by Katie Li

April 26th 2025

Take the ingredients of your favorite 2009 Youtube personality, run their voice through an earworm autotune, throw in a sex doll, glitch the fuck out, and you get music’s one-and-only: Tommy Fleece. 

SPIRIT (Persona):

Of course, that’s an oversimplification. He’s got three albums and a stalkworthy digital footprint —including two hours of non-music related Youtube content— for you to get familiar with him. My personal must-watch recommendations for you are his virginity journey series (congrats Tommy!), his slime challenge, and his “dancing to my new song” videos. The universe Tommy Fleece has built is huge and feels insanely well-thought out; for instance, “Tommy’s tech tips” are simultaneously a part of his Youtube intro, his most used Instagram hashtag, and a channel on his Discord server. 

I’m not sure if Tommy quite realizes his genius. “I’m just being me. I’m just trying to have a good time,” he emphasizes. And I think it’s the fact that these 'performances' aren’t being intellectualized — that they come so effortlessly and authentically — that allows him to make the persona and music fit into the same universe. Chaos is matched with more chaos, which is the common feeling I get when consuming anything Tommy Fleece.

SOUL (Music):

The music was born first, preceding all the silliness and the inside jokes he has with his fans. 

Bar his first two Soundcloud-only releases (the earliest being in November 2019), Tommy Fleece’s official discography begins in July 2020 with album Audio Tactile Synesthesia. At first listen, his sound in these early tracks feels somewhat unrecognizable. His vocals are absent of the heavy autotune and feel more lethargic in contrast to his current punky, thrashy, emotional tone, best exemplified by his screamo-reminiscent vocals in 2025 single “Short and Painless.” Most notably, the subgenres that inspire the album feel entirely different; “Stanley Kubrick” uses lo-fi drum beats. “Coffee Bean” reminds me more of R&B/soul-inspired indie music perfected by artists like Dijon and Ryan Beatty. “And I Walked Home” feels backroom-y, like an interlude or a piano-dominant score to a coming-of-age cinematic montage. However, despite traversing a multitude of seemingly unrelated genres, Tommy’s early sound makes sense as a precursor to his album series audio stars and audio stars 2. Dissonant keys, distorted guitars, glitchy vocal chops, and an often untraditional and stream-of-consciousness song structure define Audio Tactile Synesthesia, forming a sense of understated chaos that is still, well, chaotic.

Though his sound remains eclectic, Tommy Fleece seems to have simplified. Now, he just wants to “make [his music…] sound really bad.” And while his fans might disagree, I get the sentiment. I love describing my music taste that way, partially to self deprecate, partially for shock value. But what I mean is not the black-and-white, point-blank, ‘good vs. bad’ objectivity most people normally associate the adjective with. Instead, I think I mean the music is just subversive. And that I would get it if my grandparents or someone who hasn’t formed full fledged ADHD yet refused to let me aux again (there’s been times where, on a particularly hungover morning, my friends have used the words “loud” and “not good for their headaches” while driving to my favorite songs.). Not everyone can handle the gnarliness of the sound Tommy stresses he is trying to achieve. It’s kind of meta actually… he’s describing his music as bad from the perspective of mainstream audiences while, simultaneously, being the one challenging those mainstream ideals… genius! And what constitutes that ‘bad, grimy, gnarly’ sound today is best summarized as heavily digital— mostly devoid of reverb with an amalgamation of glitch clicks, gritty noisiness, and narrow, mono, and sine wave synths.

His lyricism is no less divisive. He seems to reference a certain culture of weirdness and randomness that could only be born from the digital world. Hello kitty bongs, body imagery (including but not limited to: teeth, tongues, and underwear), your mom mic drops, and “Zack Efron car crash” (Tommy???) are some of the topics he touches on. They’re things we know and grew up with. They’re manifestations of the nostalgia we try to shed all knowledge of as we grow up. In a culture where people seem to always be searching for a sense of profoundness, his lyricism is refreshing in its tangibility and unseriousness. 

BODY (Performance):

Basically, Tommy Fleece wants you to freak out to his music and that shows in his performances. One of four performances last Friday night, we met with Tommy pre-show in every underground music head's favorite Brooklyn neighborhood, Bushwick. New York’s most exciting musical scene, which we’ve dubbed ‘church electronic,’ unwaveringly brings devout audiences. The kind that can only be drawn from divisive sonics and a strong sense of understanding between artist and listener, where we understand their ‘bad’ music and they understand exactly how to make it.

Of the many, many New York shows I’ve come to see within the same vein, this one felt energetically different. This genre of music is one of many that’s partially fallen victim to the nonchalant epidemic, where certain shows have become as about aesthetics as about music. But this just wasn’t one of those. Led by the example of Tommy’s visceral movements and emotional facial expressions (check the gallery, you’ll know it when you see it..), the crowd felt like they were purging themselves of years of built-up energy to the soundtrack of Tommy Fleece. This sense of liberation is perfectly epitomized by both the show’s mosh pit and the constant “TOMMY!” screams that took me back to mid 2010s fangirl culture. I could go on for hours about the details of what exactly made the show the purest form of live music, but still not be able to paint the full picture. Conveniently for you, he’s going on his first-ever national tour, as opener for bicoastal musician Alice Longyu Gao, right now. And if you’re lucky enough, you’ll be able to catch him, his soul, and his sex doll-turned friend (?, someone find out for me, maybe they haven’t gotten to the label stage of their relationship just yet..) Evan, in the flesh very soon. 

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Watch my full conversation with Tommy Fleece below.