On the first Friday in May, a procession of tattooed, pierced and mostly 20-something devotees crowded into a beers-and-burgers dive bar in Sydney’s Newtown. What was originally billed as a listening party for Ecca Vandal’s second album, Looking For People to Unfollow, had evolved into a surprise live set. Bounding onstage, Vandal was a blur of movement and brilliant blue hair, locking eyes with fans in the front row as she, alongside bassist Richie Buxton and drummer Dan Maio, tore through new material with garage-band intensity. Less than 24 hours later, the trio swapped the intimacy of Newtown for an arena where they opened for Interpol and Deftones.
Despite the ease Vandal projects in rooms of any size, the pre-show jitters never disappear. “It’s a very challenging set that we play – musically, physically and vocally,” Vandal says. “Playing music people have never heard before is also a really big challenge. But those nerves just disappear when people are showing you love.”
There’s been a lot of love coming Ecca Vandal’s way of late, thanks to a run of standout singles including Cruising to Self Soothe and Bleed But Never Die. When I meet her at a busy Newtown cafe days after the two Deftones shows, she is still processing the long road to releasing an album she fully believes in. “It’s about to come out in a few weeks, but it’s been a journey of four years,” she says.
Those four years – during which Vandal went “completely offline” – began with a period of soul-searching after her 2017 self-titled album and guest spots with artists including Hilltop Hoods, Alice Ivy and Sampa The Great. While moving freely between genres in those years, she says, “I had a lot of people saying, ‘You’ll be really successful if you just pick a lane.’” She decided instead to do what she wanted.
Vandal began working on the new album in the Melbourne apartment she shared with Richie Buxton, her partner in both music and life. Making music in a tiny apartment, however, became untenable: “I was trying to track really, really heavy vocals [and] we got knocks on our door going, ‘Can you keep it down?’”
The pair decamped to Buxton’s parents’ house down the road and set up in a garage without an internet connection. “We were like kids again, messing around with instruments, trying things out,” she says. “I didn’t have to keep anyone in touch with what we were doing.”
Those intimate recording sessions found her “the most raw I’ve ever been lyrically”. Inspired by Buxton’s beats and riffs, she channelled a tangle of her own emotions and experiences as a woman of colour against the backdrop of seismic world events such as the murder of George Floyd. At the core of the album, she says, is a “search for true connection” and “trying to fight against the faux-sincerity of the online world”.
Midway through the Newtown listening party, Vandal’s manager stepped onstage to gently inform the room that the second half would shift away from rock and into more beat-driven territory. Vandal hopes fans will engage with the album as a whole. During the writing process, she says, she and Buxton “were noticing that the world was just so obsessed with 15-second snippets. To me, that was really uninspiring. I just wanted to celebrate long form again.”
Looking For People to Unfollow is also the strongest showcase yet of Ecca Vandal’s richly textured, powerful voice, equally at home on hip-hop hooks and punk howls – a “guttural and disordered” register and “the complete opposite of, like, polish and refinement and beauty”.
The next step on Ecca Vandal’s ascent came via a DM from Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst, who invited her and her band on tour in early 2025. “Fred is the most encouraging, supportive artist I think I’ve ever come across,” Vandal says with genuine affection. “Because he invited us out, we decided that we were going to leave Australia for that tour and take the risk.” After vocal support from artists including Shirley Manson, SZA, Travis Barker and Paramore’s Hayley Williams, Vandal made her Coachella debut in April. The whirl of validation has been a lot to take in: “It’s constantly something that spins me out.”
Born in South Africa after her parents fled the Sri Lankan civil war, Vandal’s family eventually settled in Melbourne, where she recalls always being “the only Brown kid” at school: “It was a constant search for, like, where did I fit in?” She found a sense of belonging through music, going on to study jazz at the Victorian College of the Arts. While her parents enjoyed and appreciated music, she says they were perplexed by her decision to pursue it professionally. Were they perhaps concerned about her financial survival? “That’s at the core of it. Like, will I ever make money from this?” She laughs. “It’s a good question. I’m still wondering that as well.”
Her Sri Lankan identity is subtly woven through her music, including a saree she wears amid a colourful array of outfit changes in the Bleed But Never Die video: “I thought it was very beautiful, so I wanted to represent it in a way – just in front of a stack of Marshall amps.”
Right now, Vandal lives mostly out of suitcases, with an occasional base in Los Angeles. Legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk, who loved the skating inspiration behind Cruising to Self Soothe, invited her to visit his private skate ramp in San Diego. Before she left, he gave her a board signed with a line inspired by the song: “Moving up where we belong.” That same week, she received a DM from Flea asking what she was up to that afternoon. “So I had tea with Flea at three o’clock in Los Feliz,” she says, clearly awed at the unreality of it all. It’s a feeling she’ll need to get used to.
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Looking for People to Unfollow is out on 22 May.
Ecca Vandal’s songs to live by
Each month we ask our headline act to share the songs that have accompanied them through love, life, lust and death.
What was the best year for music, and what five songs prove it?
1993. Oh My God – A Tribe Called Quest; Method Man – Wu-Tang Clan; My Name is Mud – Primus; 93 ‘Til Infinity – Souls of Mischief; Serve the Servants – Nirvana
What music do you clean the house to?
Anything by Aphex Twin
What’s the song you wish you wrote?
All I Need by Radiohead
What is the last song you sang in the shower?
Singin’ in the Rain
If your life was a movie, what would the opening credits song be?
Bitch Better Have My Money
What underrated song deserves classic status?
Multi-Love by Unknown Mortal Orchestra
What is a song you loved as a teenager?
Björk’s Hyper-ballad. Still love it today
What song do you want played at your funeral?
Out of Time by Blur
What is the best song to have sex to?
Left & Right by D’Angelo
