ACL Fest Interview: Dayglow

Photo by Jana Birchum

In June, Austin pop sparkler Dayglow released a video for the sticky-sweet tune "Hot Rod." Onscreen, Sloan Struble battles a giant monster made of uninflated balloons. The singer achieved the charming, Wes Anderson-meets-Power Rangers effect with a green screen propped in local director Adam Kingman's backyard.

Crafting his debut album, the single similarly employed YouTube-acquired production techniques to craft a sound bigger than his childhood bedroom in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex satellite Aledo. The 20-year-old songwriter released LP Fuzzybrain soon after starting studies at UT. He dropped out last spring after the snappy synth-pop takes took off online.

"I was really confident in the songs, I just didn't expect it to happen as fast as it did," said Struble back in June. "It's just been organic, no budget or anything. It exists on the internet because of people sharing it."

Since then, he's doubled his monthly listeners on Spotify to more than a million. Accompanying are the fixings of niche online fandom: fan-made lyric videos and unearthings of his past instrumental recordings as Kindred. The artist says album uplift "Can I Call You Tonight?" originated from an older experiment, reworked with Struble's soft lyricism on top.

"Producing and being in front of a computer with all the layering is my favorite part," adds the frontman. "For the last few years, Dayglow was a sound I was working toward."

Struble snagged a late add to the ACL Fest weekend two lineup, followed by Dayglow's first-ever tour with indie-pop trio Coin, including a local stop Oct. 24 at Emo's. Afterward, he embarks on his initial headlining dates nationally.

"Songwriting is like therapy to me," concludes Struble. "When I'm stressed, that emotion fuels me, because I have stuff to write songs about."

Dayglow