Alice Phoebe Lou

Cape Town to the Berlin subway

Alice Phoebe Lou was born on July 19, 1993 in Kommetjie on the Cape Peninsula, near Cape Town, went to a Waldorf school and has parents who are documentary filmmakers. She has named Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, the Velvet Underground and Portishead as influences. After a gap year in Amsterdam and then Berlin she settled in Berlin at 19, where in 2013 and 2014 she busked in the S-Bahn and U-Bahn, having switched from fire-dancing. The EP Momentum came out in April 2014, and at TEDxBerlin on September 6, 2014 she said she would stay independent despite label offers; Live at Gruner Salon in December 2014 helped fund her debut.

Orbit (April 2016), produced by Matteo Pavesi and Jian Kellett-Liew, was followed by three sold-out shows at the Berlin Planetarium, and in 2016 she opened for Sixto Rodriguez in South Africa. She played SXSW every year from 2015 to 2019. In December 2017 she released the EP Sola, and her song "She", from the film Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, was shortlisted for the Academy Award for original song.

Paper Castles

Paper Castles (March 8, 2019) was made after a pause in her career to find the right producer. She spoke to Noah Georgeson on the phone for over an hour, and he suggested Panoramic House, a residential studio in West Marin, California, overlooking Stinson Beach. In March 2018, just after SXSW, the band spent about two weeks there and Georgeson recorded the core of the album live. All the music was a conversation, she says, and we became a family. The band was Ziv Yamin on keys, Dekel Adin on bass and Julian Berann on drums, with Paolo Guolo on saxophone and flute, and the singles were "Something Holy" (November 30, 2018), "Skin Crawl" (January 15, 2019) and "Galaxies" (February 15, 2019). The songs deal with personal change, the end of a toxic relationship, harassment and sexism. Consequence of Sound gave it a B and Exclaim 8 out of 10. She played the main stage at Primavera Sound on May 30, 2019.

Live at Funkhaus was recorded on December 7, 2019 at Saal 1 of the Funkhaus in Berlin and released on May 1, 2020.

Since 2020

Glow followed on March 19, 2021 and Child's Play at the end of 2021 (December 2 by Wikipedia, November 25 by MusicBrainz), and in 2022 she toured North America supporting Billy Bragg. Shelter came out on July 7, 2023 and Oblivion, on Nettwerk, on October 24, 2025, with a North American tour in spring 2026 and festival dates including Latitude and Green Man. She also has a duo, Strongboi, with her keyboardist.