All photography by Drew Cwiek (@bydrewcwiek)

Frost Children have never not been trying to figure out what kind of music they make. The duo, who are also siblings, first performed together as literal children in the church. Later they were in a cover band that performed Green Day songs. After that, half of the group (Lulu) started a Beatles cover band while the other half (Angel) joined a band that played the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World soundtrack. Lulu went to music school. Angel studied neuroscience. Neither finished their program, and we’re all better off for it. The siblings came back together and formed Frost Children, the electronic project whose fourth album came out on Friday.

Frost Children’s founding did not end the experimentation. Their second album, Speed Run, sounded nothing like their third album, Hearth Room. Sister, their latest album, which you should consider listening to while reading this interview, doesn’t sound quite like either of its elders. The electronic and dance elements of their music are ever in delicate tension with their vocal and instrumental proclivities. Label the music as you see fit—you’ll be wrong by the time the next project drops.

Dynamism has not prevented Frost Children from garnering a cult following and some major collaborators. Danny Brown, Kim Petras, and Babymorocco are in the latter group. Members of the former group are why it will be hard to get a ticket to their upcoming tour.

Sister, Friday's release, is poised to be Frost Children’s biggest project yet. The sound is streamlined. On it, all of their major influences are on display, from hyperpop to indie rock to hymns. These sounds have matured, just like the siblings themselves. We spoke to Frost Children about this new music, the old music, the meaning of life, and more. Read on.

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Welcome: What is your story?

LULU: Not a lot of people know it, but we’re siblings. We grew up together. We went through a lot of different moments of music, but this is the one that took off. We’re in what I think is our best era now, and our best album just got made this year in Mexico City, London as well. That’s the short story.

Welcome: What is one thing people need to know about St. Louis?

ANGEL: People should know St. Louis was supposed to be Chicago. Like someone decided that Chicago was going to be the lit Midwest city. For a while St. Louis and Chicago were the same vibe, then they chose Chicago as the transportation hub. That’s why St. Louis feels random.

LULU: The man who invented the pop top on soda cans lived in Chesterfield, Missouri, where we grew up. He owned a lot of land around us. Then he died and it became a public park. Rest in peace to the goat.

Welcome: Growing up, you both played music in the church. Are there any lessons from those early days you still hold onto?

LULU: Some of our melody writing now is very hymnal, like offering songs at mass. Simple chords, soaring melodies, long notes, epic sounding.

ANGEL: A lot of songs from the 50s and 60s written for mass are so good. "On Eagle’s Wings" is maybe the best song of all time. The lyrics are beautiful. It has an indelible effect. Our parents don’t live in St. Louis anymore, but they still perform at a church in Virginia every Sunday. Whenever we’re in town, we see them.

Welcome: Specific sub-scenes aside, the data suggests the world is getting more secular, and fewer children grow up in the church. Considering how many musicians had formative experiences in that environment I wonder: musically, are we losing something in this shift?

ANGEL: I think so. Even outside music, [church] provides structure. There are downsides to being dogmatized early, but there’s also discipline and tradition. And you can abandon it whenever you want.

LULU: Musically, church brings everyone into a communal space where we all have to sing. Even if you don’t think you have a voice, you do if we all sing together. Lyrics also matter. As a tween I thought, "I don’t know why I’m singing this." I went through motions, but it was important. You show up, sing these songs, then later realize you don’t have to but want to, because there’s beauty in it. If you don’t have that and only have popular or radio music, you lose traditional music. For us, that was traditional American music.

ANGEL: You also have to have something to rebel against too. We weren’t like, "I love church." We were like any other kids, bored, not wanting to go. But that gives you something to go against. If a kid says, "I want to make hyperpop on FL Studio," and you just give it to them, maybe you should also say, "You’re going to sing in the choir." Then the kid thinks, "I want to go home and make beats." That tension is important. Church serves that function in addition to beauty and sacredness. You have to be bored and hate things too.

Welcome: People will refer to the club as their church. There are similarities: we sing together, all stand looking forward at one thing on an elevated surface. Do you make anything of that connection?

ANGEL: Totally. Music is super spiritual. We started a side project band last year called One. Lulu playing drums, me playing bass, our friend Angelina improv screaming. All the songs were one single chord, a different chord each song. It was more about rhythm. No lyrics, just meditation, a really intense meditation. It feels like a spiritual experience. I call it a Christian rock band because it feels spiritual. Same with Frost Children. We’re all singing along. A lot of songs on Sister are me and Lulu singing at the same time, which is a hymn in its own right.

LULU: You lose yourself in dancing, in the lights and music live, in the same way people fall to their knees and speak in tongues at church. People have that reaction to dance music, sober or on drugs, and it’s just as valid.

Welcome: ‘Move-to-New-York-and-start-a-band’ is an established narrative in the cultural consciousness. You actually did it. What inspired you to make that jump, and what would you tell someone considering moving to a major cultural hub to spark a career?

LULU: My move to New York in 2021 was inevitable. Some chapters in life, you just know it’s going to happen. Even if more people tell you not to than encourage you. My family and friends told me not to drop out because I only had one year left of college. It didn’t make sense. It seemed like the wrong time, but in my heart and brain, I knew if I didn’t do it now, I wouldn’t. My advice: if you’re unhappy where you are and have a strong inkling it’ll be better somewhere else, you should do it, even if it doesn’t feel like the right time.

ANGEL: It’ll never feel like the right time. New York specifically is the easiest entry point into music, DJing, live performance. Famously, in history and movies, you can go to New York and become whatever you want. Have you seen Undercover Billionaire? They’re dropped in a new city with $100, a cell phone, and a car, and have to make a million in a month. Sometimes I think about that, but with music: zero listeners, a laptop, dropped into New York. What would you do?

LULU: I think a lot of people make the mistake of moving to LA.

ANGEL: Yeah, it’s a huge mistake.

LULU: You can move there if you’re already connected. But people I know who moved from Nashville or New York to LA to start out make the wrong move. You’ll feel sucked into the void, bound to making very safe music just to make rent. In New York, it’s also expensive, but you can’t just be a mainstream safe artist because there’s no scene for that. You have to raise your flag to get attention, which is where true artists come from. No shade to LA. I like LA a lot.

Welcome: How do the two of you work together on a practical level? What are your respective roles?

ANGEL: We’re both producer-singers. Lulu drives a lot of the beat making, and I compliment it most of the time. Not always—I start some songs too. But Lulu is the machine of the beats most of the time.

LULU: Even then, a lot of beats I make I wouldn’t have made without Angel making a remix that inspired me. Even if I produce a beat entirely, it’ll sound like Angel too, because of influence.

ANGEL: We’re constantly making shit on our laptops within earshot of each other since we live together. We have a shared brain of production and singing, a unified role. It’s hard to describe.

LULU: We just started our label called Purple Label, working on new artist ideas. We scheme about: what if there was an artist like this? Or a sound like this? That’s our outlet for influencing the next generation of EDM and electronic music. It’s an equally split role for both of us.

Welcome: I know this forthcoming album was recorded all over the world. You also have a home studio. How does the recording process usually go? Do you like going to a studio?

LULU: Honestly, not really. I like our little studio here. It’s kind of a closet, which I love. When we go to a session in a studio, it makes things harder. You have to figure out the gear, you’re paying for studio time, the speakers aren’t ones you’re used to, you don’t know how it’ll sound after, you can’t see the sun. Every collaboration has been more fun at someone’s house or apartment. All you need is an audio interface.

ANGEL: Sometimes it works in a studio. It has functional use: good equipment, big speakers. But inspiration strikes in motion or at home. In the studio you don’t really have epiphanies. You either fake it or bottle it when you feel it outside and open that bottle later.

LULU: Why make music in a space where no one will hear it? It’s like making a movie on a massive screen, then on a normal screen it doesn’t look as good. I’ve mastered stuff on my laptop speakers because that’s how most people hear it. Or even less, on their phone.

Welcome: So how does collaboration fit in? Does that usually happen in a shared space or remotely?

Lulu: Depends. On this album we’ve had so many people in this studio, from every scene. We’re always having people over to hang out and make stuff. I prefer that to remote. On this album the Kim Petras feature, Babymorocco feature were in person—Babymorocco here, Kim at her house in LA. Porter Robinson contributed synths remotely, but he came here first, heard Don’t Make Me Cry, and it made an impression on him so he sent us things. There’s a physical in-person thing that’s necessary for lasting collaboration. But sometimes it’s remote.

Angel: I was going to say I’ve never met someone online and made a song without meeting them, but that’s happened multiple times. Before I met Thrilliam Angels we had already dropped a song together. Shit happens. Danny Brown last year was in a studio in Austin. There’s really no answer.

Welcome: How did the Danny Brown collaboration come into being?

Lulu: We found out on Twitter we were fans of each other.

Angel: He responded to our song Flatline being used on FIFA. I posted, "Flatline is in FIFA." He replied, "Hell yeah, I love FIFA." I was like, "Whoa, Danny Brown." We DMed a bit, he gave me his Steam account to play games. We ended up linking in Austin, where he still lives. Every time we're there, we do a little cookup with Danny. We did one for Shake It Like a, and we've been working on other stuff. Every time we pass through Austin, we link with Danny.

Welcome: For this new album, Sister, I hear that a really important moment of inspiration came during a DJ set in Copenhagen. Can you expand on that moment, and why it was important for directing this project?

Angel: We had released Speed Run and Hearth Room the year before and were on a DJ tour. We were asking what we wanted to do next. We're a live band, we love performing, we play guitar and bass, but we wanted it to be electronic. We called it electro grunge. When I write songs on guitar, it leans into Smashing Pumpkins or Built to Spill. I thought, "Okay, this but with 9 Inch Nails drums could be cool." We made demos like that. Then DJing, I was only listening to Avicii and older EDM, Swedish stuff especially. We played Avicii Levels at this DJ set. It was the first time we DJed it. It's the biggest EDM song, but the crowd was so bumping. I was like, "This is it. Fuck all the rest." Just simple melody and drums, that's all you need. The solution is simpler than fusing genres and doing crazy shit. It was a huge moment.

Welcome: I've seen no less than 10 different classifications for the two of you. How would you describe the music on Sister?

Lulu: It feels like universal dance, but intentional.

Angel: We're not serving the most chaotic crazy sounds. We have cool sounds, but we're focused on the songs being good on their own.

Lulu: Beautiful dance music.

Angel: I think of it as emotional dance music.

Welcome: What do you think about the state of genre more generally?

Lulu: It’s easy for us, the artists, to be like, "Oh, it's not this, that's not how I see it.” There’s never going to be a case where I see an article, good or bad, say, "I would call it this," and I'm like, "Yeah, I agree." But listeners will always want to give what they're listening to a name. So genre as a concept is mandatory. We can’t strip that away because that would only be for the artist's sake. Even if the president was like, "No more genres," everyone will still end up doing it anyway. It's the same as drinking water.

Welcome: The cover for the album has that S we all learned to draw. For me it brings back memories of elementary school, middle school. Where did that cover idea come from?

Angel: Whoever invented that S is a genius. We looked it up—no copyright. It's equally universal to the way we see the music.

Lulu: Everyone can recognize it, but everyone has different memories attached to drawing it, which is beautiful in the same way sisterhood is different to everyone but also universal. Same with dance music. They all have parallels.

Angel: I associate that image with boredom and playfulness. Boredom is awesome, something you should always have in your life. That's where bursts of creativity come from. On the cover of Sister, it's etched into her back, like a scar tattoo. A dedication to playfulness.

Welcome: Do you court boredom in your life?

Lulu: I hate being bored, hate too much free time. I work best with constraints, which is why I love touring. When I come home from tour with a week free, I'm like, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ My brain melts. I don’t work well under free time.

Angel: But that's precisely why it's important to make free time, like we were saying with church earlier. You have to engineer something you hate into your life so you can escape from it. You need moments where you don't know what to do, feel useless, hopeless. You want to fill the silence, but if there's no silence, what are you even doing? Then you're bored in a cosmic way, like, what am I even for?

Lulu: There's a balance, but we lean on one side. We're always looking for reasons to go to London, LA, wherever, to make music. We like making beats at the airport, on the way somewhere. It gives inspiration. Sometimes it's hard to find inspiration out of thin air when you just wake up at home. A blank canvas is too frustrating.

Welcome: The two of you are excellent performers. How do you prepare to go on stage both mentally and physically? What's in your rider?

Lulu: We usually eat right after the set. So we just drink whiskey on the rocks and talk.

Angel: I also like to have a lot of organ meat on tour, which gives me an immune boost and confidence boost.

Lulu: We also don't feel like we have stage fright anymore. It feels very seamless, like I'm in this room—the green room—and now I'm on stage and my heart rate didn't change. Which is good. It just feels like a fluid thing because we love doing it.

Welcome: Do you think you will open for yourself again?

Lulu: Maybe. I've considered having One on tour, our side project band. We could DJ open. We've DJ opened for ourselves because an opener couldn't make it, and we have our own DJ side projects.

Angel: Or Purple Label universe artists opening for us. We have Lilith aka DJ Thank You who's touring with us. She's an amazing producer and we're helping put out her album this year. But I would do it again.

Welcome: Your aesthetic is striking. The ‘dubstep academia’ term gets thrown around. How do you think about the aesthetic you convey as a musical group?

Lulu: I feel like it's an embodiment of what we do. We play tennis all the time. We both used to work at Ralph Lauren.

Angel: We went to private school too. Our dad worked at a private high school, so we got to go for free. We had this preppy school experience. It feels traumatic in many ways but also like—that's how I know how to dress. I love that kind of shit. It was escapist for me too. Being in St. Louis, Missouri, landlocked, I was into the idea of New England or coastal shit. I love the movie Rushmore and that prep school aesthetic. For this album, my girlfriend Andrea has been the creative director. She's done a lot of the graphics, image direction. It's the first time we've worked with someone in that capacity.

Welcome: What contemporary music are you listening to right now?

Lulu: I'm listening to a lot of older electronic music, but as far as new—oh, The Deep.

Angel: I love The Deep. We just made some shit with her in LA. She's the most goated Korean K-pop girl in my opinion. I think Ninajirachi is really cool too. I like her new album. The new Alex G album—I really like it. That shit is awesome.

Lulu: We both really like Swag, the new Justin Bieber album. I think it's one of his best. He's not getting too top pop with it. It feels like he's vibing, and his vocals sound amazing.

Angel: And the unreleased Kim Petras is so good. Oh, and unreleased Angel Money. Shout out to Angel Money.

Lulu: And Purple Label artists we listen to all the time. DJ Thank You, Angel Money. DJ Upstep—one of our favorite contemporaries—just put out an EP We Up that came out so fucking crazy. She's really talented.

Welcome: What is inspiring you these days? This can be musical or general inspiration.

Lulu: We were just talking about it. We're both really into movies. Music is always driving us, but movies are the other medium. I'm really into old Hollywood, black and white, beautifully shot classic movies. We've also been on this kick of watching sisteresque movies about sisterhood. There's a really good one called Whatever Happened to Baby Jane with Betty Davis and Joan Crawford.

Angel: I love to read and write. I'm reading Deleuze right now, Anti-Oedipus. It's really hard, but I like the challenge. I'm trying to read it more like a book of poetry, where you don't have to understand every phrase. It's making me see how psychoanalysis has impacted the world. I used to study brain science when I moved to New York. Then I dropped out. I grew to distrust science in general.

Lulu: We're also both really inspired by Zen and the art of Zen Buddhism. We both read a lot of 1930s Edo period Japanese literature, nonlinear zen stories about a guy on a mountain. That stuff is really beautiful to me.

Welcome: What do you think the meaning of life is?

Angel: Love.

Lulu: Love.

Welcome: What is the point of making music?

Angel: Also love.

Lulu: Genuine love.

Welcome: What is one thing you wish you didn't know?

Angel: I wish I didn't know three of the four performing members of Kraftwerk weren't in the original lineup. I saw them recently, full body chills the entire time. Then someone said, "Oh yeah, there’s only one OG member." And I was like, fuck, I wish I didn't know that.

Lulu: I wish I didn’t know bananas are really high in sugar.

Welcome: What's for breakfast on a normal day?

Angel: I got a good one. It's an Angel special, ‘punk breakfast.’ Oatmeal with chia seeds, honey, banana, peanut butter, and a fried egg on top. People can't fuck with you because you did some crazy shit at 10:00 a.m. You started your day with an insane yet nutritious choice. That sprinkle of insanity is important.

Lulu: I just start with a banana.

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