Arriving on the scene in 2012 with her single ‘Youth’, Foxes has managed to capture the attention of everyone, in particular producer Zedd who collaborated with the artist on the hugely popular track ‘Clarity’, reaching number one of the US Hot Dance Club Songs. Her single ‘Youth’ and its remixes have received over a million combined YouTube and SoundCloud plays, and earlier this year she was approached by UK drum and bass artists Rudimental, featuring on their awesome track ‘Right Here‘.

Soon to be stepping on Australian soil for two intimate shows in Sydney and Melbourne, we got to chat to the Southhampton born singer/songwriter!

Your music is obviously incredibly evocative and expressive, what is the song writing process you go through?

It kind of varies. It’s quite emotional and personal. Lyrically it’s always stuff that I’ve gone through or experienced. I work with a guy called Ghost Writer through out the production and I use a big white diary where I kind of draw or write out the lyrics. In the studio we have a big projector, and we project stuff onto the wall and watch movies. I find I’m really visually inspired by movies, so I’ll watch a bunch of movies and kind of get my influence from that. I’m inspired by soundtracks as well, I like to make my music quite cinematic.

 A lot of people have described your style as melancholic, how do you feel about that? Is that the vibe you’re going for?

Yeah, I mean I never intentionally decided to do that, but it’s definitely true. I definitely think that there’s a happy/sad place in the music, there’s a lot of emotion behind it. There’s some darkness to it, but it is very poppy, which I think kind of counteracts the sadness. The music’s quite upbeat while the lyrics are quite sad. I kind of like it when you talk about all of this shit but at the end you just sound really happy, I really like music that does that to you.

 How would you describe your relationship with music?

I mean I guess every artist says that it’s kind of therapeutic. It’s definitely therapy for me, which does make it quite hard sometimes to sing it live, because it comes from quite an emotional place. It’s really nice to be able to write about things you’ve gone through, I mean I definitely write to give myself strength, so if other people can take that from it, it feels like the most incredible thing in the world.

You’ve done some amazing stuff with producer Zedd, and more recently Rudimental, what drew you to those projects?

It’s really interesting actually because you’d think that I badgered them to work with me, but they got in contact with me which I find quite insane. They heard my track ‘Youth’ and got in touch with my management and asked to work with me, which I still to this day find quite overwhelming. With Zedd, he had heard ‘Youth’ and we literally just worked together and ‘Clarity’ came about and I had no idea what ‘Clarity’ would do. It’s amazing, a year on it’s doing so well, it’s done so well in America and it’s done so much for me which is brilliant.

 Do you think dance music influences your style? Is it something you’d like to keep experimenting with?

Yeah I definitely think so. I’m really inspired by nineties dance music. I don’t think dance music is a massive influence on my own stuff, I mean the songs behind the sounds of Zedd and Rudimental are definitely incredible songs, and they’re songs that mean a lot, but I don’t think the production is necessarily that similar to my own, but there are definitely elements of dance music in my stuff, there’s definitely a link there.

 We’ve noticed your single ‘Youth’ has been remixed like a bazillion times, in particular by artists Adventure Club and Danny Howard, what do you think it is about this particular song that makes people want to experiment with it so much?

I think there’s a lot of space in ‘Youth’. The song isn’t lyrically busy; it has its moments of calm. I think people think it’s good for remixes because its underlying melody, and the meaning of it, definitely lends itself a lot to different genres, I think it goes well with a lot of different styles.

If you could collaborate with anyone who would it be?

It’s been like the year of features for Foxes, it’s sort of a running joke, I’m definitely going to take some time out from featuring with anyone else, but otherwise I owe it to my childhood self to do everything I can to work with Eminem (laughs).

We noticed you were hanging with Steve Aoki and Dillon Francis in Ibiza earlier this year, what was that like? 

That was really funny actually because we were sitting around this table and I had no idea who anyone was. I mean I knew Dillon, I know him well through working with Zedd, but Steve Aoki…I actually didn’t know who he was and then we had a conversation about cake for about 20 minutes, and he asked if he could cake me and I was like yeah you can cake me, obviously he cakes people, you know.. the audience, and then we kind of had a look on his Twitter and I noticed he had millions and millions of followers and I was like oh my God, so that’s quite funny. I mean it’s really nice to meet people in that area of music because the reason I didn’t know who anyone was was because I’m not someone that comes from that side of music, but I’ve been kind of thrusted into it through working with people like Zedd and stuff like that. It’s really amazing to meet hose kinds of people and be friends with that crowd. We’re definitely two sides of music, but it’s nice to bring that together, and they’re great guys, they’re actually hilarious.

And lastly, we are so excited you’re coming to Australia, how are you feeling about your trip down under?

Yeah I’m stoked, I mean Australia is one of my dream destinations, I honestly don’t feel like it’s actually happening, I mean the music is taking me to so many places. I can’t wait, I’m probably just going to run into the sea and I think it’ll be quite hard to pull me away from Australia when I get there. I have a feeling I’m going to fall in love with it.