As an introvert growing up on the coast in County Wicklow, Ireland, a teenage Ezra Williams would steal their brother’s iPod Shuffle and jot down “little poems”. These later became songs, culminating in their first single, 2018’s Thinking of You – a wistful bedroom-pop track that only migrated from GarageBand to SoundCloud’s public sphere for the benefit of their mum, who wanted a listen. After that: “I just kept releasing things. That was it.”
Influenced by artists such as Elliott Smith, Frank Ocean and Fiona Apple, Williams’s soft indie rock is rich with layers of meaning. Their shoegazey 2020 single My Own Person drew in fans after featuring in the coming-of-age Netflix hit Heartstopper, with its gentle melody and heart-wrenching lyrics (“But I wanna start feeling that I can be myself”). “Some of the song is sarcasm relating to the fact that society thinks the trans community is constantly confused,” Williams, who identifies as non-binary, explained.
Now 21 and an art student in Cork, Williams is diving deeper still into themes of desire, alienation and uncertainty. Their forthcoming debut album, Supernumeraries, examines burgeoning or faded relationships amid a considered blend of heady, echoing harmonies and contemplative guitar-strumming. In Williams’s capable hands, intimate details and closely held desires – such as Until I’m Home’s “You smell like a home that you love and you know/ Wish I knew what it smelt like to you” – become resonant and universal.
