Zach Templar Boiler (March 2025)
Zach Templar makes ambitious indie rock with a prickly edge. It's the kind of music that makes tiny moments feel huge and is delivered with so much honesty that you feel like you're in the room with the 18-year-old as he pours his heart out.
Raised on a diet of Childish Gambino, Frank Ocean and Omar Apollo, Zach Templar's music is a "colorful mesh" of everything he loves. Some songs are pretty, stripped-back confessional songs, others are distorted and melancholy or offer a booming, defiant hope. "I try not to pigeonhole myself," he explains, who puts his heart first in everything he does. "But they're all one vibe.
Zach was already involved in music while at school, learning classical piano and taking part in theater productions, but didn't feel able to tell other people's stories. "I wanted to write my own stories," he says. Zach also wanted people to hear them, so he taught himself how to produce on a "terrible" laptop before uploading a series of raw and finished tracks to Soundcloud. "Tyler, The Creator and Prince were both big inspirations because they wrote and produced their own music. But I was also inspired by MF Doom, J Dilla and Steve Lacey," he says. It's a cool mix of forward-thinking artists, but his first few songs got lost in the ether.
Instead of giving up, however, Zach got to work, emailing thousands of different playlists and showcasing himself on social media. "I had to learn not to worry about looking stupid or releasing songs that people might not like.it was all about what I thought was cool."
Slowly, he built a loyal fanbase, which exploded with the breakthrough track "Missin Something" from 2023. "The dreamy song reached more than 113 million streams and sent him on a sold-out world tour. "I know it may seem like I came out of nowhere, but I've spent the last few years discovering my own voice and mind.
"It can be tempting to write the kind of music people say they want," he explains, especially when you've reached a milestone in streaming numbers. "But I've always kept the attitude of 'my art comes first'.Everything has been written because I think it's good music.I really believe that's what people really want."
Tracks like 'april', 'violet', 'give me your heart' and 'desires' have also resonated because Zach is so vulnerable in his lyrics. "If I'm not honest, I don't feel fulfilled," he says. "I've heard stories on tour about how much my songs have helped people or soundtracked moments in their lives, and those things just aren't possible if I don't write vulnerable lyrics."
Making music alone in his bedroom has taught him to "really trust your gut, because there's nothing else you can rely on".
"I just have to always believe that what I'm doing is right, and hopefully it will take me where I want to go."
Zach Templar's debut EP is not just a collection of hopeful anthems drenched in melancholy, but an ambitious concept album about the confusion of growing up, the loss of childhood wonder and wistful nostalgia.It's his latest reality, which he puts a fantastical twist on. "I've always wanted to make big statements," he explains. "It's about surpassing what I've done so far.I know my music has already touched people, and I just hope I can keep making things that make people feel something.These are all tracks that are really close to my heart, and when you've put this much effort into writing music, you want it to be special."