Fresh Face: Daisy Brain

Welcome to Fresh Face, a quick-fire interview series spotlighting the best rising talents in today’s youthful music scene. From biggest pet peeves to party tricks and death row meals, we’re stripping things back from the formal Q&A format. Think of it like speed dating, but with some of the freshest music makers worth discovering.

On BBC 6 Music, Steve Lamacq described Daisy Brain’s music as reminding him of early Radiohead. That’s a compliment that makes you want to sit up and pay attention, but that’s just the beginning – this is an artist who has proudly carved his own path in music.

The alter ego of Will Tse, Daisy Brain’s MO is confessional, self-reflexive indie rock to have you headbanging and thinking at the same time. Take his new song “Digital Atlas”, which pulls from grungy distorted 1990s sounds whilst meditating on Tse’s own forms of escapism in times of difficulty.

On the tune, he says, “We’ve all spent the last two years grappling with ourselves in uncertain times. I really didn’t want to write a “lockdown” song, but digital atlas describes the headspace I was in at the time. I found myself becoming more and more insular, trying to escape the world by almost any means possible and reliving my childhood by getting addicted to world of warcraft. I’ve made it sound really dark there, but the song isn’t. It just reflects this strange, surreal headspace of not really knowing where the real world and the virtual world end and begin.”

With a recent soldout headline tour including a slot at Camden Assembly, it’s clear people are getting the message. To celebrate his recent success, we sat down with Daisy Brain to chat about his ideal dinner party, aliens, his fashion nostalgia and much more…