Getting to know Alice Phoebe Lou

Alice Phoebe Lou has recently unveiled a new single and video. We asked her to tell us about herself:

1. I am… Alice ! I’m 25 and from Cape Town but I’ve been living in Berlin for 5 years, where I moved to be a street musician. I did the street hustle for years, eventually getting gigs and getting a band together and now things are popping with a lot of touring & beautiful opportunities. I still play on the street when I can, ’cause it makes me feel real good.

2. Skin Crawl is… a song I wrote after a terrifying experience of having my drink spiked after a night out in NYC. It’s about sexual aggression and the ‘little things’ that frustrate me as someone who likes to go out alone. It was released a couple of weeks ago alongside a music video wherein my closest male friends were all my objects & furniture, which was a fun concept that got a really good response in general (besides the special few who took it literally and thought that I wanted to combat sexism by becoming a dominant alpha female who literally used men as my objects, a prospect which they were very offended by 😉

3. My upcoming album, Paper Castles, is… my most honest body of work that I am so excited to share. A joy to create, a smooth and stress-free process with a wonderful producer, Noah Georgeson, my incredible band mates and a beautiful studio in California. Its themes are very personal to me, my body, my sexuality, my traumas. It’s felt like the best possible therapy. It’s coming out on the 8th of March while I’m on my first US tour.

I spend too much time… being a businesswoman and figuring out how the fuck I’m gonna afford to tour. As an independent artist, I’m very hands on in my career and at this stage it’s a lot of work keeping things off the ground. I love it! But it can get overwhelming at times.

Home is… currently my suitcase and other peoples’ homes. I’m about to go on the longest tour I’ve ever been on and it’s gonna be a lot of strangers’ couches & new cities every day. Once tour life is wrapped up, I’ll be hibernating in my chosen home and the place I’ve become who I am ; Berlin.

It might surprise people to learn that… before I made music on the street, I was doing dancing and fire performance for my supper around Europe as an 18-year-old traveller.

In the future… I’ll be putting on more events & parties, booking other artists & giving them a platform and eventually throwing my first festival in 2020.

…

Paper Castles is out March 8th Pre-order here.

Phoebe plays a London show at EartH in Hackney on 17 April. Details here.

Here are Phoebe’s full tour dates:
March 3 – Toronto, CAN – The Garrison
March 4 – Montreal, CAN – Bar Le Ritz PDB
March 5 – Boston, MA – Cafe 939
March 7 – Vienna, VA – Jammin’ Java
March 8 – Brooklyn, NY – Rough Trade
March 10 – Durham, NC – Motorco Music Hall
March 11 – Atlanta, GA – Vinyl AT Center Stage
March 13 – 17 – Austin, TX – SXSW
March 20 – San Diego, CA – The Casbah
March 21 – Los Angeles, CA – The Moroccan Lounge
March 23 – San Francisco, CA – Bottom of the Hill
March 24 – Portland, OR – The Old Church Concert Hall
March 25 – Seattle, WA – Barboz
April 10 – Leipzig, DE – UT Connewitz
April 11 – Dresden, DE – Polimagie Festival
April 13 – Hannover, DE – Faust
April 15 – Bristol, UK – Thekla
April 16 – Manchester, UK – Deaf Institute
April 17 – London, UK – Earth
April 18 – Nottingham, UK – Bodega
April 20 – Utrecht, ND – Tivoli
April 21 – Amsterdam, ND – Zonnehuis
April 23 – Aachen, DE – Kulturbunker
April 24 – Brussels, BE – Botanique
April 26 – Vienna, AT – Flex
April 28 – Prague, CZ – Futrum
April 29 – Erlangen, DE – E-Werk
May 1 – Friberg, DE – Jazzhaus
May 2 – Munich, DE – Ampere
May 3 – Zurich, CH – Bogen F
May 4 – Stuttgart, DE – Im Wizemann
May 6 – Cologne, DE – Kulturkirche
May 7 – Mainz, DE – Kuz
May 8 -Kiel, DE – Pumpe
May 9 – Copenhagen, DK – Vega
May 11 – Berlin, DE – Columbiahalle

Tickets and more information: AlicePhoebeLou.com.

Interview by Bobby Townsend.