Editor’s Note: This article was edited on 8/27/2025 to include an updated graphic.
The indie band Strongboi — composed of Alice Phoebe Lou and Ziv Yamin — will be coming to the House of Blues in Anaheim, Calif. to perform as an opener for Men I Trust’s Equus Tour. Strongboi will play back-to-back nights on Aug. 19 and Aug. 20 in Anaheim and again on Aug. 21 at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.
The band, with the help of Lou’s lively solo career, has risen in popularity over the last few years. Lou has sustained a growing discography in both her independent musical career and her work with Strongboi. Last month alone, she released the single “Pretender” on July 25 as a solo act and “one thing” on July 18 as part of Strongboi. In her solo work, she has turned towards an acoustic sound while reserving her heftier production for Strongboi.
“Pretender” comes fourth in a series of singles from Lou’s upcoming album, “Oblivion,” set to be released on Oct. 24 of this year. This marks the sixth studio album for the veteran musician, whose last project was “Shelter” in 2023.
As for “one thing,” it’s still unclear whether or not it’s part of a larger project. Although active with releases, Strongboi has yet to release their sophomore album.
The duo’s self-titled debut album was released in 2023 and solidified Strongboi as a legitimate side project for Lou. The immediate attention, along with the duo’s rapidly growing discography, has put the indie band on the map independent of Lou’s prior commercial success.
A live performance of the song “fool around” from their self-titled album was posted to their YouTube channel in 2023 and garnered 2.5 million views. Meanwhile, the music video for their most popular song “honey thighs” cleared half a million views since its release in 2020.
The beauty of a side project is the opportunity for artists to deviate from their signature style and experiment with new sounds. When the band began as a duo with Lou and Yamin, Strongboi had a simple essence “as a passion project between two close friends, with a super lo-fi vision of using mainly casio keyboards & toys.”
Their debut self-titled single in 2020 set the tone. The playful track is riddled with cowbells and whistles, with Lou getting intimate with the lyrics. Within the year, the band found their groove with “tuff girl” and “honey thighs.”
“tuff girl” gave listeners insight into the band’s direction on their first album, while the more popular “honey thighs” gave audiences a song that landed somewhere in the genre of indie-soul. More than anything, the latter demonstrated Lou and Yamin’s ability to make a diverse array of music, displaying that their band could go beyond the fun indie side project they first intended for it to be.
This shift towards a new style could be what Strongboi is showing fans this year. Alongside “one thing,” the songs “special” and “be mine” have expressed the band’s willingness to refine their sound. If the band’s second album follows the groundwork set by these singles, it is sure to be a comparable sequel.
After a relatively absent 2024, Yamin and Lou are back at work. The duo embarked on tour as an opening act for Men I Trust in July — starting right after Lou’s two-month solo tour earlier this year — and will be continuing with shows in the U.S. until September.
Taking on such a workload is impressive to say the least, but longtime fans of Lou may be reminded of her run in 2021. In March and December of that year, she released the albums “Glow” and “Child’s Play” all the while completing her first year with Strongboi in 2020. Later, Strongboi would go on to release three singles in 2022 from their debut album.
To top it all off, Lou spent the last three months of 2021 and the month of February 2022 on tour, the same month Strongboi released “fool around.”
That being the case, it’s not unreasonable to think she has more up her sleeve for Strongboi despite a scheduled solo release this fall. After all, the last time Strongboi released three singles in a year, they released an album the following year.
As for “Oblivion,” Lou’s fans know what to expect. Three of the four singles from the album are primarily acoustic guitar paired only with Lou’s melancholic lyricism. In an Instagram post announcing the release of the single “Old Shadow,” she said, “thanks for listening [to] me spill my little heart out [it’s] been so lovely making these stripped back songs.”
This style isn’t necessarily new for Lou — “Orbit” from her 2016 debut album uses a similar acoustic sound — but it has been quite some time since hearing her play stripped-down, heartfelt music. Fans are intrigued to hear Lou return to this style nearly a decade after her first album.
While fans wait, they can enjoy the consistent releases from Alice Phoebe Lou and Strongboi, respectively, as well as catch them live on tour. And by the looks of it, fans shouldn’t expect Lou to slow down any time soon.
Griffin Chan is an Arts & Entertainment Intern for the summer 2025 quarter. He can be reached at griffilc@uci.edu.
Edited by Corinna Chin and Julia Kremenetsky