Fox Stevenson sat down with us after his show in Washington, DC to discuss his 2025 album, tour life, and blending pop punk with EDM.
On Saturday, February 1, singer, songwriter, and producer Fox Stevenson stopped by Black Cat in Washington, DC, where he put on an electrifying show that blurred the lines between a concert and a rave. It was one of 38 stops on his North American and European Sunk Cost Fallacy Tour, supporting his June 2025 sophomore album of the same name.
It was a frigid day in Washington, the streets still packed with ice and snow from the winter storm the previous weekend. Despite the below-freezing temperatures, Fox Stevenson fans pulled up in full force. Doors opened at 7:30, but when I arrived at 8, a small but eager crowd had already gathered at the stage for singer and DnB producer Yue‘s opening set, which kicked off the evening with a high-energy mix of both popular tunes and underground beats.
What stood out about the crowd early on was the large number of non-ravers in attendance. While there were plenty of DnB heads up front dancing during Yue, there was an equal amount of fans lurking around the back in faded band tees and dark jeans, looking perplexed by the DJ opener.
I discovered Fox Stevenson through a DnB playlist — and I always thought of him as a DnB artist — but as a musician who blends pop-punk and indie songwriting with electronic music, he is able to keep a foot in both worlds. Seeing the hodgepodge of diverse music lovers really painted a picture of his crossover appeal and genre-blurring brand.
Black Cat is an intimate venue on the second floor of an inconspicuous building, with black-and-white-checkered tile floors and a bar to the left side of the stage. Stools and benches lined the bar and opposite wall, providing the kind of seating rarely found in standing-room venues for patrons could rest between sets. Black Cat is a no-frills venue: no visuals or lasers, just a crisp and booming sound system. With no barricade, it was easy to stand right in front of Fox Stevenson and enjoy an up-close and personal concert experience.
By the end of Yue’s set, the venue was packed and anticipation was brewing for Fox Stevenson’s live performance. There was an intermission between sets, which offered the perfect amount of time to take a restroom break or grab a drink without missing any music.
Fox’s energy was palpable, and it spread through the crowd. He and the band were on stage for over an hour, performing an array of hits from his discography, from classics like “Bruises,” “Like That,” and “Dreamland,” to songs off his new album like “Curtain Call,” “One Horse Town,” and even an acoustic demo of “Memories.”
Everyone was singing along and moving the whole time, jumping as the drops hit, or waving their hands in unison through the air. It was also truly impressive how his music translated so seamlessly into a live performance that the instrumentation sounded interchangeable with that of the recorded versions.
The energy carried into Fox Stevenson’s DJ set when he opened it with his iconic remix of DJ Fresh‘s “Gold Dust,” which set the tone for the hour that followed. His eclectic set served as a medium for him to play more of his older or underrated tracks, demonstrate his mixing skills, and showcase his music tastes beyond his own songs — ranging from mainstream DnB bangers to old school dubstep pieces.
For his fans, this tour offers a rare chance to experience the full scope of his artistry. Overall, it was a really unique and unforgettable concert experience that was really well executed.
After the show, we caught up with Fox Stevenson who offered insights into the highs and lows of tour life, his opinions on the DnB scene in the US, the intersection between emo and EDM, and a deeper look into Sunk Cost Fallacy. Read on for the conversation!
Stream Fox Stevenson – Sunk Cost Fallacy Deluxe Edition on Spotify:
Thanks for taking the time to talk with us today! You’re almost two weeks into the tour now. How has life on the road been for you guys, and how have you been enjoying it?
The shows have been amazing, but it’s honestly been a little bit more arduous than it usually is, mostly because of this crazy, crazy winter storm. We started in the Midwest, and while we were in Madison, it was negative degrees, and our generator went out at 3am, which was keeping us warm on the bus. So we had a bit of a panic for our lives at one point.
That sounds crazy.
Yeah, it was something. But aside from that, it’s been great. We’re slowly coming out of the cold, and our bus is slowly starting to work again. We’re just punking our way through it and doing the best we can. But, as always, there’s stuff you expected, stuff you didn’t expect, and touring is crazy.
It seems like tour life can be a lot of fun, but also really demanding. How do you practice self-care and look out for your mental health while on the road?
I think there’s this certain level of locking in. The hard mental health stuff with touring happens slowly. It makes more sense to just take stock and take the moments of self-care that you can. No one will wake you up early on a day off to do a load of stuff. We’re trying not to the extra mile when we don’t have to, because we still have another four weeks of this tour — and we’re all already beat up. You ease into it, and you get used to it, and you just have to carry it, which I know can be hard for some people. But I’m lucky enough to have my friends on tour. My friends are my colleagues, and the shows are doing well. And honestly, we’re not the hardest act to set up in the world. We’re not having to set up some giant stage or an LED wall or anything. So yeah, you just kind of get through it.
I’m assuming the snow has gotten in the way of a lot of this, but with touring, you get to visit a ton of new cities. Maybe you’ve visited some before, maybe it’s the first time for some. Is there anything you enjoy doing on your days off when visiting someplace?
Generally, our off days tend to be travel days. That’s usually the way it goes. In all honesty, I don’t get to see the country all that much doing this. I’ll maybe get to see some Walmarts and maybe a Chipotle around the corner from the venue. Or, if I’m lucky, a local restaurant and a lot of trucker stops. That’s mostly it, but at least when I go to a city, I do know where to order takeout.
One of the main genres you explore is drum and bass, and your new album and accompanying tour arrived at the peak of its US popularity. How do you view this moment? Does anything stand out for you when playing to North American crowds on this tour?
I don’t know if I’m entirely qualified to answer that with certainty, because I feel like despite having at least one foot in drum and bass, at our own Fox Stevenson shows, it’s mostly people who are our fans as opposed to drum and bass fans. There’s plenty of people in there who are both, but I don’t really know. I’ve only played one drum and bass night since this has all been happening. I played Brownies & Lemonade in LA, so I guess to talk about that, it feels like something is happening. My prediction and thoughts on it are that the interest is there, but I feel that it’s not quite right yet.
And I’m not saying that there’s any hesitancy, but I feel like the right drum and bass act, or the right drum and bass song, hasn’t happened yet. I feel like we’re due a moment, like a “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” moment, where someone gets drum and bass right for the American audience.
One of the problems I think that faces drum and bass — especially in finding new audiences anywhere outside drum and bass-centric places — is I feel drum and bass is incredibly self-referential, so there’s almost a knowledge barrier to really understand and enjoy drum and bass to the fullest. And for some people, that’s a great thing. They love to sink their teeth into it. But I think that it’s not the most pick-up-and-listen genre, because there’s plenty of tunes that are still being referenced in production choices. And that really works for the people who know, but not the ones who don’t know. Obviously, that’s quite a sweeping statement that doesn’t hold true for every single track out there, but I think it’s generally true.
I feel like a lot of people who become ravers start as emo kids in middle school, and there’s similar values and connections between the scenes and the cultures. Do you have any opinions on that as someone who grew up on pop punk and indie, and whose sound really blurs the lines?
Well, my general perspective on all of that is that obviously, yes, there’s often this bit of blood from both in what I do. The thing for me is that I’ve always loved dance music, but what’s really interested me about it is we haven’t had dance music in the same way that we’ve had pop punk or whatever, where the form of it is more of a bedrock for songwriting. And that’s what I try and do.
But I think one of the things that connects drum and bass and pop punk is that it’s actually a really similar tempo. The groove is quite similar, and maybe what would be great is to actually play some pop punk festivals, because at times we essentially are electronic pop punk. But yeah, it’s strange, because I’ve always thought of dubstep as kind of hip-hop adjacent, because it’s got that half-time 140/50 flow, while full-time 170ish has always been quite punky. Or if you go back, it’s almost even do-woppy in places. At the end of the day, it’s just groove. I don’t really know what that says about it, but there’s an interesting thread to pull there. And I know someone’s gonna pull it in the right way soon.
Your tour is a really unique format for electronic music as it includes a full band performance followed by a DJ set. What do you enjoy about each part of the show, and how do these two formats let you express different sides of yourself as an artist?
The way I think of it is the live band is like the main course, and the DJ set is kind of a dessert. So I love the live band thing. I think it makes the most sense for my music, because I think that the contrast we’re able to do with the live band is quite cool. When it’s two musicians playing a guitar and singing on stage, there’s an intimacy there. And the energy level is obviously incredibly low for a moment like that, but it’s hopefully still captivating. And that means that you’ve actually got so much further to go when you hit a full-on drop, and when you’ve come from that place, you can ride the emotional lows and highs a bit better.
And for the DJing part, that’s kind of like me explaining myself and showing people the kind of influences I have. And what’s really nice about doing the DJ set after the live band is I don’t have to play all my biggest bangers — just other stuff. Because if I get booked to play a DJ set somewhere, 80% of that setlist is decided by the fact that I want to play the things that I know for sure people want to hear.
This tour is for your album, Sunk Cost Fallacy. Can you tell us more about the album, the creative process for it, and what themes or ideas you were trying to explore with the lyrics?
So, now that it’s been out a while, I do have some thoughts on that album. When I was making it, I thought I was getting everything right, and that it was the perfect album for me. And now that I’ve got a bit of distance from it, I feel like it’s the most intimate I’ve ever been with some of my thoughts and melodies. In certain places, I may have been a bit indulgent with the songwriting and didn’t let things breathe as much. I’m really glad I did that, because it’s pointed at something that I know I like, but I need to make better.
But for the process itself, a lot of them started as acoustic demos, just literally songs on the guitar that I produced from there. I would often mute the guitar for a lot of it, but produce it from there and try not to change those two channels too much, because when the acoustic demo was done, the song had the correct arc already. I have quite a strange relationship with this album at this point, because I think it’s a proper album compared to my other album, which was sort of an amalgamation of ideas I had. This one felt like one thing, and I don’t think I’m gonna do that again. I think that now I just want to make a load of fucking undeniable tunes, just like, “Here you fucking go.”
So would you say for this album there’s more of a cohesive theme or narrative to it, then?
The theme is a little indulgent, but I guess the theme is just me, and I’m working through some shit. “Exile Is A Habit” is about — well, I’ve actually got some in the other room, but — people that you make friends with while you’re both passing through a city, and you never speak to them, but then you see them again nine months later in their city. It’s like you pressed pause, but nothing did pause. They have a whole life without you, and you didn’t check in on them, and there’s no bad blood there or anything. But that’s happened to me my whole life, because I’ve been touring since 2014. “One Horse Town” is about my obsession with making music, which pervades to this day. I can’t stop, and still love it just as much. So yeah, it’s quite the diarizing album.
Thanks for bringing up “One Horse Town.” Right before you guys closed with it, you said it was the song you felt got closest to revealing who you were emotionally, deep down. Could you elaborate more on that?
I didn’t go to college and missed out on a certain level of socializing. While all my friends went to college, I started playing shows around Europe in the drum and bass scene. There’s a certain amount of — maybe I feel like this isn’t the right word — but it’s somewhere on the spectrum toward self-loathing about the blind spots I have socially because I’ve been so obsessed and exacting and consumed by making music.
I don’t dislike that fact, but I think of myself as a result of it. “One Horse Town” takes stock of that. And as I age, and as my career continues, there’s a certain level of, like, “Did I fuck up? Did I really fucking destroy myself over this, and is that okay?” And then invariably, I get to the answer: “Yeah, that was sick.” But that’s the place that song comes from.
How do you balance your introspective lyrics and upbeat production? When writing a song, what comes first? Do you usually write lyrics and then try to pair production with it, or does it go the other way around?
Honestly, I don’t think too much about that. The one thing I would say is I always try to make sure that it’s not hopeless, because that’s not how I feel. I don’t feel hopeless. But what I always aim to do with with most of the songs — this isn’t always true, of course — but in a lot of the songs on that album and my back catalog, there’s hope.
I try and leave some hope in there, at least some kind of turnaround where it’s like, “But what if?” or “Actually, you could think about it this way,” and that’s maybe a bit better. I don’t know if that necessarily answers your question about bridging the gap between those things. Sometimes it’s fun to have the two things competing with each other or going the same way. But I don’t know, I don’t agonize over that.
