The FADER's longstanding series GEN F profiles emerging artists to know now.

There was a once-secret swimming hole in Philadelphia, down by the old mill in a creek full of snakes and ruins and lush, haunted greenery that inspires feelings evoked through @’s (pronounced “at”) psych-folk records. Victoria Rose, one half of the duo alongside Stone Filipczak, has just informed me she got a ticket during her last excursion there. “The cops came and they gave us an open container ticket and trespassing!”

My mouth hangs open in total disbelief as she continues. “The owner of the mill dropped the charges or something. That was my spot for years. I can never go back there or else I will get in trouble.”

The three of us are bonding, as most transplanted Philadelphians often do, over the eccentricities of our delightfully chaotic (if challenging) city. More specifically, their neighborhood of West Philly, a bustling area of Ethiopian vegetarian platters and overgrown gardens, has seen a surge of indie folk musicians in recent decades. “Philly has such a strong history, music history,” Filipczak says, “and such a strong music culture. I mean, there's so many people that move here just to be in bands.”

The duo are on the cusp of their second record, the jangling and deeply emotional Autosmile, out October 16. If their debut, Mind Palace Music, was a feat of indie-folk production and songwriting that launched them into an echelon of niche indie stardom, Autosmile reflects their new surroundings. Beyond the many willing musical collaborators eager to work with them, the project arrives on new label home 4AD, an adjustment for the pair that built their following on being anything but plugged into the music industry machine.

When asked about the changes to their artistic process between the cult-hit Mind Palace Music and Autosmile, Rose says, “there is something really special about smaller scale shows and operations and having a little bit more control over the way that your music is put out into the world.” Despite the necessary machinations of label backing, however, they’ve managed to retain the singular spirit that defined Mind Palace Music. On social media, they post videos of themselves performing in old mines and those aforementioned gardens, lending to their “if you know, you know” reputation which they’ve intentionally cultivated, according to Filipczak.

“We've historically been an extremely high-control band because we do everything ourselves and mix the music ourselves and just are wildly obsessive about everything that comes out,” Filipczak adds. “Having to give up some of that control, whether it's to somebody at our label or a journalist, anyone really, has definitely, like Victoria said, been a bit of a learning curve. The music's just gotten a lot bigger than us now.”

Rose and Filipczak formed @ during lockdown in 2020 after first meeting in Boston’s DIY scene in 2017; a year later they released Mind Palace Music. That album blended their folksy vocal harmonies with warped digital production and MIDI sounds, reflecting its scrappy creation during lockdown and initial self-release in 2021. Then came 2024’s hyperpop-adjacent EP Are You There God? It’s Me, a record deal, and now, their second album. What has emerged from the back-to-back releases is an anachronistic vibe to their music and imagery, like the roots of an ancient tree overtaking a MIDI controller.

Filipczak says it wasn’t “super intentional” that the band became known for their past-meets-future imagery, but that “nature and specifically a middle ground between that and technology has always been a part of this project.” Autosmile maintains the intimate, psychedelic soundscapes of Mind Palace Music despite the burgeoning scope of their musical ambitions. Close friends contributed cello, violin, and drums, their participation a perk of Philly’s DIY-driven music scene.

“You're really never short of any type of musician when you live here,” Rose says. “You pretty much know someone who can do anything that you want for your record, and I think that's really exciting.”

Filipczak interjects that they wanted to keep Autosmile "more or less in the same ballpark as our first album and try to create a cohesive body of work.” He says their musical DNA, heard on singles like “Punish My Mind”, is a descendent of his love for prog-rock. During the album's creation he was listening to a lot of Agriculture, a black metal band that inspired him to embrace “the darker side of my music taste.”

But the album isn’t entirely darkness. Its songs careen from the stripped-back ambiance of a cello and flute on “Earthly Love” to the densely layered instrumentation of “I’m Not In Pain,” an album standout alongside the title track “Autosmile.” Filipczak and Rose carry the vocals and guitar, alongside the keyboard, clarinet, flute and saz, a traditional long-necked string instrument found in Turkish music. The result of all of this, when listening to Autosmile, is a sense of the whole thing being tightly wound, like a spring of instruments and emotions that might fly apart at any second.

Filipczak says that “having our hands in everything and remaining very hands-on with essentially every aspect of the album's production isn't unheard of, but also I don't think is super common for bands operating in this world that we're now in.”

The challenge now, for them, is balancing their indie folk-intimacy with a burgeoning fanbase and the growing pressure of the label system. Their band name was one such challenge; I ask if it was intentional that they chose the “least searchable name in the music industry.” The two laugh. “That was totally just downstream of us deciding to call the band what we decided to call it,” Filipczak says. “And then we got kind of stubborn about it. We've had countless people tell us we should change our name and we were just like, No. So now it's just kind of a joke and it's just part of the fabric of the project.”

Rose piles on: “I do like the idea that you can maybe begin to locate us online by referring to us as being unsearchable.”

Earlier in our conversation, Rose had mentioned the affordability of a city like Philadelphia being an essential component of the rich and diverse tapestry of indie artists that have blossomed up in the city. Still, as they navigated their latest album cycle, she and Filipczak had to balance music obligations with working their day jobs and other personal commitments.

“Something has to fall into the background for a bit, and you have to prioritize what's got to get done. So that can be kind of tough.” She pauses and adds, “As it is with my current full-time day job, I'm still struggling to honestly pay for my life.” Filipczak agrees and says that he recently became a contractor for his job so he doesn’t “get paid benefits anymore, and in return, I can take off the time I need to take off.”

In the face of uncertainty and on the eve of their latest release, Filipczak admits that “it's sometimes pretty overwhelming to look ahead and be like, ‘How is this all going to work?’” Having now sat with the both of them and Autosmile, one gets the sense it’s going to work out better than the two of them expect.