10xTANTRUM

Four careers, pooled

10xTANTRUM arrived in mid-2025 as a four-piece from New York City, and the unusual thing about the line-up is that none of the four needed the band to have a career. ELI — Eli Romanova — is a multidisciplinary artist and musician who runs the boutique talent agency Fox Creatives, and whose credits include work with Angel Haze on Beautiful Tears and with the Grammy-winning producer TROY NōKA. BLU JAY is the actress and musician Jade Duncan, who appeared in the 2013 film Decoding Annie Parker and in HBO's Sharp Objects in 2018, and who runs the clothing label Baby Daddy Momma Drama. JACK XANDER is a singer, producer and visual artist whose 2024 EP Truck Punk built him a following of its own. DILL is Diletta Busin, an Italian vocalist, producer and model whose fashion work includes Valentino and Charles Jeffrey Loverboy.

Romanova has described that spread as the point rather than a complication: each member keeps a solo project with a separate set of influences — electronic, indie rock, or something further out — and the group is where those diets collide. The reference points the band put forward sit in two clusters: the girl-group construction of the Go-Gos and Bananarama, and a Y2K-era seam running through Ladytron, Spoon and New Young Pony Club. What comes out has been written up as alt-pop with indie-rock bite, and the description the band's own billing settles on is a collective blending alt-pop, indie rock, fashion and performance art.

BABYGIRL, and the shape of the thing

The debut single, BABYGIRL, came out on 25 July 2025 with a video built around the band travelling by truck between locations — a cheap-looking, deliberately unglamorous frame for a song that writers heard as bratty and emotionally unguarded at once. Romanova's gloss on it was that they wanted the debut to feel like a part-punk daydream, and the reception followed that reading: Post-Punk filed it as an alt-pop daydream, other outlets as full brat-mode.

It is worth noting what the debut did not have. There was no album campaign behind it, no announced label, no support slot to grow into. What it had instead was a finished visual world — styling, direction, a video — released the same day as the song. That pattern has held since, and it is the clearest thing to say about how this group works: the record and the imagery are produced as one object, not as a song plus a later video.

MONEY! and WORK: records made inside fashion houses

MONEY! followed on 15 August 2025, a harder and more abrasive track than the debut — pop-punk grit crossed with industrial pop. It was made in collaboration with the Italian label Just Cavalli, with creative direction by Daniele Lombardo, and its visuals were shot between the Alps and Los Angeles. That is an unusual production credit for a band three weeks past its first single, and it set the template for the next one.

WORK arrived on 4 September 2025, premiered by Magnet, with a video filmed in northern Italy made with the house Fiorucci and creative direction by Francesca Murri. Awet Aleu features on the track. Where MONEY! was snarling, WORK was funkier and more hypnotic, with a psychedelic edge to the groove — the first sign that the four voices in the group could be used for something other than shouting in unison.

The run of three singles in six weeks did two things at once: it established the band as a going concern with a genuine release cadence, and it attached them to the fashion calendar rather than the touring calendar. For most of their first year, that is where they operated.

2026: five singles deep, no album

The releases kept coming through 2026, still as standalone singles. D.O.P.E. and Trains both appeared during the year, followed by Heart Bit, and then Bitch! She Blonde on 25 September 2026, which remains the most recent thing out. Five singles are listed under the band's name on streaming services; there is no EP or album among them, and none has been announced.

Bitch! She Blonde drew the band's first notice in the weekly music digests in October 2026, where the group was summarised as a New York four-piece making catchy alt-pop singles with chaotic DIY energy. That is a fair description of where they have landed: short songs, released fast, each with its own look, accumulating into a body of work without ever being gathered into a record.

No label has been named on any of the five releases, and the Just Cavalli and Fiorucci credits are creative collaborations on specific videos rather than recording deals. On the evidence of the release list, 10xTANTRUM are self-directing — which explains both the speed and the absence of an album.

Off the fashion circuit and onto a tour bus

The group's first significant live outing was not a club show. In September 2025 they performed at R13's private New York Fashion Week SS26 event, which placed them in front of the fashion industry before they had played to a conventional ticket-buying audience. For a collective whose members come from modelling, styling and visual art as much as from music, that was a logical first stage.

2026 changed the setting. 10xTANTRUM spent the autumn as the named support on LAUNDRY DAY's Larger Than LIFE Tour — LAUNDRY DAY being the Manhattan pop-rock band formed in 2017, and a considerably bigger draw. The San Diego stop, at the Music Box on India Street on 2 October 2026, was an 18-and-over, standing-room show with doors at 8pm and music from 9pm, tickets between roughly £19 and £24 in local terms. Several other dates on the run were billed with 10xTANTRUM's name in the title, which is unusual for an opener and suggests the headliner's team expected the pairing to sell.

That run has now finished, and nothing is currently on sale under the band's own name. Anyone tracking them for a headline show is waiting on an announcement that has not come.

What is still unproven

Fifteen months in, the record is strong on output and thin on the two things that usually decide whether a band like this survives. There is no long-form release to argue with — five singles, no sequencing, no sustained statement. And the live reputation is barely documented: the coverage so far has gone almost entirely to the songs and the videos, with the shows mentioned in listings rather than reviewed.

The stronger reading is that the group has built the harder half first. Four people with separate audiences, a visual identity that arrives finished, and institutional fashion backing are assets most new alt-pop bands spend years failing to assemble. What happens next depends on whether the touring that began in autumn 2026 continues, and whether the singles eventually become a record.