Zach Templar makes ambitious indie rock with a scrappy edge. It’s the sort of music that makes tiny moments feel enormous and is delivered with so much honesty, you feel like you’re in the room with the 18-year-old as he pours his guts out.

Raised on a diet of Childish Gambino, Frank Ocean and Omar Apollo, Zach Templar’s music is a “colourful mesh” of everything he loves. Some songs are pretty, stripped back confessionals, others are distorted and melancholic or offer woozy, defiant hope. “I try not to create a box for myself,” he explains, with a heart-first approach to everything he does. “They’re all a vibe though.”

Zach first dabbled in music while still at school, learning classical piano and getting involved in theatre productions but felt stifled telling other people’s tales. “I wanted to write my own stories,” he says. Zach also wanted people to hear them, so taught himself how to produce on a “terrible” laptop before uploading a number of rough and ready tracks to Soundcloud. “Tyler, The Creator and Prince were both big inspirations, because they both wrote and produced their own music. I was also inspired by MF Doom, J Dilla and Steve Lacey though,” he says. It’s a cool blend of forward-thinking artists but his first few songs got lost in the ether. Rather than give up though Zach put in the work emailing 1000s of different playlists and putting himself out there on social media. “I had to learn not to care about looking stupid or putting out songs people might not like. It was all about what I thought was cool.”

He slowly built up a loyal following that exploded with 2023’s breakout track ‘missin something’. “It’s a relatable banger,” he grins, with the dreamy song racking up more than 113million streams and sending him on a sold out world tour. “I know it might seem that I’ve come out of nowhere but I’ve spent the past few years really discovering my own voice and mind.”

“It can be tempting to write the sort of music people tell you they want,” especially after achieving milestone streaming numbers, he explains. “But I’ve always kept this mindset of ‘my art comes first’. Everything has been written because I believe it’s good music. I honestly believe that’s what people really want anyway“

Tracks like ‘april’, ‘violet’, ‘give me your heart’ and ‘desires’ have also connected because of how vulnerable Zach is with his lyrics. “If I’m not being honest, I don’t feel fulfilled,” he says. “I’ve heard stories on tour about how much my songs have helped people or soundtracked moments in their lives and those things just aren’t possible unless I’m creating stuff that is vulnerable.”

And now, with a debut EP out, Zach’s never been more sure of himself. “I have a clear vision for my sound and where I want to take it.” Making music alone in his bedroom has taught him “to really trust your gut, because there’s nothing else to rely on”.

“I just have to keep believing that what I’m doing is right and hopefully it’ll take me where I want to go.”

Rather than just a collection of hopeful anthems drenched in melancholy, Zach Templar’s debut EP is an ambitious concept record about coming-of-age confusion, the loss of childlike wonder and wistful nostalgia. It’s his recent reality, given a fantastical twist. “I’ve always wanted to make big statements,” he explains. “It’s about elevating what I’ve done before. I know my music has already touched people and I just hope I can continue doing things that make people feel something. These are all tracks that I really care and if you’ve put all this effort into writing music, you want it to be something special.”