Underscores (musician)

April Harper Grey (born April 21, 2000), known professionally as Underscores (stylized in lowercase), is an American singer-songwriter and producer. She grew up listening to artists like Jack White, Beck, and Madonna, becoming interested in filmmaking and composing music at a young age. Grey began releasing dubstep music on SoundCloud at the age of 13, eventually incorporating other genres. After releasing three extended plays (EPs) from 2018 to 2020, she rose to prominence with her debut album Fishmonger in March 2021. She released its companion EP and opened for 100 gecs on tour later that year. Grey performed her first headlining tour in early 2022 and concluded the "Fishmonger era" with a pop song in early 2023. She released her second album Wallsocket in September 2023 on the Mom + Pop record label. It was promoted with four singles, an alternate reality game, and a tour of North America and Europe.

Grey's early influences include Skrillex and 100 gecs. Wallsocket was inspired by artists such as Imogen Heap, Bruce Springsteen, and Sufjan Stevens, as well as country music, 2010s pop, and horror films. Her style has been noted as diverse, playful, but precise, encompassing genres such as hyperpop, pop-punk, dubstep, indie pop, rock, and Midwest emo.

Early life
April Harper Grey was born on April 21, 2000, in San Francisco, California, to a Filipina mother and a white father. Before coming out as a trans woman, she attended an all-boys Catholic school for nine years, where she visited church three times a week. However, she has stated that her parents did not raise her to be religious like them. As a child, Grey wrote short stories, created films using iMovie, and ran a YouTube channel with Let's Plays of the video game Minecraft (2011).

Growing up, Grey listened to artists like Jack White, Beck, Lucinda Williams, and Van Morrison, as well as pop stars like Madonna, Britney Spears, and Justin Timberlake. She has specified Madonna's Music (2000) as the first album she remembers listening to. Grey became interested in composing music at the age of six. As a child, she produced beat loops and burned them onto CDs using her father's computer. She also experimented with GarageBand. In the early 2010s, Grey discovered Skrillex and the dubstep genre and was attracted to its sound design possibilities, akin to "rocket science". Spencer Kornhaber of The Atlantic wrote: "In high school, [she] became a jazz-band geek with a penchant for music theory". She also listened to Midwest emo and math rock music during high school.

Career
At the age of 13, Grey began releasing dubstep music as Underscores on SoundCloud. For years, she released a stream of "one-offs", such as her 2015 single "Mild Season", but she eventually became bored of "using the same sounds" and began incorporating other influences. She released the jazz–EDM extended play (EP) Skin Purifying Treatment in 2018. It was the first project she wrote lyrics for and she has cited it as where her style solidified. Grey followed it with the EP We Never Got Strawberry Cake in 2019. She designed its cover and uploaded it to DistroKid immediately after completion. She has noted it as the project she is most proud of, explaining, "because I didn't give myself ample time to start resenting it". In 2020, Grey released the EP Character Development!.

Grey released her debut album Fishmonger in March 2021. It features appearances from 8485, Gabby Start (formerly known as Knapsack), and Maxwell Young, and was preceded by the promotional singles "Second Hand Embarrassment" and "Kinko's Field Trip 2006". She recorded it at her parents' house amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite having no prior experience, she incorporated guitar into every track because she had "run out of production tricks" and did not like any piano voicings. Fishmonger appeared on The Atlantic list of the 10 best albums of 2021 and The Line of Best Fit list of the 15 best hyperpop albums. They complimented its combination of hyperpop with pop-punk, rock, and indie genres. Fishmonger also drew the attention of high-profile musicians such as Glaive, Lido, and Travis Barker of Blink-182. Upon release, Lido sent the album to Dorothy Caccavale of ATC Management, who eventually became Grey's manager alongside Jackson Perry. In late 2021, Grey toured as an opening act for 100 gecs on the U.S. leg of their 10,000 gecs tour. A follow-up EP to Fishmonger, titled Boneyard AKA Fearmonger, was released in December. It features drums from Barker and co-production from Brakence. The EP was inspired by her feelings of paralyzation and existential dread after releasing Fishmonger, in which she did not write music for five months. She tried to adapt these feelings into an apocalyptic setting. Until the idea for a song had formed, she did not allow herself to open the digital audio workstation Ableton.

Grey embarked on her first headlining mini-tour from February–March 2022. She also performed on Lollapalooza's opening day, July 28, at the T-Mobile stage in Grant Park, Chicago. She then featured in the social networking service Discord's mini-documentary titled Discord Scenes: Underground Pop Music. Grey released the pop song "Count of Three (You Can Eat $#@!)" in January 2023, which she dubbed "the last piece of the Fishmonger era". It features production from Dylan Brady and Cashmere Cat, as well as writing from Benny Blanco.

In April 2023, Grey released a "Wallsocket era" trailer, following it with the lead single "Cops and Robbers" in May. In June, she released a second single, "You Don't Even Know Who I Am". The Wallsocket album and its release date were announced in July alongside a third single, "Locals (Girls Like Us)", which features Gabby Start. On July 13, Grey embarked on the North American leg of her second headlining tour, the Hometown Tour. A fourth single, "Old Money Bitch", was released in August. Wallsocket was released on September 22, 2023, on the Mom + Pop record label. Alongside the tour, it was promoted with an alternate reality game (ARG) involving websites of a fictional Wallsocket, Michigan, town. The album features additional appearances from Henhouse! and Jane Remover. It received acclaim for its character-driven narrative and "eclectic" mix of genres. Grey began a European leg of the Hometown Tour on November 30.

Influences
Elias Leight of Rolling Stone highlighted Grey's liberal citing of influences, specifically, the U.K. garage of PinkPantheress and the Madonna–Nicki Minaj collaboration "Bitch I'm Madonna" (2015). While producing dubstep, she was inspired by Skrillex's "signature growl noise" and his EP Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites (2010). Grey gained the confidence to use her voice from how Laura Les, a trans woman, manipulated her vocals in alignment with her identity. As well, the popularity of 100 gecs affirmed to Grey that there was an audience for "weird", "distorted", and "funny" music.

For Flood Magazine, Grey listed 12 artists that had influenced Wallsocket. These included The Raconteurs, Sky Ferreira, Jason Isbell, Kwon Jin-ah, and Gillian Welch, as well as artists she listened to during childhood. In the interview, she identified songwriting inspiration from Imogen Heap, storytelling inspiration from Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska (1982), and conceptual inspiration from Sufjan Stevens's Michigan (2003) and Illinois (2005). Other Wallsocket influences include the pedal steel guitar, harmonica, and slide guitar involved in country music, as well as the 2010s pop of Marina and the Diamonds, Justin Timberlake, and Kesha. For Office, Grey said that Wallsocket was inspired by social commentary on the American class system within slasher films. She also cited horror films set in rural America as influences, like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Bones and All (2022). Wallsocket rollout was inspired by Halo 2 ARG I Love Bees, the marketing campaign for the 2008 film Cloverfield, and the screenplay and short film companion to Childish Gambino's Because the Internet (2013).

Musical style
Grey is a producer and singer-songwriter. Her music has been described as hyperpop,  pop-punk,  dubstep,   electropop, indie pop, electronica, rock, and Midwest emo. Grey's early dubstep music experimented with structure due to her perception that the genre was traditionally limited to filling in a template. Her debut album Fishmonger is a hyperpop record with elements of rock, emo, pop-punk, indie pop, ambience, and dubstep. Touching on celebrity culture, the album drew comparisons to 1990s alt-rock, as well as bands like MGMT and Cobra Starship. Fishmonger follow-up EP, Boneyard AKA Fearmonger, is a fusion of pop-punk, dubstep, drum and bass, and new wave, also containing ballads. Its lyrics discuss anxiety, existence, and generational apathy, and like Fishmonger, it is set in a seaside New Jersey town. Grey's second album Wallsocket is primarily pop, rock, folk, and country, with punk, shoegaze, trap, and emo influences. Some publications noted it as having moved on from hyperpop, Grey calling the genre "officially dead" in a 2023 NME interview. Wallsocket is a Michigan-set concept album about three girls navigating adulthood. It involves themes of gun violence, trans identity, corporatization, and religion.

The Guardian Aneesa Ahmed wrote that Grey has a "very gen-Z disregard for genre boundaries" and The Fader Jordan Darville said she has an "all in" approach to dissolving genre guardrails. Likewise, The Line of Best Fit Noah Simon and Matthew Kim wrote that Grey's "stylistic range is vast" and that she "has always been known for eclecticism". Spencer Kornhaber of The Atlantic noted that Grey uses technology to sing beyond physical limits. Kornhaber described her music as "nonbinary both in form and in content", linking it to the LGBT community. Nico Tripodi for Pigeons & Planes thought that half of her appeal was her refreshing production, yet "behind the turbulent sonics, there always lies a song that would sound just as good stripped down." Similarly, i-D Frankie Dunn called Grey's sound nostalgic and playful, while Leight of Rolling Stone described her as "precise about process". Grey herself called the production of Boneyard AKA Fearmonger "super anal [and] type-A". In a DIY interview, Grey said that her music tries to "[be] serious about being tongue in cheek", and in a Paste interview, that she is afraid of solely retreading, and instead tries to fuse many "bygone sounds". For Metal, she wrote that she identified with "new prog pop", a genre coined by her friend, defining it as: "Conceptual prog music formatted in albums, usually made by one person or a small group in their bedroom". She also stated that she does not mind the, often divisive, hyperpop categorization.

Other projects
Grey is a member of the experimental electronic collective Six Impala and the bedroom pop band Papaya & Friends. She also releases music under the alias Milkfish.

Personal life
Grey is a trans woman. She has stated that she is theistic.