Sofie Royer

Sofie Royer, a singer and songwriter based in Vienna, assembles art-pop from an eclectic array of sources that includes cabaret, synth pop, 1980s soft rock, and opera. A violinist and violist grounded in classical training, she immersed herself in Los Angeles underground club scenes, where she established the Boiler Room’s first West Coast presence and worked as an A&R representative at the independent label Stones Throw Records. Upon returning to Austria she issued three distinctive solo albums on that imprint: Cult Survivor in 2020, Harlequin in 2022, and Young-Girl Forever in 2024.

Royer was born in California to parents of Iranian and Austrian descent and spent her early training years at the Konservatorium in Vienna, concentrating on violin and viola. While based in Los Angeles she began as an intern at Stones Throw Records, advancing to positions as digital manager and A&R representative; simultaneously she developed a DJ practice that included hosting the initial West Coast Boiler Room transmission and sharing bills with J Rocc, Dam-Funk, and label founder Peanut Butter Wolf. Her 2016 mixtape Sofie’s SOS Tape surveyed the region’s underground hip-hop community.

She later relocated in turn to New York and London before settling again in Vienna, where she sustained her DJ work, pursued painting studies, and shaped an identity as an experimental pop musician. Stones Throw issued her debut album Cult Survivor in 2020, presenting melodies rooted in vintage singer-songwriter traditions alongside classically inflected elements and atmospheric synth textures. The 2022 follow-up Harlequin intensified that approach with added theatrical dimensions drawn from cabaret and opera. For her third release, Young-Girl Forever, issued in November 2024, Royer adopted a concept from Tiqqun’s Preliminary Materials for the Theory of a Young-Girl to examine consumerism, feminism, and the ecosystem surrounding present-day women artists.