Crafting soaring, jangly indie-rock that sparkles with the same energy as Cold War Kids, Cage the Elephant, and Vampire Weekend, Fox Royale can make music about things like emotional insecurities, breakups, and family breakdowns sound almost joyful.
“We’re trying to tackle [millennial anxieties] in such a way that doesn’t sound naive, which is hard because we’re as young as the people listening,” says vocalist/guitarist Nathan Hurley. “It’s bright sounding. A lot of it sounds happy. It’s not just one line that’s super catchy. We want every line to get stuck in your head.”
We connected with Nathan from Fox Royale via email to ask a few questions:
Congratulations on your new track Out Of My Hands. Can you give us a little background on this song?
We wrote this last summer. Two weeks after, I (Nathan) got married. I was experiencing tension with my spouse, and this song came out of that tension. We’ve found that trying to be good partners to our families back home and also being good bandmates on the road is tough to balance. Working as a musician is very unpredictable, so the whole idea of not knowing what comes next, and still choosing to make a lifelong commitment to another person outside of the band is very difficult. We love the challenge, and we are learning a lot. This song came from that.
Is this track part of a larger collection?
Hopefully! We have released two singles, including this one. We have a few more songs that we’d like to share online in the coming months. We’ll see what happens.
Can you tell us a bit about your band?
There are four of us: brothers Nathan Hurley (vocals and guitar) and Caleb Hurley (keys and vocals), Davis Drake (bass and vocals) and Evan Todd (drums and vocals). Caleb and I met as children. Evan, Davis and I met each other in high school orchestra. We were in a traveling band accompanying a choir and have been playing together ever since in various capacities. We started Fox Royale a little less than a year ago!
Currently working on more videos and editing songs for our upcoming project(s). Can’t really get into it yet, but we have more things in the works, and we are excited to get out west again, whether it be for shows or for more writing/studio sessions!
This track came out right in the heart of the pandemic and the stay-at-home orders. How does that impact your musical plans?
We gave up on the idea of touring for this year. We write a lot, and we practice a lot. We took the quarantine time to double down on our social media platforms-specifically we worked to grow our Instagram and the now outlawed Tik Tok. Figuring out that one was a very fun experience for us.
How has COVID-19 affected your ability to produce your music?
We do most of it at home, so COVID-19 has pushed us to produce more than we used to. It’s one of the silver linings of this mess of a year was that it forced us to stay in that creative space way more consistently than we ever had before.
Is Fox Royale doing any live-stream performances?
We haven’t done much live-streaming, but we do post live covers every week from our home studio! We never really did cover videos before COVID-19, so that has also been a fun development. Turns out, we really enjoy putting our spin on our favorite songs! We are looking into some live-stream events with our friends this Fall.
Is there anything you’d like to add?
Check out our music video! We are making some short films that are all kind of connected to each other. We all love movies, so it has been great getting to write these and put that cinematic element into our music content.
