pauses, and smiles. “That’s the key, I think; this year has been empowering for me.”
The Project
I Love You Jennifer B, out now on Rough Trade Records.
The Origin
Though they were both drawn to the Guildhall School of Music in London for its rare, genre-inclusive approach to music academics – teaching everything from electronic production to jazz piano – Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye were not the most likely duo at the school to form a band. Ellery arrived her first year at the school as a violinist with no experience writing songs, while Skye was busy scoring scenes in feature films. “But I think we were both looking for each other,” Ellery says wistfully, looking back on the time she still says is “definitely the most formative of my life.”
Inspired by the emerging experimentalist pop scene at the school, Ellery tried to write songs on her own, setting down her trusty violin in favor of a piano or guitar. After penning her first one, Ellery took it to Skye to produce, given her admiration for his soundtrack work and their shared love of James Blake, Four Tet and of Annie Mac’s BBC 1 radio show. “I’ve never really enjoyed playing by myself, so it just made a lot of sense to work together,” Ellery explains. “He was looking for a band, I was looking for a band, so the two just kept going after the first song.”
Soon, the duo was self-releasing their music, which ultimately sounded as jarring as the name they assumed to do it: Jockstrap. When asked why they chose the moniker, Skye just shrugs. “We like heavy metal names.”
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The Sound
Made up of Ellery’s soul-baring songwriting and Skye’s bombastic electronic production, Jockstrap’s I Love You Jennifer B is a commanding front-to-back listen, and is already beloved by tastemakers like Jamie xx and Populous. At times, I Love You Jennifer B is longing, and at other times frenetic, but that’s what makes it brilliant: it is committed to subverting expectations at every turn.
Skye says it was always a conscious choice to put together a full project’s worth of songs, but Ellery also says, “We weren’t writing for cohesion.”
The Breakthrough
When releasing their first songs, Jockstrap took inspiration – knowingly or unknowingly – from Skye’s early-Uni roots, scoring scenes in his dorm room. The duo paired their music with visuals they created themselves; sure, saving the money as a then-independent band was helpful, but making music videos from scratch was also a way to illustrate a bigger artistic vision.
“We had this sort of plan of how we should self-release,” says Ellery of their first songs. The band put out homemade videos as well as linked up with a local magazine to premiere them. “We were just so driven and determined to make it a real thing,” says Ellery. “I think we did it the correct way, because our team just kind of came to us after.” The music videos and songs led to their record deal with Rough Trade Records, two EPs and finally, their debut album.
The Piece of Studio Equipment Jockstrap Cannot Live Without
Skye: “My PSP vintage warmer.”
Ellery: “My trusty old Audio Technica headphones that are dirt cheap.”
The Artist They Believe Deserves More Attention
Skye: “MT Hadley”
The Takeaway That They Hope Fans Have When They Hear the Album
Ellery: “We truly hope that there’s a banger in there for everyone. That at least one song screams at them.”
The Advice Every Indie Artist Needs to Hear
Ellery: “Take control and make your own music video. Try to get your own premieres in magazines, don’t wait on others to do it.”
The Thing That Needs to Change in the Music Industry
Ellery: “More women. Less misogyny.”
This Friday (Nov. 18), nine months after their bright, buoyant studio album Time Skiffs, Animal Collective releases a new project in the form of The Inspection, the soundtrack to an A24 film that opens the same day.
“The Inspection is a story of a Black, gay man who joins the Marines in search of validation from and acceptance from his mother,” says star and executive producer Gabrielle Union in a teaser trailer. “It’s about the fight every day to be seen and respected.”
The film stars Jeremy Pope as Ellis French, a character inspired by director/screenwriter Elegance Bratton’s own life. And while Animal Collective probably isn’t the first band you think of when you hear the words “U.S. Marines,” Bratton feels the experimental indie outfit provided him with the “perfect backdrop” to explore various emotional states on screen.
“We were very inspired by the music of our composers Animal Collective. We wanted to create the right rhythms to blur the line between what French thinks is real and what is really happening,” Bratton explained. “So those fantasy sequences could serve as the evolution of French’s inner life. In essence, we wanted to create a sense of the stir craziness of the monotony of boot camp, juxtaposed with the massive transformation Ellis French undergoes. Animal Collective provides the perfect backdrop to shrink and expand the time according to the emotion.” (The soundtrack also features contributions from singer-songwriter Indigo de Souza.)
With The Inspection being AnCo’s second feature-length film soundtrack (following 2021’s Crestone), we asked the group to share their favorite movie soundtracks of all time. See what Avey Tare (David Portner), Geologist (Brian Weitz) and Deakin (Josh Dibb) chose below.
