Pillowprince @ The New Colossus Festival 2026
LA’s Pillowprince is Olivia Lee (vocals/guitar) Silas Snyder (drums) and Liza Stegall (bass). At a slowcore pace, their sound is made to explicitly appreciate its heaviness. Their debut EP pretty, baby! is pure magic. The opening song “R The Straights OK” (more a remark than a question), is a tongue-in-cheek indie rock jam exploring the sameness and vanilla details of heteronormative culture. The expectations of pretty dresses, marriage, kids, etc. Though its last verse signals perhaps what goes on underneath the glaze of it all. On “Babybird” and the standout “Care About,” Pillowprince uses a different approach. The sonic intensity slowly builds. Their heavy guitar tones paint a dark sky, and Olivia’s voice is a drifting cloud. Watching them live plays out in a similar way. The sound slowly envelops you, before it bites at your skin.
We connected with Lee on gear, songwriting, hope in the music industry and more.
Pillowprince (@pillowprinceband)
Homebase: Los Angeles, CA
How would you describe The New Colossus Festival? A takeover of the Lower East side with music and bands pouring through the streets. Bands chatting it up and supporting each other. Pure music lover energy. It gave me hope for the music industry.
What’s your songwriting process? It varies a lot-- we like to stay creatively playful. We often draw inspiration from cinematic moments we've shared together as long-time friends. We like to create really random prompts for ourselves and paint splatter out dozens of ideas and then refine the ones we like the most.
Favorite piece of gear? I have to limit the scope of this question to gear that I own because I could talk about this forever. My favorite studio piece of gear is the Boss DM-300, which I bought long ago as a cheaper alternative to the Space Echo. It's very different, but degrades signal so beautifully--reminiscent of The Disintegration Loops. I like to imagine the buckets brigading the signal like the freaky mops in Fantasia. My favorite live piece of gear is the Industrialectric RM-1N, which is a dark, dirty overdrive/distortion reverb pedal that has a mind and literal heartbeat (IYKYK) of its own. It's on more often than off.
Did you catch any other bands at the festival? Any standouts? We saw tons of bands. Baby Baby Explores.., Loveletter, Sloe Noon, Welcome Strawberry, Drook, and Lone Aires stick out.
What’s your favorite song to perform live? We're writing a lot right now towards our first LP, so playing new songs out, I'd say. Because it's vulnerable, but we like to see how the crowd reacts and what they resonate with.
Follow Pillowprince on Instagram.