On the Rise
Lottie’s

Is she subtly declaring, This belongs to me – putting the possessive in possessive apostrophe – and therefore outrunning any ‘nepo baby’ mudslinging? Is this a way of disentangling from one of our most lauded and influential songwriters – her father, Stephen Malkmus?

Not really. It’s not that deep.

“I do like the way that ‘Lottie’ looks written out, like in interesting fonts – that’s why I decided to call the project Lottie’s with an apostrophe-s,” she tells me from a friend’s house in Oregon. It’s spring break, barely breakfast time, and she and some pals are midway through a road trip up the coast. Kendra Smith, the reclusive singer of Opal – a psychedelic eighties band that Hope Sandoval later joined and morphed into Mazzy Star – resides in the same neck of the woods, Lottie tells me, “living out her days with no cell service or electricity, or something like that.” Lottie is disarmingly cognisant and conversational, especially given the hour – and that this is her first ever press interview.

“I just think [Lottie’s] is a cool-looking name, like, formally,” she continues. “I definitely didn’t want [to release stuff under] the Malkmus last name. Not because I don’t like Pavement or any of his music – I think it’s super cool – but just because then there’s slightly less of an association.”

When picking a DJ name, Lottie went slightly more obscure with Leroy the Poet. As well as creating music as Lottie’s, she studies Philosophy and English at Pomona College in California, where she’s music director for the radio station that serves their campus and other Claremont colleges, KSPC 88.7FM.

“I was almost named Leroy – I wish,” she says when I ask who her one public Spotify playlist, Leroy’s, is named for. “All the other DJs at the station, their names were DJ blank – like, ‘I’m DJ River and my show is currents,’” she balks at the cheesiness. “I wasn’t really about that. So I’ll be Leroy the Poet instead of DJ Leroy or DJ whatever-kinda-thing. It’s my alter ego. It’s my DJ persona.”

If she isn’t about currents, then what is Leroy the Poet’s musical marrow? “Man, I’ve been all over the place in terms of what I listen to,” she says. “A lot of my listening was informed by what we had in the library: a lot of outsider musicians and feedback-y lo-fi stuff, like Flying Saucer Attack.” She namechecks cult indie labels such as Philadelphia’s Siltbreeze, fellow Californian outcasts Shrimper, and Chicago’s Drag City, which has released records by Royal Trux and Joanna Newsom as well as Pavement’s dirt-caked 1990 EP Demolition Plot J-7. Then goes on to cite Arthur Russell’s World of Echo, Neu!, and John Fahey as particular favourites.

All of these align with the lightly experimental, make-it-sound-easy indie rock sound Lottie landed on with her first songs, “The Cut” and “What have we got”. You’ll hear Fahey’s quiet reverence of the acoustic guitar and innovative, evolving playing style; the lo-fi production and addictive hooks of early Pavement and their nineties peers; and the rhythmic, sweet-sung minimalism of Young Marble Giants, who appear in the Leroy’s playlist and are perhaps Lottie’s closest sonic relative. Lottie deftly amalgamates what is a pretty eclectic mix – particularly for someone in her early twenties.

Then again, college radio also seems an anachronistic pursuit for a twenty-something in 2025. We’re a ways past the peak of its relevance, when “college rock” progenitors such as R.E.M. were freeing the airways and Lottie’s father was a DJ at his alma mater’s station, WTJU, out of the University of Virginia. But college radio is an enduring format and bastion of the creative community, with stations such as Calgary’s CJSW still considered certified tastemakers.

Sure, it’s a little old school, Lottie admits, but it tracks with her outlook more generally: a gentle rebellion against our perpetual online-ness – what she calls this “culture of bedroom-y isolated individual music creation.” In contrast, she explains, “the things that excite me most about music are community-oriented, and integrating into scenes in different cities and meeting interesting people and collaborating. I really like bands – collaborative, band-oriented music creation, so that’s what I’m gonna lean into.”

Lottie takes an analogue approach to other aspects of music where she can. When it comes to booking shows, she and Adam Dieck, her bass player, will drive to their favourite L.A. venues and just start chatting to people. (It’s easiest when their target is wearing a cool shirt, as that’s a good way in.) Playing live is her favourite part of all this – rock shows, well, they’re “less intimidating than performing a cello sonata in front of the music department,” she says. Plus: she, Adam, and drummer René Garcia started developing their live-show synergy even before the first Lottie’s shows earlier this year; the trio used to play in an ambient group, Lottie on cello, which she manipulated with delays and distortions.

“They were like, ‘Hey, since you have music out, we should totally use this as an excuse to book gigs, like real gigs,’” Lottie says, recalling her bandmates’ pitch. “We played at the James Turrell Skyspace, which was like an impromptu concert,” she says. “We were going to play on Mount Baldy, which is near Claremont, a little drive away. Then we started playing my music and that overtook the ambient music group, and then we honed in on that instead.”

But writing isn’t as easy on cello, she says, commending the guitar’s versatility, how intuitive it is. “I’ve played instruments all my life,” she explains. “I started out on classical guitar when we lived in Berlin. I was taking lessons from this old German guy who didn’t speak any English. I was in first grade, so I fell off that pretty fast.” Next came piano, then cello – her true love for a long spell – before guitar won her back around.

“I was a very intense kid; I took everything really seriously,” Lottie shares, which seems surprising given her father’s notoriously carefree attitude (see: the dreaded ‘slacker’ label). “I became really obsessed with cello,” Lottie continues. “I listened to the Elgar Cello Concerto – I think Jacqueline du Pré was playing it – and it really impacted me. Maybe because Jacqueline du Pré was so beautiful. I was a little kid. I was like, ‘Wow, she’s amazing. I want to be like her.’”

Lottie is carrying forward her du Pré love into her own music, incorporating a distorted minor-third cello part into the low-end of “The Cut”, where it adds a subtle texture that beefs up the rusty, almost Jeff Mangum-esque growls of acoustic guitar as they bicker with coltish drum-kit scatters. “What have we got”, her first release, is a sunny tune, centered on an infectious, shoulder-sinking turnaround. “No more recitations when I’m on my way back home,” she murmurs in the chorus, her vocals tucked away in the shade of bright, tinkling guitars that cruise down the street after her. Though it was inspired by Joyce’s Dubliners and written “in a frenzy,” “What have we got” radiates only sunshine, ease, and a sense of freedom – maybe the best track of 2025 so far.

Both songs were tracked in her friend Greg White’s living room in Pasadena. Sitting in an armchair for hours, Lottie studied his mixing chops. “Honestly, two hours in and I couldn’t focus anymore,” she admits. “I think it’s a process that requires a couple years of devotion to nail down. You can always go deeper. I don’t love a super highly produced song, but mixing does matter.”

Here, Lottie reveals her enviable combination of curiosity and patience, her acceptance of time as a necessary part in building out whatever this is. She tells me that she never imagined having a music career – if this is to be her career – but given her musical upbringing and innate talent, I wonder if it was predestined, or perhaps a noble pursuit for the benefit of the music-loving population?

“It turned out the only thing that really made sense to me was music,” she confirms. “I still remember the first song I wrote. There might be a video somewhere on the internet of me singing it at some benefit gala. It was called ‘Balloons Make Me Happy’ and it was in third grade. But you don’t ever anticipate that as a career. I still don’t know if that’s what is going to happen down the line. But you just start doing it. You play in bands, you start to record, and I’m early on in the process…”

She’s right: her first songs are barely two months old. She doesn’t have a publicist yet. No other publications have requested an interview (despite her social media bios offering a direct-line email address). Her childhood intensity having softened, Lottie has adopted an attitude that is perceptive yet relaxed, happy to play it as it lays – a sure-fire inoculation against any pressure that might come attached to the name Malkmus. For now, her focus is on the stuff that matters: playing some shows with some cool bands in Chicago and New York this summer and then it’s back to her mixing-and-mastering homework for her debut album. She’s scrapping it together, as she puts it.

“I don’t know how many musicians are actually intentional about becoming musicians,” Lottie concludes, poking at a question around our unintentional adherence to what our parents model for us, following them through life like little ducklings doomed to fail or sure to succeed. Of course, it’s not that simple. But it also kind of is: “To me, there’s nothing else I can do,” she continues. “I’m gonna be doing this whether it’s a career or not. It’s something I’m gonna do because I can’t not do it. It’s like being or drinking or breathing.”

And, most importantly, “It’s so much fun.”