Biography
A versatile singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist hailing from Boise, Idaho, Trevor Powers launched the Youth Lagoon project in 2010 to explore dreamy, vulnerable neo-psychedelic pop. After issuing three albums across six years, he formally retired the alias in 2016 and shifted to recording under his given name. His debut solo effort, the fractured, noisy avant-pop album Mulberry Violence, surfaced in 2018. Two years afterward he shifted direction again with Capricorn, a concise 2021 set consisting entirely of haunting electronic instrumentals.
Youth Lagoon had functioned as the vehicle for Powers’ most intimate hopes and fears, which he paired with dreamy yet tenacious lo-fi pop. He first uploaded a Youth Lagoon track in May 2011; the immediate online interest secured a contract with Fat Possum Records. That September he delivered his opening full-length, The Year of Hibernation, an album centered on psychological dysphoria. The follow-up, Wondrous Bughouse, arrived in March 2013 and expanded the sonic palette while inviting comparisons to vintage Pink Floyd and the Flaming Lips; its thematic core circled “the struggle between the physical and the spiritual world.” Powers subsequently relocated to England, where he collaborated with co-producer Ali Chant at Toybox Studios in Bristol. The sessions yielded Savage Hills Ballroom, Youth Lagoon’s third studio long-player, which reached listeners in 2015. On February 1, 2016, Powers declared the project finished in an open letter, writing that “I ended Youth Lagoon because it became a mental dungeon, and I was its captive. My intention was never to keep it going -- only to serve as a nod to the blooming years.”
Under his own name he issued Mulberry Violence in 2018, fusing the introspective fractured pop of his prior work with a bolder experimental and electronics-forward sensibility. Three years later he returned with Capricorn, his first entirely instrumental collection.
Youth Lagoon had functioned as the vehicle for Powers’ most intimate hopes and fears, which he paired with dreamy yet tenacious lo-fi pop. He first uploaded a Youth Lagoon track in May 2011; the immediate online interest secured a contract with Fat Possum Records. That September he delivered his opening full-length, The Year of Hibernation, an album centered on psychological dysphoria. The follow-up, Wondrous Bughouse, arrived in March 2013 and expanded the sonic palette while inviting comparisons to vintage Pink Floyd and the Flaming Lips; its thematic core circled “the struggle between the physical and the spiritual world.” Powers subsequently relocated to England, where he collaborated with co-producer Ali Chant at Toybox Studios in Bristol. The sessions yielded Savage Hills Ballroom, Youth Lagoon’s third studio long-player, which reached listeners in 2015. On February 1, 2016, Powers declared the project finished in an open letter, writing that “I ended Youth Lagoon because it became a mental dungeon, and I was its captive. My intention was never to keep it going -- only to serve as a nod to the blooming years.”
Under his own name he issued Mulberry Violence in 2018, fusing the introspective fractured pop of his prior work with a bolder experimental and electronics-forward sensibility. Three years later he returned with Capricorn, his first entirely instrumental collection.
Albums
Capricorn
2020
Mulberry Violence
2018
Clad In Skin / Squelch
2018
XTQ Idol / Dicegame
2018
Ache / Plaster Saint
2018
Singles