9 takeaways from underscores’s FADER cover story
The 26-year-old electronic popstar went deep on K-pop and her musical eras in our latest cover story.
Kevin Amato / The FADER
underscores is The FADER’s newest cover star. The 26-year-old electronic popstar talked to The FADER about growing up in San Francisco with an audio engineer father, getting inspired by K-pop, her relationship with fans, and the various eras of her musical career. Check out the big takeaways below, and read the full underscores cover story here.
underscores dreamed of being a K-pop idol when she was younger.
underscores fans already know she’s a serious K-pop fan: she used to run the YouTube channel 2ndgenbias (though she’s evasive when asked about it) and her most iconic merch has to be the lightsticks modeled after the cover of her debut album fishmonger. Speaking on her K-pop inspirations, underscores said in part, “I like the idea of trying to do that without the resources of a multimillion-dollar company. It's just always been a dream of mine when I was younger, alongside being an electronic producer.”
She says her fans are typically pretty respectful of her boundaries.
Despite the fact that, “people can get very parasocial” and “some people go over the line,” underscores says her fans maintain, “an amount of distance that I’m not terribly uncomfortable with. Alongside her use of stage names, that gap helps the artist to maintain the DIY popstar mystique her listeners love so much.
underscores can be pretty reserved in her personal life.
Friends of the artist say she’s slow to open up. Jane Remover described befriending underscores as “peeling back the layers,” saying they only started to “unlock” a friendship after hanging out three or four times. Longtime friend and former roommate umru says he’s watched underscores grow from “the quietest, most reserved person,” into the star she is today: “I've literally watched her whole character change so much since we've known each other.”
underscores’s dad makes music too…
Her father Ryan Downe is a GRAMMY-nominated audio engineer who now works at a tech company specializing in “live spatial audio technology.” underscores is particularly fond of his prog-rock band Moth Vellum, and says that the version of her dad she heard on wax was nothing like the person she thought she knew. “I never heard him sing in that voice in real life [...] I was like, I have no idea who this is. This isn't my dad. I’ve never known this person.”
… but she isn’t a nepo baby (just a little privileged).
Though her dad worked in music, he didn’t have much in the way of industry connections to offer her. But underscores knows that she had it, “super good growing up,” and that her father being into music and tech laid the foundation for the music she makes today. “I had, from a young age, computers and instruments just around the house,” she said in part. “I know how much of a leg up I had to get to this point. But I do think that there's a DIY spirit that I try and keep in there.”
underscores has a lot of alter egos.
Milkfish, 2ndgenbias, underscores, April… and that’s before we get into the various SoundCloud collectives she’s been in (Nematic and six impala, to name just two). underscores also says she’s released a fully anonymous project her fans still have yet to uncover. “I really like the idea of making music both presently and anonymously,” she says. “I always admired people that have a lot of different aliases.”
Blowing up after fishmonger was sort of overwhelming.
Her 2021 debut established underscores as a major rising talent in the realm of hyperpop, leading to an opening slot on the 100 gecs tour that fall. But the up-and-coming popstar wasn’t fully present for it. “I remember feeling really on autopilot, and kind of vacant at the time,” she recalls. “It was just a large influx of crazy things happening that I couldn’t really process enough, which is probably similar to what’s happening right now.”
Wallsocket sounds angry and depressed because of antidepressants.
underscores’s sophomore album was much darker than her debut. “I was, for full transparency, on antidepressants, so I was just not feeling much of anything,” she says of recording Wallsocket. She describes the record’s sound as, “the anger and depression of not being able to feel anything.”
Her latest album U feels more authentic and honest to underscores.
“this is the least poser-y I’ve felt going into an album so far,” underscores says of her excellent 2026 album. She characterizes U as, “a celebration of being able to feel and understand emotions.” That’s especially apparent on emotionally charged songs like “The Peace.” That sentiment is likely why U has reached previously unprecedented heights for underscores, including an opening slot on Charli xcx’s upcoming tour. “I was feeling kind of misunderstood before,” underscores told The FADER. “And now I feel really understood.”
