Royel Maddell and Otis Pavlovic, who make up the Australian indie pop band Royel Otis, aren’t sure how everything happened so quickly.
What began in 2019 with demos on laptops and cheap microphones has, six years later, grown into several viral social media moments, a constant flow of international concerts, major spots on the U.S. festival circuit, and now, a hit sophomore album, hickey, which came out on August 25, only about a year after their first album Pratts & Pain.
What they can say definitively is that everything leading up to this moment has been nonstop. “We spent four months in LA working on this. We’re pretty shattered,” Pavlovic tells Teen Vogue when we met up in Brooklyn in early August.
That afternoon, they were fresh off their first Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon appearance and rightfully tired (as evidenced by Maddell’s quick catnap before we started our interview) from traveling back and forth across Europe and the U.S. When they left the restaurant, they were heading back to Belgium for a string of shows that were ultimately postponed after Maddell appeared to faint on stage due to a virus, according to a statement from the band.
This kind of whirlwind reads like an overnight success most bands dream of (minus the illness, of course), but from their perspective, it’s actually a slow burn of constant work. “It feels like it's happening kind of gradually,” Pavlovic says. “We've been playing for five years, and [the attention] has just slowly gone up.”
As I go to respond, a waiter pushes a chair at the table next to us, and it makes a loud vibrating noise. Maddell stops himself before adding to the conversation, “Excuse me,” he says. Pavolic looks at him, then me. I get the joke and laugh, giving what feels like a sort of permission for them to let out some exhaustion-induced goofiness. A full three minutes later, we’re back to the conversation.
“The other day, man, I was looking out at the crowd at Outside Lands Festival, and it was pretty crazy,” says Maddell. “It was just surreal.”
The band hail from Sydney but they haven’t totally decided on their origin story. They met through their ex-girlfriends but they also crossed paths in local bars and at different shows over the years. Oh, and Maddell’s dad knew Pavlovic’s uncle, but ultimately they landed on the idea that it was their then-girlfriends who brought them together, helping them go from acquaintances who liked similar music to a successful musical partnership. It turns out, it’s a fitting start to the story (the beginning of which they are arguably still in) of two guys who make a lot of music about... well, girls.
They’ve fashioned a distinctive aesthetic to go along with their sound. Maddell chooses to semi-hide his face with his wavy hair, which is bleached and dyed light pink at the ends, often wearing cardigans and tees ala Kurt Cobain. Pavlovic similarly has the effortless effort of someone who skateboards and listens to Radiohead, unironically wearing his own merch to our shoot because it was what he had on him.
Something unique about Royel Otis’s growth is that many of their fans came for their viral covers of other people’s songs and stayed for the rest. In 2023, they covered Sophie Ellis-Bextor's “Murder on the Dance Floor” on Australia’s Like a Version at the exact time Saltburn was bringing the song back onto the charts. “In a lot of ways, it's less surprising [that the cover] was what was popular,” says Pavlovic. “I think if it were our own song that went viral, that would be way more surprising.” Another viral cover of The Cranberries' 1993 hit “Linger” was recently used as one of the best needle drops of the entire The Summer I Turned Pretty series.
“That was with Conrad, right?” Pavlovic asks. “I watched the episode with my girlfriend a couple of months ago,” I asked him what they thought. He shrugs and smiles, “It was nice.”
The song works well in the episode because it comes alongside a narration flip from the female lead, Belly [Lola Tung], to the male lead, Conrad [Chris Briney]. It’s a scene that’s maxed out on pining, with slow-motion close-ups of Belly that cut back to Conrad, who is clearly longing for her. When Royel Otis’s “Linger” kicks in, Pavlovic’s soft pitch lends a boyish vulnerability to the song that gives the moment its almost too-painful-to-watch romanticism.
It’s another notch in the show’s track record for excellent scores, but it also doesn’t hurt that Tung is apparently a big fan of the band. “I’m not sure about how big of a fan, but she’s really good at pool,” says Maddell. And he would know. The relationship between the actress and the band has grown so much that she is the star of their recent “whos your boyfriend” music video. In it, Tung plays girlfriend to Pavlovic. She arrives at a bar early, gorgeous as ever, gets a free drink from a bartender only for him to realize that she’s actually in a relationship when the band walks in — she and Pavlovic hug, kiss, and of course, play pool.
Suppose Royel Otis were tired before the album was released. In that case, it’s maybe nothing compared to where they are now: a forthcoming European leg of their upcoming tour, marking a total of 47 international shows before the end of the year (10 of which are already sold out), then back to the U.S. where they’ll be playing their first-ever Coachella set. Still, they maintain a kind of ease in person that shows in their music.
Their newest album is clearly thoughtful, yet laid-back enough lyrically that listening to it feels easy, in the best possible way. Compared to their first album, this one makes a clear turn into pop side of indie pop, filling a space left open by the TikTokification of the genre. Many songs were created with the help of producer Blake Slatkin, who famously works with Charli XCX.
The collaboration is immediately apparent in their single releases, “moody” and “say something.” (The former of which they apologized for a lyric that some deemed misogynistic.) Both songs have the pre-cellphone-era coffee shop bounciness of an early 2000s indie bop; they also worked with Josh and Lydia from the popular British indie band Jungle. “Josh and Lydia could be making sushi from scratch, making up harmonies and saying what chord can possibly go next,” says Maddell. “They're f*cking incredible.”
Since the album's release, the reception has been decidedly positive, with most reviews placing them into a growing lane of indie pop bands taking over the internet waves, gathering cult-like followings around the world. “We recorded like 30 songs to get to this,” adds Pavlovic, “but we’re pretty happy.”
