Oxis’s electro-pop is a siren’s call

The Opener is The FADER’s short-form profile series of casual conversations with exciting new artists.

There are over 30,000 species of fish in existence, something that must assure Valentina Cy a.k.a. Oxis. For the past couple of years she has been weaving electronic bleeps and clipped guitar loops into constellations that wrap around her soft-hearted pop songs. Each track she writes is named after a different type of underwater creature (“Long Sardine” is a fan favorite, “Flounder” is another) and comes with fishy artwork. She is wildly prolific (7 albums in just 2 years with another on the way) but even at her rapid pace, she won’t run out of song titles any time soon.

Named after the Latin term for tuna, Oxis dropped her latest single “Fry” last month. It’s a song that taps into the many contradictions of life set to a driving bassline and handclap percussion. “I don’t wanna dig deeper,” she sings as her guitar twinkles above head. “Bring it up shove it down till it cuts. I’m alive till I’m not.” Like all of the best Oxis songs it is minimal by design but with a maximalist vocal delivery that comes straight from the gut.

As is standard with Oxis releases, the song was shared alongside a DIY performance video filled with lines and coordinates that elevate the home footage into something closer to sci-fi than a simple TikTok video. The visual effects on the video were coded by Oxis, who taught herself blob tracking to be able to create visuals that capture the unique vibe of her music.

Oxis just finished a stint opening for Magdalena Bay on tour across North America. That pairing makes a lot of sense, with both artists sharing a desire to push electronic pop music into strange and unchartered territory. Later this month she will play three headline dates in L.A., Toronto and Brooklyn.

We asked Oxis for some photos from behind-the-scenes of her time on tour and got her opinions on finding a way through creative issues, an inspiring movie biopic, and other hot topics.

It was a Lady Gaga show. My friend and I wore face paint and it was the most incredible thing I had seen in my 12 years of life.

Bohemian Rhapsody. It broke my heart 17 times, and left me feeling so inspired I wanted to run up a mountain.

“Piranha.” It translates the exact way that I feel inside my head most of the time.

I’ve played 12 shows in the last couple weeks (all but 2 were opening for the wildly lovely and talented Magdalena Bay) and each one is so different and exhilarating, I cannot favor one over the other.