What Is Synthedelic Pop?

You've probably never heard the term "synthedelic pop" before. That's because I made it up.

Not out of ego — out of necessity. When you're a one-man band making music that pulls equally from late-70s punk energy, 80s synth-pop grandeur, and modern psychedelic electronic production, no existing genre label quite fits. "Indie pop" is too clean. "Synth-pop" implies something more polished and retro-nostalgic than what I'm going for. "Psych-pop" gets closer but misses the analog synthesizer backbone that drives everything.

So: synthedelic pop. A collision of synthesizer textures and psychedelic songwriting sensibilities, wrapped in pop hooks that are meant to hit you in the gut before your brain catches up.

Where It Comes From

I grew up in San Francisco playing in rock bands, moved to Brooklyn in 2011, and spent years in the psych-rock world with my band The Midnight Hollow (Stereogum called us a "Band To Watch," which was a wild moment). But by 2016 I had a pile of songs that didn't sound like that band anymore. They were more romantic, more synth-driven, more indebted to the DFA scene in Brooklyn and the late-night energy of places that don't exist anymore.

DRAGER was born as a clean slate to chase that sound. And the sound needed a name that didn't come with someone else's baggage attached.

What It Sounds Like

Atwood Magazine described it better than I could:

"An ingenious blend of old and new inspirations: the driving rhythms of late 70s punk, synth heavy pop of the 80s, and the druggy, electronic compositions of modern psych-pop."— Atwood Magazine

The building blocks are analog synthesizers (I'm a Sequential artist — the Pro 3 and Prophet line are central to everything), drum machines, vintage guitars (Eastman makes beautiful instruments), and vocals that sit somewhere between a croon and a war cry. Everything is written, performed, produced, mixed, and mastered by me in my Brooklyn studio. That's not a flex — it's just how the music needs to be made. One vision, uncompromised.

Why It Matters

Genre labels are mostly for other people — for algorithms, for playlist curators, for the person trying to describe your music to a friend. But having your own term means you're not competing in someone else's lane. When someone searches for "synthedelic pop," they find DRAGER. That's the whole point.

If you want to hear what synthedelic pop actually sounds like, start with the music. The debut album Goths a la Discotheque is probably the most complete statement of the sound so far. And if you're the kind of person who reads about genres on the internet, you're probably the kind of person who'd dig it.