Cavetown is the project of Robin Skinner, a Cambridge-based musician known for his delicate and intimately rendered brand of indie pop. Skinner first rose to success as a teenager in the mid-2010s with his popular Cavetown video channel, where he covered popular songs on ukulele and uploaded his own material. By 2018, he had established himself as a popular D.I.Y. singer/songwriter with several independently released albums to his credit, including the breakout hit Lemon Boy. In 2020, after signing with Warner/Sire, he reached the Top 20 of Billboard's Americana/folk albums chart with his full-length Sleepyhead, and followed it up with 2022's Worm Food. Cavetown continued to focus on singles over the next year, eventually issuing another EP, Little Vice.
Born in Oxford to a musical family, he moved to Cambridge at the age of eight, where his father became a fellow and the Director of Music at Cambridge University. Skinner's own musical talents were apparent at a young age, and by 2013 he'd begun writing and recording his own songs out of his bedroom studio. He launched his Cavetown video channel in 2014 and began releasing singles and albums through his Bandcamp page the following year. After the viral success of 2015's "This Is Home" single, he issued Cavetown's self-titled debut album later that year. Mixing warm, melodic bedroom pop that ran the gamut from gentle ukulele ballads to lo-fi indie rock, he returned in 2016 with his second full-length, 16/04/16. Simultaneously recording new studio songs and maintaining his popular online channel, Skinner experienced somewhat of a breakout with his next album, 2018's quirky and more expansive Lemon Boy. He quickly followed it with the "Animal Kingdom" project, releasing five split singles into 2019. The installments -- "Sandy," "Comet," "Ash," "Shells," and "Jackson" -- were later compiled onto a single mixtape. In 2020, Skinner returned with the song "Sweet Tooth. It was included on his full-length Sleepyhead, which cracked the Top 20 of Billboard's Americana/Folk Albums chart. A second EP, Man's Best Friend, arrived in June 2021. It was followed in early 2022 by the hypnotic companion singles "squares" and "y 13" as well as the poignantly romantic Beabadoobee collaboration "Fall in Love with a Girl." Led by catchy indie single "1994," Skinner's next Cavetown album, Worm Food, was released in November of that year. The album reached number 39 on the U.K. pop charts and number 16 on Billboard's Heatseekers. 2023 brought more standalone singles including the Field Medic collaboration "Glacier Meadow." Another EP, the low-key Little Vice, was released in early 2024. ~ Timothy Monger
Singer/songwriter Beabadoobee pairs delicately sung confessions with guitars that pack a wallop. When she appeared in 2017 with "Coffee" -- the first song she ever wrote -- her intimate, lo-fi sound reflected her love of indie songwriters like Elliott Smith and Kimya Dawson and fit in perfectly with bedroom pop contemporaries such as Clairo. By 2019, however, she'd stepped out of the bedroom's confines with the Space Cadet EP, an homage to the sounds of '90s Sonic Youth and Pavement that featured the track "I Wanna Be Stephen Malkmus." Even as she cranked up the volume, Beabadoobee kept her frank, vulnerable viewpoint on her 2020 debut album, Fake It Flowers, and 2022's Beatopia, which included folk, Latin, and psych rock influences. Her 2023 hit single "Glue Song" and a Laufey collaboration, "A Night to Remember," paved the way for the mature reflections of 2024's This Is How Tomorrow Moves.
Born in 2000 in the Philippines' Iloilo City, Bea Kristi and her family moved to London's Camden neighborhood when she was three. Growing up, she took years of violin lessons and listened to Pinoy music as well as '90s artists -- the Cranberries, Liz Phair, Natalie Imbruglia -- that were her mother's favorites. As a teen, she felt like an outsider. The only Filipino student at an all-girl Catholic school (where a screening of the 2007 film Juno introduced her to the music of Kimya Dawson, a major influence on her sound), she struggled with depression and discrimination, and was expelled at age 17. To cheer her up, her father bought her a second-hand guitar. Teaching herself to play using online tutorials and taking the performing name Beabadoobee from an old social media handle, she created a delicate, intimate style informed by Dawson's music as well as that of Alex G, Florist, and Karen O. Beabadoobee recorded the first song she wrote, "Coffee," in a friend's bedroom and put it online in September 2017. Though her goal was to share it with her friends, the song soon had hundreds of thousands of views.
"Coffee"'s online success piqued the interest of London's Dirty Hit label, which signed Beabadoobee early in 2018. She released a pair of EPs on the label that year: March's Lice and December's Patched Up, both of which built on her viral single's quietly confessional approach. She wanted her music to sound fuller, so she recruited bassist Eliana Sewell, drummer Louis Semlekan-Faith, and guitarist Jacob Bugden to flesh it out. Working with former Vaccines drummer Pete Robertson as producer, Beabadoobee issued the Loveworm EP in April 2019, which introduced a heavier grunge- and shoegaze-inspired attack to her melodies; an acoustic version, "Loveworm (Bedroom Sessions)," appeared in July. Again featuring production by Robertson, that October's Space Cadet EP was an even bolder homage to '90s indie and alt-rock. Beabadoobee closed out the year with a cover of Simple Minds' "Don't You Forget About Me" and nominations for the 2020 Brit Awards' Rising Star Award and the BBC's Sound of 2020 critics' poll.
Her success continued into 2020. Along with a February tour supporting labelmates the 1975, the Canadian rapper Powfu's single "Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head)," which sampled "Coffee," became a viral hit with billions of plays when it was used in a social media meme. The track entered the Top Five in several countries and earned gold and platinum certification in several others, including the U.K. and the U.S. That October, Beabadoobee released her debut album Fake It Flowers. Produced by Robertson and engineered by Joseph Rodgers, it expanded on the '90s alt-rock-goes-pop feel of Space Cadet. A Top Ten hit in the U.K., the album also charted in Australia, Japan, and the U.S., and made fans out of Harry Styles and Taylor Swift.
In May 2021, Beabadoobee returned with the Our Extended Play EP. Featuring the COVID-19 pandemic-inspired single "Last Day on Earth," she co-wrote and produced the EP with the 1975's Matty Healy and George Daniel. During quarantine, she worked on her second album with Budgen, and wrote songs about her traumatic past that also borrowed from folk, bossa nova, and hip-hop. Named for the imaginary world she created when she was seven, July 2022's introspective Beatopia featured contributions from Daniel and Healy as well as PinkPantheress and Black Country, and New Road's Georgia Ellery. Cracking the Top Five of the U.K. Album Charts, the album peaked at 32 on the Independent Albums Chart in the U.S.
Beabadoobee then toured with Halsey and Bleachers and returned with new music in February 2023: the Valentine's Day release of the single "Glue Song." The romantic tune became one of her biggest hits, reaching the Top 40 in the U.K. (where it was certified silver) and number 12 on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs Chart in the U.S. (where it was certified gold). A few months later, a remix featuring Clairo appeared. Another standalone single, "The Way Things Go," followed in July, with the Laufey collaboration "A Night to Remember" arriving in October; both songs appeared on the U.S. Hot Rock & Alternative Songs Chart. Early in 2024, Beabadoobee issued "Take a Bite," the first single from her August album This Is How Tomorrow Moves. Produced by Rick Rubin, the album found Beabadoobee entering her mid-twenties with songs about accepting her responsibility for her feelings and actions. ~ Heather Phares
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