On the first Friday in May, a crowd of tattooed, pierced, and mostly twentysomething devotees gathered at a casual beers-and-burgers bar in Sydney's Newtown. What was initially advertised as a listening party for Ecca Vandal's second album, Looking For People to Unfollow, had transformed into an unexpected live performance. Bounding onto the stage, Vandal was a whirlwind of movement with striking blue hair, locking eyes with fans in the front row as she, together with bassist Richie Buxton and drummer Dan Maio, tore through new material with garage-band intensity. Less than 24 hours later, the trio swapped the intimate setting of Newtown for an arena where they opened for Interpol and Deftones.
Despite the confidence Vandal exudes in venues of any size, the pre-show nerves never fully disappear. "It's a very challenging set that we play – musically, physically and vocally," Vandal explains. "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 has been a significant amount of admiration directed toward Ecca Vandal recently, thanks to a series of standout singles including Cruising to Self Soothe and Bleed But Never Die. When I meet her at a bustling Newtown cafe days after the two Deftones shows, she is still processing the lengthy journey 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 introspection following her 2017 self-titled album and guest appearances with artists such as Hilltop Hoods, Alice Ivy, and Sampa The Great. While moving freely between genres during those years, she notes, "I had a lot of people saying, 'You'll be really successful if you just pick a lane.'" She decided instead to follow her own path.
Vandal started working on the new album in the Melbourne apartment she shared with Richie Buxton, her partner in both music and life. However, making music in a small apartment became impractical: "I was trying to track really, really heavy vocals [and] we got knocks on our door going, 'Can you keep it down?'"
The pair relocated to Buxton's parents' house nearby and set up in a garage without internet access. "We were like kids again, messing around with instruments, trying things out," she recalls. "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 channeled a mix of her own emotions and experiences as a woman of colour against the backdrop of major world events such as the murder of George Floyd. At the heart 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 also serves as the strongest showcase yet of Ecca Vandal's richly textured, powerful voice, equally comfortable on hip-hop hooks and punk howls – a "guttural and disordered" register that is "the complete opposite of, like, polish and refinement and beauty."
The next step on Ecca Vandal's rise came via a direct message 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 warmth. "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 whirlwind of validation has been overwhelming: "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. Looking for People to Unfollow is out on 22 May.
