Rick Owens Tank
9vyris Necklace
Ann Demeulemeester Muti Ring Necklace
Saint Laurent Paris Leather Pants (Heidi Era)
Vivienne Westwood Ring
Gucci Heels
“Troye Sivan followed
me the other day.
But it was in one ear,
out the other.
Three months ago,
I would’ve been like,
oh my God.
But for some reason right now,
I just can’t pay attention to it.
I gotta keep going.”
She spent almost 24 hours trying to pick a restaurant for this interview taking place between the first two dates of her GALLERIA tour. After sharing her favorite foods (sushi and pasta), the 26-year-old suggests we meet at the Jollibee in Irvine. An hour and a half later, she decides she’d rather go to the Whole Foods hot bar to “be healthy.” Or maybe we should hit In-n-Out. Eventually, we end up at an unremarkable Italian restaurant — “is this too fancy lol,” she asks when she texts me the location — in Tustin, a sterile, NPC-ass city that’s 90 minutes from Los Angeles.
We’re sitting at a candlelit wooden table in a restaurant that feels upscale to the point it’s almost clinical. Orange County is probably the most artificial and fake place in Southern California, and the outdoor mall we’re eating at is no exception; with its big-box stores and manicured landscaping, it’s a capitalist utopia.
The formality feels a little silly for the occasion, like we’re two unsupervised children on a sponsored playdate, engaging in stilted conversation over garlic bread that tastes 3D-printed, since the restaurant didn’t offer free bread for the table. “Sometimes they’ll put olive oil and then they’ll put a big thing of vinegar, like, right in the middle. And I don’t fuck with vinegar. I like when they separate it,” she says, sharing her thoughts on the integrity of bread dipping.
“There’s something really inspiring about, like, a regular person going through this system of pop music that makes them into this otherworldly being or something. I like the idea of trying to do that without the resources of a multimillion-dollar company,” she says. “It’s just always been a dream of mine when I was younger, alongside being an electronic producer. I also wanted to be a pop star like that.”
In a way, K-pop idols are, essentially, avatars. At least in the way Grey describes it, where people project thoughts, feelings, and emotions on an artist to the point that their image becomes so far removed from their actual self. There’s a deep sublimation of ego that has to happen. I wonder out loud if she feels like anybody is projecting things onto her as her fanbase multiplies by the day.
“Probably,” she replies. “Obviously not everyone knows everything, so there’s definitely a lot of projection for sure, and people can get very parasocial, online especially.”
“Some people go over the line, but I think for the most part people are keeping an amount of distance that I’m not terribly uncomfortable with,” she adds.
That distance is essential to keeping underscores’ “visage,” as she describes, separate from Grey’s true personality. It’s not until our third chat (fittingly, on Zoom) that I feel like I’m actually accessing the latter, as she becomes more comfortable and forthcoming. There are glimmers of her interiority on a song like “The Peace,” U’s most intimate cut, where she uses the textures of Imogen Heap to sing about sharing cigarettes with a crush. I also see it briefly when I talk with her in the green room after her show and she profusely apologizes for making me wait over an hour. But even for her friends, it took a while to get to that point.
Jane Remover, who was at GALLERIA’s opening night, cites a similarly complex experience of getting to know the real April. They were first internet friends, before underscores became the first act Jane ever saw live in 2021. They met in person that night, and have since become collaborators.
“I feel like she’s one of those people you’ve gotta hang out with, like, three, four times to, like, really unlock them, you know?” Jane says, calling from their tour in Chicago. “She was really shy when I first met her. And I remember, we were trying to make small talk and it didn’t really go anywhere ’cause I think neither of us knew what to say.” Soon, though, they started to click. “I felt like the more I talked to her, the more like I was peeling back the layers.”
underscores’ opening act umru says they became friends fairly fast. Before touring together, the two were close friends and, for a period of time, roommates. They met in 2017, when Grey was touring New York University as a prospective student. She asked him if he was “from SoundCloud.”
“She used to be the quietest, most reserved person, and sometimes it would take a while to figure out what she was really thinking about something,” he says on a phone call in between tour dates. “I’ve literally watched her whole character change so much since we’ve known each other. It makes me super proud.”
Grey was born in San Francisco in the “sleepy” neighborhood of Miraloma.
Growing up in the shadow of Mount Davidson, her recollections of childhood are brief and paint a picture of the isolation that founds the bedrock of her earlier records. When I ask her what she would do as a kid, she replies simply, “just kind of walked around a lot, I guess.”
While her early years were “pretty chill,” music was an exciting escape. It’s in her blood: Grey’s dad, Ryan Downe, is an audio engineer that was signed to Elton John’s record label for one album; nominated for a Grammy for his work on the madcap dance-jazz record Arepa 3000 by Los Amigos Invisibles; and is now president of a tech company that specializes in “live spatial audio technology.” He’s released music under multiple projects, including the prog-rock outfit Moth Vellum, and was able to instill a wariness in Grey about the industry. His advice: “Be careful.”
Musically, Grey rocks with her dad’s output, Moth Vellum in particular. She recalls an element of distance to those songs, as if the person singing on those sprawling, immersive tracks was not her father, but someone else entirely.
“I never heard him sing in that voice in real life. He had a voice for singing in the car that wasn’t that,” she recalls. “I was like, I have no idea who this is. This isn’t my dad. I’ve never known this person.”
Her dad’s larger connection to the industry is tenuous. In the era of the nepo baby allegations, Grey is trying to reckon with having a father who has had lived experience making music, but doesn’t reap the stereotypical benefits. He didn’t give her any connections, but her supportive, “well-off” environment primed her to succeed.
“I did have it super good growing up, and I was born into a very conducive environment to make electronic music,” Grey says. “I had, from a young age, computers and instruments just around the house and stuff,” highlighting her dad’s pivot into the tech space. “I know how much of a leg up I had to get to this point. But I do think that there’s a DIY spirit that I try and keep in there. But I think it’s more so just being stubborn.”
From kindergarten through eighth grade, she went to an all-boys religious private school, where she turned to music more seriously. She began to release music under the name underscores at around 12 years old, making Skrillex-inspired dubstep tracks and posting them to SoundCloud. She’d show early drafts to her dad, and he’d give engineering tips and mixing notes to make the music shine. “Some of them still hold up lowkey,” she says of some of the tracks from that era. “Like, the production’s kinda fire.”
Over the years, she’s amassed several different aliases. There’s Milkfish, her DJ persona; olivia offseason, her vlog account; the now-private 2ndgenbias Youtube; and numerous others she’s abandoned throughout the years, including an “anonymous project” that her fans still haven’t discovered. She’s been a member of several SoundCloud collectives, including the seemingly defunct dubstep group Nematic and the still-active proto-hyperpop supergroup six impala, which she’s a part of today. For her, these outlets offer freedom since the bigger she gets, the more red tape pops up.
“I always just admired people that have a lot of different aliases to make it feel kind of like a secret thing that people are in on,” she says. “I really like the idea of making music both presently and anonymously.”
After years of releasing loose singles, Grey released her debut record, fishmonger, in 2021. The music was set in the suburbs of New Jersey and fused dead-end ennui with titanic hooks. It was the album that put her in the conversation of modern hyperpop, a scene ballooning in popularity post-lockdown. The ensuing hype led Grey to open for 100 gecs that fall. It was the first moment she realized her career was blowing up.
“I remember feeling really on autopilot, and kind of vacant at the time,” she recalls. “I was trying not to be on autopilot. I was trying to take control again… [but] I think it was just a large influx of crazy things happening that I couldn’t really process enough, which is probably similar to what’s happening right now.”
Wallsocket, her 2023 second album, was much darker. The songs owed more to emo music than Y2K pop, and often explored unsettling themes: “Johnny johnny johnny” is about a trans woman getting groomed and sexually assaulted by a much older man, and “Shoot to kill, kill your darlings” prods at the military-industrial complex. It’s a pessimistic journey through a fake rural Michigan town, a sort of Lynchian horror in audio form.
On stage in Los Angeles the night before, Grey was dynamic. As underscores, she projects confidence, able to inspire idol-like fervor by bouncing around with an energy best compared to Sonic the Hedgehog. Her music is similarly frenetic. Off the stage, though, Grey is shy, quiet, and skittish. She fidgets when she’s deep in thought, and trails off at the ends of sentences. Her features are piercing — a dark brow and cutting brown eyes — but she often has trouble sustaining eye contact from behind her bangs. At multiple points in our conversations, I wonder if it’d be easier to communicate with her through a screen.
The GALLERIA tour comes on the heels of underscores’ new record, U, released in March. The album is glittering pop maximalism at its finest, a sublime and deeply felt blend of dubstep, trance, and hyperpop filled with boundless potential. It sounds like you swallowed the last 20 years of pop music and vomited it back up. Most importantly: it bangs.
Over the past six months, U has been the catalyst for Grey’s propulsion from underground status to the brink of the mainstream, with her deepest emotions squarely at its center. It’s thrown her into a blur of excitement and critical acclaim, amassing her placement on a slew of best album lists (including from this very publication) and a wholly devoted, rabid fanbase that dutifully produces unhinged fancams, DIY merch, and earnest deep dives into her and her music.
Grey says her dream isn’t the whole world listening to her music. But when I ask her what the goal is, she answers with a glint in her eye: “I think the goal is Madonna.” It’s a contradiction — the irony isn’t lost on me that Madonna is a world-dominating pop star.
But underscores is a project founded on contradiction. Her first two albums, fishmonger and Wallsocket, take place in lonely suburbia, despite the fact that Grey was raised in bustling San Francisco. Grey has pop star energy, but imbues everything with a scrappy, DIY ethos. She spends hours livestreaming Ableton sessions to her fans, and she edits her own concert visuals. She has even created her own iconography: her bleached headphone hair acts as her Gaultier cone bra.
She’s also constantly in a state of flux. Across our three conversations over the course of a week, her answers often conflicted with one another. When we first linked after her show in Los Angeles, she highlighted a sense of removal between herself and her artistic persona.
“Things are definitely way crazier online now and with the fans than they were last album. I think there’s more attention on me as an avatar,” she said backstage. “Which is obviously an intentional decision to try and make myself into more of a character.”
But when we chatted the next day and I asked her to elaborate on that, she walked it back. “I think it’s purely just the visage of underscores,” she said with a laugh. “Not necessarily a character.”
Maybe she’s just figuring everything out in real time. It’s understandable, considering the massive influx of pressure suddenly thrown her way. During a recent hair appointment, she was told her hair was falling out due to stress. This prompted her to tweet: “Every passing day I feel more and more like Skye riley,” referencing the pop star protagonist of the horror movie Smile 2, whose nervous tic is pulling out her own hair. (It’s worth mentioning Skye Riley dies at the end of the movie, stabbing herself on stage at her own concert.)
“A lot of crazy things are happening. A bunch of famous people are following me, and I’m not reacting to it at all,” Grey says at dinner. “Troye Sivan followed me the other day. But it was in one ear, out the other. Three months ago, I would’ve been like, ‘oh my God.’ But for some reason right now, I just can’t pay attention to it. I gotta keep going.”
Through talking to her, I get the sense that there’s three versions of the artist. There’s underscores, the persona we see dominating the stage; there’s April, what she describes as a “stage name;” and there’s Devon, the woman behind it all, a name that she’s phased out publicly but uses with her family, friends, and team. (She gives me permission to use it in this article.)
“There’s Devon, there’s April, there’s underscores. And it’s like, okay, I’ll just let them all be in flux or whatever,” she says with a mischievous smile. “ I’ve put a lot of people in a weird position doing that.”
But if fame is overwhelming to April — or Devon, for that matter — you wouldn’t be able to tell when it comes to underscores. The night before our Italian dinner, I watched Grey take the stage at the Fonda, a venue right in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. The most esoteric music enjoyers in the greater Los Angeles area had waited outside for up to 12 hours to get in, baking in the sun as the Hollywood Walk of Fame’s sounds (and smells of urine and sizzling bacon-wrapped hot dogs) kept them company.
By 9 P.M., the chain wallet-toting masses soon became a rumbling cacophony directly above the green room, where a who’s who of the underground scene milled about: Lucy Bedroque, Jane Remover, ericdoa, and Grey’s former roommate turned tour opener, umru. When underscores took the stage, the crowd erupted.
The last time I saw Grey perform live was back in 2021, when she opened up for 100 gecs at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall. Even back then, she was able to goad an audience into hysterics; I still think about her animated cover of “Hella Good” by No Doubt. The GALLERIA tour is a bigger showcase for that very skill. At the Fonda, people screamed, stomped, and crowdsurfed, whipped into an intense frenzy. Nearly every person in the audience waved custom lightsticks, modeled after the smiling water tower from the cover of fishmonger.
The lightsticks are another brainchild of Grey’s. They’re a common sight at K-pop concerts, and Grey is a K-pop superfan. She used to run the defunct K-pop YouTube channel 2ndgenbias and has always been heavily influenced by that world, from the way her music circumvents genre to the way she’s now trying to fashion herself into a larger-than-life persona.
These records are a complete vibe shift from the optimism and infinite potential of U. Rather than focusing on conceptual portrayals of fictional towns and the people in them for her third record, Grey’s songwriting turned insular. Songs like “Bodyfeeling,” about getting butterflies, and “The Peace” find her putting her own authentic experiences front and center. Its candor reflected a real-life change.
“I was, for full transparency, on antidepressants, so I was just not feeling much of anything,” she says of making Wallsocket. “Even though there’s a lot of sad songs and things that are hard to parse through, I think [U] was almost a celebration of being able to feel and understand emotions. And I think Wallsocket was just the anger and depression of not being able to feel anything.”
She doesn’t listen to her old records. Wallsocket, in particular, is hard for her to revisit. The foreboding, detached energy is at odds with her whole vibe these days; only two songs from each of her previous albums pop up on the GALLERIA setlist. She even goes so far as to call those albums “poser-y.”
“[With U,] this is the least poser-y I’ve felt going into an album so far. Just because I feel like I’ve had the most control over it,” she adds. “Being in this lane just felt a little more true to where I was at over time.”
The GALLERIA tour, which wrapped its first U.S. leg on June 26, featured some of underscores’ biggest performances since opening for 100 gecs. She used to play shows that held 100 people; her tour opener at the Fonda held 1,200. Later this year, she’ll return to Los Angeles to perform at The Novo, a venue with double that capacity. Her team is moving a bus, a trailer, and a truck from show to show, and during her Atlanta concert, she brought out the K-pop artist Yves to perform the ex-LOONA member’s remix of “Do It.” On stage, as the two sang to one another, Grey can be seen nervously grinning, as if she’s in disbelief that she’s sharing the stage with one of her icons.
At dinner, a week prior to that show, she reflected pensively on her career. “It definitely feels like the height of something,” she said. “I don’t know what my ceiling is, but it definitely feels like this could be it. I don’t know. It feels really…” She searched for the word. “Cataclysmic.” She laughed, maybe remembering that a cataclysm brings about violent, destructive upheaval and change. “That’s not the right word. Whatever.”
underscores is unsure where her career will take her in the future. “I guess when I’m, like, daydreaming about stuff, I don’t really imagine myself playing in big arenas. It’s just not something that’s really interesting to me,” she told me. “If I was given the opportunity, I’d probably take it, but I think there’s maybe a ceiling I would enforce on myself at a certain point.”
April Harper Grey might be one of the most
commanding pop stars of the moment,
“Even though there’s
a lot of sad songs
and things that are
hard to parse through,
I think [U] was almost
a celebration of being
able to feel and
understand emotions.”
“I don’t know what my ceiling is,
but it definitely feels like this could be it.
I don’t know. It feels really…
cataclysmic.”
And now I feel really
understood, which is
interesting.
That hasn’t really
happened before.
“And now I feel really
understood, which is
interesting.
That hasn’t really
happened before.”
That opportunity (or cataclysm, depending on who you talk to) came suddenly. Days after our last call, Grey and her team cancelled the back half of her GALLERIA shows so she can open for Charli xcx on her Music, Fashion, Film tour. She will be playing arenas.
As the underscores project gets more and more popular, Grey’s idea of success seems to be constantly morphing and changing with it. But the grey area — no pun intended — is what makes her celebrity interesting. Pop music is always shifting, mutating into a refraction of the audience listening to it, so it makes sense that she is doing the same, adjusting what underscores means, and represents, day by day.
The weirdest part of pop stardom is being fully knowable all the time. There’s a beauty to challenging that, even if it’s having the opposite effect.
“I was feeling kind of misunderstood before,” she said with a chuckle. “And now I feel really understood, which is interesting. That hasn’t really happened before.”
Story by Reanna Cruz
Photography by Kevin Amato
Styling by Christine Vuong
Vintage Black Sheer Off the Shoulder Top
Thistle and Spire Lace Top
Yohji Yamamoto Black Skirt
9vyris Necklace
Vintage Metallic Silver Dress
Jacquemus top
Zhilyova Skirt
Marc Jacobs Heels
underground hero
Gucci Ninja Pullover
9vyris Necklace
9vyris Fur Shawl
Zhilyova Tights
Saint Laurent Silver Heels
Devon, April, underscores
“There’s Devon,
there’s April,
there’s underscores.
And it’s like, okay, I’ll just let them all be in flux or whatever.”
Every passing day
I feel more and more
like Skye riley
“Every passing day
I feel more and more
like Skye riley.”
Additional Credits:
Art Direction by Quil Lemons
Produced by Farah Idrees
Hair by Josie Jones
Make Up by Jazzmin Oddie
Styling Assistant Kenah Jonel
Video by Krysta Hawkins
but she can’t figure out what to eat for dinner.
ANT/ANTI hat
Number (N)INE Red striped Top
A monumental first half of 2026 propelled the 26-year-old from the underground to the brink of the mainstream. She’s figuring it all out in real time.
underscores
Vintage Ballerina Tulle
Vintage White Top
Vintage Dior White Boots
underscores
underscores
underscores
underground hero
underground hero
underground hero
Story by Reanna Cruz Photography by Kevin Amato Styling by Christine Vuong
Story by Reanna Cruz
Photography by Kevin Amato
Styling by Christine Vuong
Story by Reanna Cruz
Photography by Kevin Amato
Styling by Christine Vuong
A monumental first half of 2026 propelled the 26-year-old from the underground to the brink of the mainstream. She’s figuring it all out in real time.
A monumental first half of 2026 propelled the 26-year-old from the underground to the brink of the mainstream. She’s figuring it all out in real time.
A monumental first half of 2026 propelled the 26-year-old from the underground to the brink of the mainstream. She’s figuring it all out in real time.
April Harper Grey might be one of the most commanding pop stars of the moment, but she can’t figure out what to eat for dinner.
April Harper Grey might be one of the most commanding pop stars of the moment, but she can’t figure out what to eat for dinner.
April Harper Grey might be one of the most commanding pop stars of the moment,
but she can’t figure out what to eat for dinner.
She spent almost 24 hours trying to pick a restaurant for this interview taking place between the first two dates of her GALLERIA tour. After sharing her favorite foods (sushi and pasta), the 26-year-old suggests we meet at the Jollibee in Irvine. An hour and a half later, she decides she’d rather go to the Whole Foods hot bar to “be healthy.” Or maybe we should hit In-n-Out. Eventually, we end up at an unremarkable Italian restaurant — “is this too fancy lol,” she asks when she texts me the location — in Tustin, a sterile, NPC-ass city that’s 90 minutes from Los Angeles. We’re sitting at a candlelit wooden table in a restaurant that feels upscale to the point it’s almost clinical. Orange County is probably the most artificial and fake place in Southern California, and the outdoor mall we’re eating at is no exception; with its big-box stores and manicured landscaping, it’s a capitalist utopia. The formality feels a little silly for the occasion, like we’re two unsupervised children on a sponsored playdate, engaging in stilted conversation over garlic bread that tastes 3D-printed, since the restaurant didn’t offer free bread for the table. “Sometimes they’ll put olive oil and then they’ll put a big thing of vinegar, like, right in the middle. And I don’t fuck with vinegar. I like when they separate it,” she says, sharing her thoughts on the integrity of bread dipping.
She spent almost 24 hours trying to pick a restaurant for this interview taking place between the first two dates of her GALLERIA tour. After sharing her favorite foods (sushi and pasta), the 26-year-old suggests we meet at the Jollibee in Irvine. An hour and a half later, she decides she’d rather go to the Whole Foods hot bar to “be healthy.” Or maybe we should hit In-n-Out. Eventually, we end up at an unremarkable Italian restaurant — “is this too fancy lol,” she asks when she texts me the location — in Tustin, a sterile, NPC-ass city that’s 90 minutes from Los Angeles.
We’re sitting at a candlelit wooden table in a restaurant that feels upscale to the point it’s almost clinical. Orange County is probably the most artificial and fake place in Southern California, and the outdoor mall we’re eating at is no exception; with its big-box stores and manicured landscaping, it’s a capitalist utopia.
The formality feels a little silly for the occasion, like we’re two unsupervised children on a sponsored playdate, engaging in stilted conversation over garlic bread that tastes 3D-printed, since the restaurant didn’t offer free bread for the table. “Sometimes they’ll put olive oil and then they’ll put a big thing of vinegar, like, right in the middle. And I don’t fuck with vinegar. I like when they separate it,” she says, sharing her thoughts on the integrity of bread dipping.
She spent almost 24 hours trying to pick a restaurant for this interview taking place between the first two dates of her GALLERIA tour. After sharing her favorite foods (sushi and pasta), the 26-year-old suggests we meet at the Jollibee in Irvine. An hour and a half later, she decides she’d rather go to the Whole Foods hot bar to “be healthy.” Or maybe we should hit In-n-Out. Eventually, we end up at an unremarkable Italian restaurant — “is this too fancy lol,” she asks when she texts me the location — in Tustin, a sterile, NPC-ass city that’s 90 minutes from Los Angeles.
We’re sitting at a candlelit wooden table in a restaurant that feels upscale to the point it’s almost clinical. Orange County is probably the most artificial and fake place in Southern California, and the outdoor mall we’re eating at is no exception; with its big-box stores and manicured landscaping, it’s a capitalist utopia.
The formality feels a little silly for the occasion, like we’re two unsupervised children on a sponsored playdate, engaging in stilted conversation over garlic bread that tastes 3D-printed, since the restaurant didn’t offer free bread for the table. “Sometimes they’ll put olive oil and then they’ll put a big thing of vinegar, like, right in the middle. And I don’t fuck with vinegar. I like when they separate it,” she says, sharing her thoughts on the integrity of bread dipping.
Vintage Ballerina Tulle · Vintage White Top · Vintage Dior White Boots
Vintage Ballerina Tulle · Vintage White Top · Vintage Dior White Boots
Vintage Ballerina Tulle · Vintage White Top · Vintage Dior White Boots
On stage in Los Angeles the night before, Grey was dynamic. As underscores, she projects confidence, able to inspire idol-like fervor by bouncing around with an energy best compared to Sonic the Hedgehog. Her music is similarly frenetic. Off the stage, though, Grey is shy, quiet, and skittish. She fidgets when she’s deep in thought, and trails off at the ends of sentences. Her features are piercing — a dark brow and cutting brown eyes — but she often has trouble sustaining eye contact from behind her bangs. At multiple points in our conversations, I wonder if it’d be easier to communicate with her through a screen. The GALLERIA tour comes on the heels of underscores’ new record, U, released in March. The album is glittering pop maximalism at its finest, a sublime and deeply felt blend of dubstep, trance, and hyperpop filled with boundless potential. It sounds like you swallowed the last 20 years of pop music and vomited it back up. Most importantly: it bangs. Over the past six months, U has been the catalyst for Grey’s propulsion from underground status to the brink of the mainstream, with her deepest emotions squarely at its center. It’s thrown her into a blur of excitement and critical acclaim, amassing her placement on a slew of best album lists (including from this very publication) and a wholly devoted, rabid fanbase that dutifully produces unhinged fancams, DIY merch, and earnest deep dives into her and her music. Grey says her dream isn’t the whole world listening to her music. But when I ask her what the goal is, she answers with a glint in her eye: “I think the goal is Madonna.” It’s a contradiction — the irony isn’t lost on me that Madonna is a world-dominating pop star.
On stage in Los Angeles the night before, Grey was dynamic. As underscores, she projects confidence, able to inspire idol-like fervor by bouncing around with an energy best compared to Sonic the Hedgehog. Her music is similarly frenetic. Off the stage, though, Grey is shy, quiet, and skittish. She fidgets when she’s deep in thought, and trails off at the ends of sentences. Her features are piercing — a dark brow and cutting brown eyes — but she often has trouble sustaining eye contact from behind her bangs. At multiple points in our conversations, I wonder if it’d be easier to communicate with her through a screen.
The GALLERIA tour comes on the heels of underscores’ new record, U, released in March. The album is glittering pop maximalism at its finest, a sublime and deeply felt blend of dubstep, trance, and hyperpop filled with boundless potential. It sounds like you swallowed the last 20 years of pop music and vomited it back up. Most importantly: it bangs.
Over the past six months, U has been the catalyst for Grey’s propulsion from underground status to the brink of the mainstream, with her deepest emotions squarely at its center. It’s thrown her into a blur of excitement and critical acclaim, amassing her placement on a slew of best album lists (including from this very publication) and a wholly devoted, rabid fanbase that dutifully produces unhinged fancams, DIY merch, and earnest deep dives into her and her music.
Grey says her dream isn’t the whole world listening to her music. But when I ask her what the goal is, she answers with a glint in her eye: “I think the goal is Madonna.” It’s a contradiction — the irony isn’t lost on me that Madonna is a world-dominating pop star.
On stage in Los Angeles the night before, Grey was dynamic. As underscores, she projects confidence, able to inspire idol-like fervor by bouncing around with an energy best compared to Sonic the Hedgehog. Her music is similarly frenetic. Off the stage, though, Grey is shy, quiet, and skittish. She fidgets when she’s deep in thought, and trails off at the ends of sentences. Her features are piercing — a dark brow and cutting brown eyes — but she often has trouble sustaining eye contact from behind her bangs. At multiple points in our conversations, I wonder if it’d be easier to communicate with her through a screen.
The GALLERIA tour comes on the heels of underscores’ new record, U, released in March. The album is glittering pop maximalism at its finest, a sublime and deeply felt blend of dubstep, trance, and hyperpop filled with boundless potential. It sounds like you swallowed the last 20 years of pop music and vomited it back up. Most importantly: it bangs.
Over the past six months, U has been the catalyst for Grey’s propulsion from underground status to the brink of the mainstream, with her deepest emotions squarely at its center. It’s thrown her into a blur of excitement and critical acclaim, amassing her placement on a slew of best album lists (including from this very publication) and a wholly devoted, rabid fanbase that dutifully produces unhinged fancams, DIY merch, and earnest deep dives into her and her music.
Grey says her dream isn’t the whole world listening to her music. But when I ask her what the goal is, she answers with a glint in her eye: “I think the goal is Madonna.” It’s a contradiction — the irony isn’t lost on me that Madonna is a world-dominating pop star.
“Every passing day
I feel more and more
like Skye riley.”
“Every passing day
I feel more and more
like Skye riley.”
“Every passing day
I feel more and more
like Skye riley.”
“Every passing day
I feel more and more
like Skye riley.”
But underscores is a project founded on contradiction. Her first two albums, fishmonger and Wallsocket, take place in lonely suburbia, despite the fact that Grey was raised in bustling San Francisco. Grey has pop star energy, but imbues everything with a scrappy, DIY ethos. She spends hours livestreaming Ableton sessions to her fans, and she edits her own concert visuals. She has even created her own iconography: her bleached headphone hair acts as her Gaultier cone bra.
She’s also constantly in a state of flux. Across our three conversations over the course of a week, her answers often conflicted with one another. When we first linked after her show in Los Angeles, she highlighted a sense of removal between herself and her artistic persona.
“Things are definitely way crazier online now and with the fans than they were last album. I think there’s more attention on me as an avatar,” she said backstage. “Which is obviously an intentional decision to try and make myself into more of a character.”
But when we chatted the next day and I asked her to elaborate on that, she walked it back. “I think it’s purely just the visage of underscores,” she said with a laugh. “Not necessarily a character.”
Maybe she’s just figuring everything out in real time. It’s understandable, considering the massive influx of pressure suddenly thrown her way. During a recent hair appointment, she was told her hair was falling out due to stress. This prompted her to tweet: “Every passing day I feel more and more like Skye riley,” referencing the pop star protagonist of the horror movie Smile 2, whose nervous tic is pulling out her own hair. (It’s worth mentioning Skye Riley dies at the end of the movie, stabbing herself on stage at her own concert.)
“Troye Sivan followed me the other day. But it was in one ear, out the other. Three months ago, I would’ve been like, oh my God. But for some reason right now, I just can’t pay attention to it. I gotta keep going.”
“Troye Sivan followed me the other day. But it was in one ear, out the other. Three months ago, I would’ve been like, oh my God. But for some reason right now, I just can’t pay attention to it. I gotta keep going.”
“Troye Sivan followed me the other day. But it was in one ear, out the other. Three months ago, I would’ve been like, oh my God. But for some reason right now, I just can’t pay attention to it. I gotta keep going.”
Rick Owens Tank ·9vyris Necklace · Ann Demeulemeester Muti Ring Necklace · Saint Laurent Paris Leather Pants (Heidi Era) · Vivienne Westwood Ring · Gucci Heels
Rick Owens Tank ·9vyris Necklace · Ann Demeulemeester Muti Ring Necklace
Saint Laurent Paris Leather Pants (Heidi Era) · Vivienne Westwood Ring · Gucci Heels
But underscores is a project founded on contradiction. Her first two albums, fishmonger and Wallsocket, take place in lonely suburbia, despite the fact that Grey was raised in bustling San Francisco. Grey has pop star energy, but imbues everything with a scrappy, DIY ethos. She spends hours livestreaming Ableton sessions to her fans, and she edits her own concert visuals. She has even created her own iconography: her bleached headphone hair acts as her Gaultier cone bra.
She’s also constantly in a state of flux. Across our three conversations over the course of a week, her answers often conflicted with one another. When we first linked after her show in Los Angeles, she highlighted a sense of removal between herself and her artistic persona.
“Things are definitely way crazier online now and with the fans than they were last album. I think there’s more attention on me as an avatar,” she said backstage. “Which is obviously an intentional decision to try and make myself into more of a character.”
But when we chatted the next day and I asked her to elaborate on that, she walked it back. “I think it’s purely just the visage of underscores,” she said with a laugh. “Not necessarily a character.”
Maybe she’s just figuring everything out in real time. It’s understandable, considering the massive influx of pressure suddenly thrown her way. During a recent hair appointment, she was told her hair was falling out due to stress. This prompted her to tweet: “Every passing day I feel more and more like Skye riley,” referencing the pop star protagonist of the horror movie Smile 2, whose nervous tic is pulling out her own hair. (It’s worth mentioning Skye Riley dies at the end of the movie, stabbing herself on stage at her own concert.)
Vintage Black Sheer Off the Shoulder Top · Thistle and Spire Lace Top · Yohji Yamamoto Black Skirt
Vintage Black Sheer Off the Shoulder Top · Thistle and Spire Lace Top · Yohji Yamamoto Black Skirt
Vintage Black Sheer Off the Shoulder Top · Thistle and Spire Lace Top · Yohji Yamamoto Black Skirt
“A lot of crazy things are happening. A bunch of famous people are following me, and I’m not reacting to it at all,” Grey says at dinner. “Troye Sivan followed me the other day. But it was in one ear, out the other. Three months ago, I would’ve been like, ‘oh my God.’ But for some reason right now, I just can’t pay attention to it. I gotta keep going.”
Through talking to her, I get the sense that there’s three versions of the artist. There’s underscores, the persona we see dominating the stage; there’s April, what she describes as a “stage name;” and there’s Devon, the woman behind it all, a name that she’s phased out publicly but uses with her family, friends, and team. (She gives me permission to use it in this article.)
“There’s Devon, there’s April, there’s underscores. And it’s like, okay, I’ll just let them all be in flux or whatever,” she says with a mischievous smile. “ I’ve put a lot of people in a weird position doing that.”
But if fame is overwhelming to April — or Devon, for that matter — you wouldn’t be able to tell when it comes to underscores. The night before our Italian dinner, I watched Grey take the stage at the Fonda, a venue right in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. The most esoteric music enjoyers in the greater Los Angeles area had waited outside for up to 12 hours to get in, baking in the sun as the Hollywood Walk of Fame’s sounds (and smells of urine and sizzling bacon-wrapped hot dogs) kept them company.
By 9 P.M., the chain wallet-toting masses soon became a rumbling cacophony directly above the green room, where a who’s who of the underground scene milled about: Lucy Bedroque, Jane Remover, ericdoa, and Grey’s former roommate turned tour opener, umru. When underscores took the stage, the crowd erupted.
The last time I saw Grey perform live was back in 2021, when she opened up for 100 gecs at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall. Even back then, she was able to goad an audience into hysterics; I still think about her animated cover of “Hella Good” by No Doubt. The GALLERIA tour is a bigger showcase for that very skill. At the Fonda, people screamed, stomped, and crowdsurfed, whipped into an intense frenzy. Nearly every person in the audience waved custom lightsticks, modeled after the smiling water tower from the cover of fishmonger.
The lightsticks are another brainchild of Grey’s. They’re a common sight at K-pop concerts, and Grey is a K-pop superfan. She used to run the defunct K-pop YouTube channel 2ndgenbias and has always been heavily influenced by that world, from the way her music circumvents genre to the way she’s now trying to fashion herself into a larger-than-life persona.
“There’s Devon,
there’s April,
there’s underscores.
And it’s like, okay, I’ll just let them all be in flux or whatever.”
“There’s Devon,
there’s April,
there’s underscores.
And it’s like, okay, I’ll just let them all be in flux or whatever.”
“There’s Devon,
there’s April,
there’s underscores.
And it’s like, okay, I’ll just let them all be in flux or whatever.”
“There’s something really inspiring about, like, a regular person going through this system of pop music that makes them into this otherworldly being or something. I like the idea of trying to do that without the resources of a multimillion-dollar company,” she says. “It’s just always been a dream of mine when I was younger, alongside being an electronic producer. I also wanted to be a pop star like that.” In a way, K-pop idols are, essentially, avatars. At least in the way Grey describes it, where people project thoughts, feelings, and emotions on an artist to the point that their image becomes so far removed from their actual self. There’s a deep sublimation of ego that has to happen. I wonder out loud if she feels like anybody is projecting things onto her as her fanbase multiplies by the day. “Probably,” she replies. “Obviously not everyone knows everything, so there’s definitely a lot of projection for sure, and people can get very parasocial, online especially.” “Some people go over the line, but I think for the most part people are keeping an amount of distance that I’m not terribly uncomfortable with,” she adds. That distance is essential to keeping underscores’ “visage,” as she describes, separate from Grey’s true personality. It’s not until our third chat (fittingly, on Zoom) that I feel like I’m actually accessing the latter, as she becomes more comfortable and forthcoming. There are glimmers of her interiority on a song like “The Peace,” U’s most intimate cut, where she uses the textures of Imogen Heap to sing about sharing cigarettes with a crush. I also see it briefly when I talk with her in the green room after her show and she profusely apologizes for making me wait over an hour. But even for her friends, it took a while to get to that point. Jane Remover, who was at GALLERIA’s opening night, cites a similarly complex experience of getting to know the real April. They were first internet friends, before underscores became the first act Jane ever saw live in 2021. They met in person that night, and have since become collaborators. “I feel like she’s one of those people you’ve gotta hang out with, like, three, four times to, like, really unlock them, you know?” Jane says, calling from their tour in Chicago. “She was really shy when I first met her. And I remember, we were trying to make small talk and it didn’t really go anywhere ’cause I think neither of us knew what to say.” Soon, though, they started to click. “I felt like the more I talked to her, the more like I was peeling back the layers.” underscores’ opening act umru says they became friends fairly fast. Before touring together, the two were close friends and, for a period of time, roommates. They met in 2017, when Grey was touring New York University as a prospective student. She asked him if he was “from SoundCloud.” “She used to be the quietest, most reserved person, and sometimes it would take a while to figure out what she was really thinking about something,” he says on a phone call in between tour dates. “I’ve literally watched her whole character change so much since we’ve known each other. It makes me super proud.”
“There’s something really inspiring about, like, a regular person going through this system of pop music that makes them into this otherworldly being or something. I like the idea of trying to do that without the resources of a multimillion-dollar company,” she says. “It’s just always been a dream of mine when I was younger, alongside being an electronic producer. I also wanted to be a pop star like that.”
In a way, K-pop idols are, essentially, avatars. At least in the way Grey describes it, where people project thoughts, feelings, and emotions on an artist to the point that their image becomes so far removed from their actual self. There’s a deep sublimation of ego that has to happen. I wonder out loud if she feels like anybody is projecting things onto her as her fanbase multiplies by the day.
“Probably,” she replies. “Obviously not everyone knows everything, so there’s definitely a lot of projection for sure, and people can get very parasocial, online especially.”
“Some people go over the line, but I think for the most part people are keeping an amount of distance that I’m not terribly uncomfortable with,” she adds.
That distance is essential to keeping underscores’ “visage,” as she describes, separate from Grey’s true personality. It’s not until our third chat (fittingly, on Zoom) that I feel like I’m actually accessing the latter, as she becomes more comfortable and forthcoming. There are glimmers of her interiority on a song like “The Peace,” U’s most intimate cut, where she uses the textures of Imogen Heap to sing about sharing cigarettes with a crush. I also see it briefly when I talk with her in the green room after her show and she profusely apologizes for making me wait over an hour. But even for her friends, it took a while to get to that point.
Jane Remover, who was at GALLERIA’s opening night, cites a similarly complex experience of getting to know the real April. They were first internet friends, before underscores became the first act Jane ever saw live in 2021. They met in person that night, and have since become collaborators.
“I feel like she’s one of those people you’ve gotta hang out with, like, three, four times to, like, really unlock them, you know?” Jane says, calling from their tour in Chicago. “She was really shy when I first met her. And I remember, we were trying to make small talk and it didn’t really go anywhere ’cause I think neither of us knew what to say.” Soon, though, they started to click. “I felt like the more I talked to her, the more like I was peeling back the layers.”
underscores’ opening act umru says they became friends fairly fast. Before touring together, the two were close friends and, for a period of time, roommates. They met in 2017, when Grey was touring New York University as a prospective student. She asked him if he was “from SoundCloud.”
“She used to be the quietest, most reserved person, and sometimes it would take a while to figure out what she was really thinking about something,” he says on a phone call in between tour dates. “I’ve literally watched her whole character change so much since we’ve known each other. It makes me super proud.”
“There’s something really inspiring about, like, a regular person going through this system of pop music that makes them into this otherworldly being or something. I like the idea of trying to do that without the resources of a multimillion-dollar company,” she says. “It’s just always been a dream of mine when I was younger, alongside being an electronic producer. I also wanted to be a pop star like that.”
In a way, K-pop idols are, essentially, avatars. At least in the way Grey describes it, where people project thoughts, feelings, and emotions on an artist to the point that their image becomes so far removed from their actual self. There’s a deep sublimation of ego that has to happen. I wonder out loud if she feels like anybody is projecting things onto her as her fanbase multiplies by the day.
“Probably,” she replies. “Obviously not everyone knows everything, so there’s definitely a lot of projection for sure, and people can get very parasocial, online especially.”
“Some people go over the line, but I think for the most part people are keeping an amount of distance that I’m not terribly uncomfortable with,” she adds.
That distance is essential to keeping underscores’ “visage,” as she describes, separate from Grey’s true personality. It’s not until our third chat (fittingly, on Zoom) that I feel like I’m actually accessing the latter, as she becomes more comfortable and forthcoming. There are glimmers of her interiority on a song like “The Peace,” U’s most intimate cut, where she uses the textures of Imogen Heap to sing about sharing cigarettes with a crush. I also see it briefly when I talk with her in the green room after her show and she profusely apologizes for making me wait over an hour. But even for her friends, it took a while to get to that point.
Jane Remover, who was at GALLERIA’s opening night, cites a similarly complex experience of getting to know the real April. They were first internet friends, before underscores became the first act Jane ever saw live in 2021. They met in person that night, and have since become collaborators.
“I feel like she’s one of those people you’ve gotta hang out with, like, three, four times to, like, really unlock them, you know?” Jane says, calling from their tour in Chicago. “She was really shy when I first met her. And I remember, we were trying to make small talk and it didn’t really go anywhere ’cause I think neither of us knew what to say.” Soon, though, they started to click. “I felt like the more I talked to her, the more like I was peeling back the layers.”
underscores’ opening act umru says they became friends fairly fast. Before touring together, the two were close friends and, for a period of time, roommates. They met in 2017, when Grey was touring New York University as a prospective student.
She asked him if he was “from SoundCloud.” “She used to be the quietest, most reserved person, and sometimes it would take a while to figure out what she was really thinking about something,” he says on a phone call in between tour dates. “I’ve literally watched her whole character change so much since we’ve known each other. It makes me super proud.”
Jacquemus top · Zhilyova skirt · Marc Jacobs heels
Jacquemus top · Zhilyova skirt · Marc Jacobs heels
“Even though there’s a lot of sad songs and things that are hard to parse through, I think [U] was almost a celebration of being able to feel and understand emotions.”
“Even though there’s a lot of sad songs and things that are hard to parse through,
I think [U]
was almost
a celebration of being able to feel and understand emotions.”
“Even though there’s a lot of sad songs and things that are hard to parse through, I think [U] was almost a celebration of being able to feel and understand emotions.”
Grey was born in San Francisco in the “sleepy” neighborhood of Miraloma. Growing up in the shadow of Mount Davidson, her recollections of childhood are brief and paint a picture of the isolation that founds the bedrock of her earlier records. When I ask her what she would do as a kid, she replies simply, “just kind of walked around a lot, I guess.” While her early years were “pretty chill,” music was an exciting escape. It’s in her blood: Grey’s dad, Ryan Downe, is an audio engineer that was signed to Elton John’s record label for one album; nominated for a Grammy for his work on the madcap dance-jazz record Arepa 3000 by Los Amigos Invisibles; and is now president of a tech company that specializes in “live spatial audio technology.” He’s released music under multiple projects, including the prog-rock outfit Moth Vellum, and was able to instill a wariness in Grey about the industry. His advice: “Be careful.” Musically, Grey rocks with her dad’s output, Moth Vellum in particular. She recalls an element of distance to those songs, as if the person singing on those sprawling, immersive tracks was not her father, but someone else entirely. “I never heard him sing in that voice in real life. He had a voice for singing in the car that wasn’t that,” she recalls. “I was like, I have no idea who this is. This isn’t my dad. I’ve never known this person.” Her dad’s larger connection to the industry is tenuous. In the era of the nepo baby allegations, Grey is trying to reckon with having a father who has had lived experience making music, but doesn’t reap the stereotypical benefits. He didn’t give her any connections, but her supportive, “well-off” environment primed her to succeed. “I did have it super good growing up, and I was born into a very conducive environment to make electronic music,” Grey says. “I had, from a young age, computers and instruments just around the house and stuff,” highlighting her dad’s pivot into the tech space. “I know how much of a leg up I had to get to this point. But I do think that there’s a DIY spirit that I try and keep in there. But I think it’s more so just being stubborn.”
Grey was born in San Francisco in the “sleepy” neighborhood of Miraloma.
Growing up in the shadow of Mount Davidson, her recollections of childhood are brief and paint a picture of the isolation that founds the bedrock of her earlier records. When I ask her what she would do as a kid, she replies simply, “just kind of walked around a lot, I guess.”
While her early years were “pretty chill,” music was an exciting escape. It’s in her blood: Grey’s dad, Ryan Downe, is an audio engineer that was signed to Elton John’s record label for one album; nominated for a Grammy for his work on the madcap dance-jazz record Arepa 3000 by Los Amigos Invisibles; and is now president of a tech company that specializes in “live spatial audio technology.” He’s released music under multiple projects, including the prog-rock outfit Moth Vellum, and was able to instill a wariness in Grey about the industry. His advice: “Be careful.”
Musically, Grey rocks with her dad’s output, Moth Vellum in particular. She recalls an element of distance to those songs, as if the person singing on those sprawling, immersive tracks was not her father, but someone else entirely.
“I never heard him sing in that voice in real life. He had a voice for singing in the car that wasn’t that,” she recalls. “I was like, I have no idea who this is. This isn’t my dad. I’ve never known this person.”
Her dad’s larger connection to the industry is tenuous. In the era of the nepo baby allegations, Grey is trying to reckon with having a father who has had lived experience making music, but doesn’t reap the stereotypical benefits. He didn’t give her any connections, but her supportive, “well-off” environment primed her to succeed.
“I did have it super good growing up, and I was born into a very conducive environment to make electronic music,” Grey says. “I had, from a young age, computers and instruments just around the house and stuff,” highlighting her dad’s pivot into the tech space. “I know how much of a leg up I had to get to this point. But I do think that there’s a DIY spirit that I try and keep in there. But I think it’s more so just being stubborn.”
Grey was born in San Francisco in the “sleepy” neighborhood of Miraloma.
Growing up in the shadow of Mount Davidson, her recollections of childhood are brief and paint a picture of the isolation that founds the bedrock of her earlier records. When I ask her what she would do as a kid, she replies simply, “just kind of walked around a lot, I guess.”
While her early years were “pretty chill,” music was an exciting escape. It’s in her blood: Grey’s dad, Ryan Downe, is an audio engineer that was signed to Elton John’s record label for one album; nominated for a Grammy for his work on the madcap dance-jazz record Arepa 3000 by Los Amigos Invisibles; and is now president of a tech company that specializes in “live spatial audio technology.” He’s released music under multiple projects, including the prog-rock outfit Moth Vellum, and was able to instill a wariness in Grey about the industry. His advice: “Be careful.”
Musically, Grey rocks with her dad’s output, Moth Vellum in particular. She recalls an element of distance to those songs, as if the person singing on those sprawling, immersive tracks was not her father, but someone else entirely.
“I never heard him sing in that voice in real life. He had a voice for singing in the car that wasn’t that,” she recalls. “I was like, I have no idea who this is. This isn’t my dad. I’ve never known this person.”
Her dad’s larger connection to the industry is tenuous. In the era of the nepo baby allegations, Grey is trying to reckon with having a father who has had lived experience making music, but doesn’t reap the stereotypical benefits. He didn’t give her any connections, but her supportive, “well-off” environment primed her to succeed.
“I did have it super good growing up, and I was born into a very conducive environment to make electronic music,” Grey says. “I had, from a young age, computers and instruments just around the house and stuff,” highlighting her dad’s pivot into the tech space. “I know how much of a leg up I had to get to this point. But I do think that there’s a DIY spirit that I try and keep in there. But I think it’s more so just being stubborn.”
From kindergarten through eighth grade, she went to an all-boys religious private school, where she turned to music more seriously. She began to release music under the name underscores at around 12 years old, making Skrillex-inspired dubstep tracks and posting them to SoundCloud. She’d show early drafts to her dad, and he’d give engineering tips and mixing notes to make the music shine. “Some of them still hold up lowkey,” she says of some of the tracks from that era. “Like, the production’s kinda fire.” Over the years, she’s amassed several different aliases. There’s Milkfish, her DJ persona; olivia offseason, her vlog account; the now-private 2ndgenbias Youtube; and numerous others she’s abandoned throughout the years, including an “anonymous project” that her fans still haven’t discovered. She’s been a member of several SoundCloud collectives, including the seemingly defunct dubstep group Nematic and the still-active proto-hyperpop supergroup six impala, which she’s a part of today. For her, these outlets offer freedom since the bigger she gets, the more red tape pops up. “I always just admired people that have a lot of different aliases to make it feel kind of like a secret thing that people are in on,” she says. “I really like the idea of making music both presently and anonymously.” After years of releasing loose singles, Grey released her debut record, fishmonger, in 2021. The music was set in the suburbs of New Jersey and fused dead-end ennui with titanic hooks. It was the album that put her in the conversation of modern hyperpop, a scene ballooning in popularity post-lockdown. The ensuing hype led Grey to open for 100 gecs that fall. It was the first moment she realized her career was blowing up. “I remember feeling really on autopilot, and kind of vacant at the time,” she recalls. “I was trying not to be on autopilot. I was trying to take control again… [but] I think it was just a large influx of crazy things happening that I couldn’t really process enough, which is probably similar to what’s happening right now.” Wallsocket, her 2023 second album, was much darker. The songs owed more to emo music than Y2K pop, and often explored unsettling themes: “Johnny johnny johnny” is about a trans woman getting groomed and sexually assaulted by a much older man, and “Shoot to kill, kill your darlings” prods at the military-industrial complex. It’s a pessimistic journey through a fake rural Michigan town, a sort of Lynchian horror in audio form.
From kindergarten through eighth grade, she went to an all-boys religious private school, where she turned to music more seriously. She began to release music under the name underscores at around 12 years old, making Skrillex-inspired dubstep tracks and posting them to SoundCloud. She’d show early drafts to her dad, and he’d give engineering tips and mixing notes to make the music shine. “Some of them still hold up lowkey,” she says of some of the tracks from that era. “Like, the production’s kinda fire.”
Over the years, she’s amassed several different aliases. There’s Milkfish, her DJ persona; olivia offseason, her vlog account; the now-private 2ndgenbias Youtube; and numerous others she’s abandoned throughout the years, including an “anonymous project” that her fans still haven’t discovered. She’s been a member of several SoundCloud collectives, including the seemingly defunct dubstep group Nematic and the still-active proto-hyperpop supergroup six impala, which she’s a part of today. For her, these outlets offer freedom since the bigger she gets, the more red tape pops up.
“I always just admired people that have a lot of different aliases to make it feel kind of like a secret thing that people are in on,” she says. “I really like the idea of making music both presently and anonymously.”
After years of releasing loose singles, Grey released her debut record, fishmonger, in 2021. The music was set in the suburbs of New Jersey and fused dead-end ennui with titanic hooks. It was the album that put her in the conversation of modern hyperpop, a scene ballooning in popularity post-lockdown. The ensuing hype led Grey to open for 100 gecs that fall. It was the first moment she realized her career was blowing up.
“I remember feeling really on autopilot, and kind of vacant at the time,” she recalls. “I was trying not to be on autopilot. I was trying to take control again… [but] I think it was just a large influx of crazy things happening that I couldn’t really process enough, which is probably similar to what’s happening right now.”
From kindergarten through eighth grade, she went to an all-boys religious private school, where she turned to music more seriously. She began to release music under the name underscores at around 12 years old, making Skrillex-inspired dubstep tracks and posting them to SoundCloud. She’d show early drafts to her dad, and he’d give engineering tips and mixing notes to make the music shine. “Some of them still hold up lowkey,” she says of some of the tracks from that era. “Like, the production’s kinda fire.”
Over the years, she’s amassed several different aliases. There’s Milkfish, her DJ persona; olivia offseason, her vlog account; the now-private 2ndgenbias Youtube; and numerous others she’s abandoned throughout the years, including an “anonymous project” that her fans still haven’t discovered. She’s been a member of several SoundCloud collectives, including the seemingly defunct dubstep group Nematic and the still-active proto-hyperpop supergroup six impala, which she’s a part of today. For her, these outlets offer freedom since the bigger she gets, the more red tape pops up.
“I always just admired people that have a lot of different aliases to make it feel kind of like a secret thing that people are in on,” she says. “I really like the idea of making music both presently and anonymously.”
After years of releasing loose singles, Grey released her debut record, fishmonger, in 2021. The music was set in the suburbs of New Jersey and fused dead-end ennui with titanic hooks. It was the album that put her in the conversation of modern hyperpop, a scene ballooning in popularity post-lockdown. The ensuing hype led Grey to open for 100 gecs that fall. It was the first moment she realized her career was blowing up.
“I remember feeling really on autopilot, and kind of vacant at the time,” she recalls. “I was trying not to be on autopilot. I was trying to take control again… [but] I think it was just a large influx of crazy things happening that I couldn’t really process enough, which is probably similar to what’s happening right now.”
“I don’t know what my ceiling is,
but it definitely feels like this could be it.
I don’t know. It feels really…
cataclysmic.”
“I don’t know what my ceiling is,
but it definitely feels like this could be it.
I don’t know. It feels really…
cataclysmic.”
“I don’t know what my ceiling is,
but it definitely feels like this could be it.
I don’t know. It feels really…
cataclysmic.”
“I don’t know what my ceiling is,
but it definitely feels like this could be it.
I don’t know. It feels really…
cataclysmic.”
“I don’t know what my ceiling is,
but it definitely feels like this could be it.
I don’t know. It feels really…
cataclysmic.”
“I don’t know what my ceiling is,
but it definitely feels like this could be it.
I don’t know. It feels really…
cataclysmic.”
Gucci Ninja Pullover · 9vyris Necklace · 9vyris Fur Shawl · Zhilyova Tights · Saint Laurent Silver Heels
Gucci Ninja Pullover · 9vyris Necklace · 9vyris Fur Shawl · Zhilyova Tights · Saint Laurent Silver Heels
Gucci Ninja Pullover · 9vyris Necklace · 9vyris Fur Shawl · Zhilyova Tights · Saint Laurent Silver Heels
ANT/ANTI hat · Number (N)INE Red striped top
ANT/ANTI hat · Number (N)INE Red striped top
ANT/ANTI hat · Number (N)INE Red striped top
These records are a complete vibe shift from the optimism and infinite potential of U. Rather than focusing on conceptual portrayals of fictional towns and the people in them for her third record, Grey’s songwriting turned insular. Songs like “Bodyfeeling,” about getting butterflies, and “The Peace” find her putting her own authentic experiences front and center. Its candor reflected a real-life change. “I was, for full transparency, on antidepressants, so I was just not feeling much of anything,” she says of making Wallsocket. “Even though there’s a lot of sad songs and things that are hard to parse through, I think [U] was almost a celebration of being able to feel and understand emotions. And I think Wallsocket was just the anger and depression of not being able to feel anything.” She doesn’t listen to her old records. Wallsocket, in particular, is hard for her to revisit. The foreboding, detached energy is at odds with her whole vibe these days; only two songs from each of her previous albums pop up on the GALLERIA setlist. She even goes so far as to call those albums “poser-y.” “[With U,] this is the least poser-y I’ve felt going into an album so far. Just because I feel like I’ve had the most control over it,” she adds. “Being in this lane just felt a little more true to where I was at over time.”
These records are a complete vibe shift from the optimism and infinite potential of U. Rather than focusing on conceptual portrayals of fictional towns and the people in them for her third record, Grey’s songwriting turned insular. Songs like “Bodyfeeling,” about getting butterflies, and “The Peace” find her putting her own authentic experiences front and center. Its candor reflected a real-life change.
“I was, for full transparency, on antidepressants, so I was just not feeling much of anything,” she says of making Wallsocket. “Even though there’s a lot of sad songs and things that are hard to parse through, I think [U] was almost a celebration of being able to feel and understand emotions. And I think Wallsocket was just the anger and depression of not being able to feel anything.”
She doesn’t listen to her old records. Wallsocket, in particular, is hard for her to revisit. The foreboding, detached energy is at odds with her whole vibe these days; only two songs from each of her previous albums pop up on the GALLERIA setlist. She even goes so far as to call those albums “poser-y.”
“[With U,] this is the least poser-y I’ve felt going into an album so far. Just because I feel like I’ve had the most control over it,” she adds. “Being in this lane just felt a little more true to where I was at over time.”
These records are a complete vibe shift from the optimism and infinite potential of U. Rather than focusing on conceptual portrayals of fictional towns and the people in them for her third record, Grey’s songwriting turned insular. Songs like “Bodyfeeling,” about getting butterflies, and “The Peace” find her putting her own authentic experiences front and center. Its candor reflected a real-life change.
“I was, for full transparency, on antidepressants, so I was just not feeling much of anything,” she says of making Wallsocket. “Even though there’s a lot of sad songs and things that are hard to parse through, I think [U] was almost a celebration of being able to feel and understand emotions. And I think Wallsocket was just the anger and depression of not being able to feel anything.”
She doesn’t listen to her old records. Wallsocket, in particular, is hard for her to revisit. The foreboding, detached energy is at odds with her whole vibe these days; only two songs from each of her previous albums pop up on the GALLERIA setlist. She even goes so far as to call those albums “poser-y.”
“[With U,] this is the least poser-y I’ve felt going into an album so far. Just because I feel like I’ve had the most control over it,” she adds. “Being in this lane just felt a little more true to where I was at over time.”
The GALLERIA tour, which wrapped its first U.S. leg on June 26, featured some of underscores’ biggest performances since opening for 100 gecs. She used to play shows that held 100 people; her tour opener at the Fonda held 1,200. Later this year, she’ll return to Los Angeles to perform at The Novo, a venue with double that capacity. Her team is moving a bus, a trailer, and a truck from show to show, and during her Atlanta concert, she brought out the K-pop artist Yves to perform the ex-LOONA member’s remix of “Do It.” On stage, as the two sang to one another, Grey can be seen nervously grinning, as if she’s in disbelief that she’s sharing the stage with one of her icons. At dinner, a week prior to that show, she reflected pensively on her career. “It definitely feels like the height of something,” she said. “I don’t know what my ceiling is, but it definitely feels like this could be it. I don’t know. It feels really…” She searched for the word. “Cataclysmic.” She laughed, maybe remembering that a cataclysm brings about violent, destructive upheaval and change. “That’s not the right word. Whatever.” underscores is unsure where her career will take her in the future. “I guess when I’m, like, daydreaming about stuff, I don’t really imagine myself playing in big arenas. It’s just not something that’s really interesting to me,” she told me. “If I was given the opportunity, I’d probably take it, but I think there’s maybe a ceiling I would enforce on myself at a certain point.”
The GALLERIA tour, which wrapped its first U.S. leg on June 26, featured some of underscores’ biggest performances since opening for 100 gecs. She used to play shows that held 100 people; her tour opener at the Fonda held 1,200. Later this year, she’ll return to Los Angeles to perform at The Novo, a venue with double that capacity. Her team is moving a bus, a trailer, and a truck from show to show, and during her Atlanta concert, she brought out the K-pop artist Yves to perform the ex-LOONA member’s remix of “Do It.” On stage, as the two sang to one another, Grey can be seen nervously grinning, as if she’s in disbelief that she’s sharing the stage with one of her icons.
At dinner, a week prior to that show, she reflected pensively on her career. “It definitely feels like the height of something,” she said. “I don’t know what my ceiling is, but it definitely feels like this could be it. I don’t know. It feels really…” She searched for the word. “Cataclysmic.” She laughed, maybe remembering that a cataclysm brings about violent, destructive upheaval and change. “That’s not the right word. Whatever.”
underscores is unsure where her career will take her in the future. “I guess when I’m, like, daydreaming about stuff, I don’t really imagine myself playing in big arenas. It’s just not something that’s really interesting to me,” she told me. “If I was given the opportunity, I’d probably take it, but I think there’s maybe a ceiling I would enforce on myself at a certain point.”
The GALLERIA tour, which wrapped its first U.S. leg on June 26, featured some of underscores’ biggest performances since opening for 100 gecs. She used to play shows that held 100 people; her tour opener at the Fonda held 1,200. Later this year, she’ll return to Los Angeles to perform at The Novo, a venue with double that capacity. Her team is moving a bus, a trailer, and a truck from show to show, and during her Atlanta concert, she brought out the K-pop artist Yves to perform the ex-LOONA member’s remix of “Do It.” On stage, as the two sang to one another, Grey can be seen nervously grinning, as if she’s in disbelief that she’s sharing the stage with one of her icons.
At dinner, a week prior to that show, she reflected pensively on her career. “It definitely feels like the height of something,” she said. “I don’t know what my ceiling is, but it definitely feels like this could be it. I don’t know. It feels really…” She searched for the word. “Cataclysmic.” She laughed, maybe remembering that a cataclysm brings about violent, destructive upheaval and change. “That’s not the right word. Whatever.”
underscores is unsure where her career will take her in the future. “I guess when I’m, like, daydreaming about stuff, I don’t really imagine myself playing in big arenas. It’s just not something that’s really interesting to me,” she told me. “If I was given the opportunity, I’d probably take it, but I think there’s maybe a ceiling I would enforce on myself at a certain point.”
“And now I feel really understood, which is interesting. That hasn’t really happened before.”
“And now I feel really understood, which is interesting. That hasn’t really happened before.”
9vyris Necklace · Vintage Metallic Silver Dress
That opportunity (or cataclysm, depending on who you talk to) came suddenly. Days after our last call, Grey and her team cancelled the back half of her GALLERIA shows so she can open for Charli xcx on her Music, Fashion, Film tour. She will be playing arenas. As the underscores project gets more and more popular, Grey’s idea of success seems to be constantly morphing and changing with it. But the grey area — no pun intended — is what makes her celebrity interesting. Pop music is always shifting, mutating into a refraction of the audience listening to it, so it makes sense that she is doing the same, adjusting what underscores means, and represents, day by day. The weirdest part of pop stardom is being fully knowable all the time. There’s a beauty to challenging that, even if it’s having the opposite effect. “I was feeling kind of misunderstood before,” she said with a chuckle. “And now I feel really understood, which is interesting. That hasn’t really happened before.”
That opportunity (or cataclysm, depending on who you talk to) came suddenly. Days after our last call, Grey and her team cancelled the back half of her GALLERIA shows so she can open for Charli xcx on her Music, Fashion, Film tour. She will be playing arenas.
As the underscores project gets more and more popular, Grey’s idea of success seems to be constantly morphing and changing with it. But the grey area — no pun intended — is what makes her celebrity interesting. Pop music is always shifting, mutating into a refraction of the audience listening to it, so it makes sense that she is doing the same, adjusting what underscores means, and represents, day by day.
The weirdest part of pop stardom is being fully knowable all the time. There’s a beauty to challenging that, even if it’s having the opposite effect.
“I was feeling kind of misunderstood before,” she said with a chuckle. “And now I feel really understood, which is interesting. That hasn’t really happened before.”
That opportunity (or cataclysm, depending on who you talk to) came suddenly. Days after our last call, Grey and her team cancelled the back half of her GALLERIA shows so she can open for Charli xcx on her Music, Fashion, Film tour. She will be playing arenas.
As the underscores project gets more and more popular, Grey’s idea of success seems to be constantly morphing and changing with it. But the grey area — no pun intended — is what makes her celebrity interesting. Pop music is always shifting, mutating into a refraction of the audience listening to it, so it makes sense that she is doing the same, adjusting what underscores means, and represents, day by day.
The weirdest part of pop stardom is being fully knowable all the time. There’s a beauty to challenging that, even if it’s having the opposite effect.
“I was feeling kind of misunderstood before,” she said with a chuckle. “And now I feel really understood, which is interesting. That hasn’t really happened before.”
Additional Credtis: Photo direction by Quil Lemons. Produced by Farah Idrees. Hair by Josie Jones. Make up by Jazzmin Oddie. Styling assistant: Kenah Jonel. Video by Krysta Hawkins BACK TO THEFADER.COM
Additional Credits:
Art Direction by Quil Lemons
Produced by Farah Idrees
Hair by Josie Jones
Make Up by Jazzmin Oddie
Styling Assistant Kenah Jonel
Video by Krysta Hawkins
Additional Credits:
Art Direction by Quil Lemons
Produced by Farah Idrees
Hair by Josie Jones
Make Up by Jazzmin Oddie
Styling Assistant Kenah Jonel
Video by Krysta Hawkins
9vyris Necklace · Vintage Metallic Silver Dress
9vyris Necklace · Vintage Metallic Silver Dress
“A lot of crazy things are happening. A bunch of famous people are following me, and I’m not reacting to it at all,” Grey says at dinner. “Troye Sivan followed me the other day. But it was in one ear, out the other. Three months ago, I would’ve been like, ‘oh my God.’ But for some reason right now, I just can’t pay attention to it. I gotta keep going.”
Through talking to her, I get the sense that there’s three versions of the artist. There’s underscores, the persona we see dominating the stage; there’s April, what she describes as a “stage name;” and there’s Devon, the woman behind it all, a name that she’s phased out publicly but uses with her family, friends, and team. (She gives me permission to use it in this article.)
“There’s Devon, there’s April, there’s underscores. And it’s like, okay, I’ll just let them all be in flux or whatever,” she says with a mischievous smile. “ I’ve put a lot of people in a weird position doing that.”
But if fame is overwhelming to April — or Devon, for that matter — you wouldn’t be able to tell when it comes to underscores. The night before our Italian dinner, I watched Grey take the stage at the Fonda, a venue right in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. The most esoteric music enjoyers in the greater Los Angeles area had waited outside for up to 12 hours to get in, baking in the sun as the Hollywood Walk of Fame’s sounds (and smells of urine and sizzling bacon-wrapped hot dogs) kept them company.
By 9 P.M., the chain wallet-toting masses soon became a rumbling cacophony directly above the green room, where a who’s who of the underground scene milled about: Lucy Bedroque, Jane Remover, ericdoa, and Grey’s former roommate turned tour opener, umru. When underscores took the stage, the crowd erupted.
The last time I saw Grey perform live was back in 2021, when she opened up for 100 gecs at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall. Even back then, she was able to goad an audience into hysterics; I still think about her animated cover of “Hella Good” by No Doubt. The GALLERIA tour is a bigger showcase for that very skill. At the Fonda, people screamed, stomped, and crowdsurfed, whipped into an intense frenzy. Nearly every person in the audience waved custom lightsticks, modeled after the smiling water tower from the cover of fishmonger.
The lightsticks are another brainchild of Grey’s. They’re a common sight at K-pop concerts, and Grey is a K-pop superfan. She used to run the defunct K-pop YouTube channel 2ndgenbias and has always been heavily influenced by that world, from the way her music circumvents genre to the way she’s now trying to fashion herself into a larger-than-life persona.