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The profile · researched 10 September 2026
Everywhere Isn't Texas: how August Ponthier left Allen, lost a major label and found a first album
August Ponthier is the Texas-raised, Brooklyn-based songwriter who came out as nonbinary in October 2025 and released a self-funded debut album four months later. In September 2026 they are on the road as a duo, opening for Of Monsters and Men and Lord Huron, with a novel due from Dutton in June 2027.
From Allen to Brooklyn
August Ponthier was born on 26 February 1996 and grew up in Allen, a suburb north of Dallas. They studied jazz at the University of North Texas, then moved to Brooklyn in 2017 at the age of 20. The jobs that followed were the kind that fill a young artist's early years in New York: a Snapchat contributor for the American Museum of Natural History, modelling, selling jewellery and painting custom pet portraits.
Music arrived through the phone rather than the club circuit. In 2019 Ponthier began posting covers and queer-themed adaptations of songs to TikTok, and that audience is what got a label's attention. Interscope Records signed them in 2020.
That much is the paper trail. What the songs have since made clear is that the distance from Allen mattered as much as the destination. The debut album takes its title from a line about leaving, and Ponthier has described the record as dealing with a "complicated relationship with your hometown" and as "a coming-of-age album for late bloomers who grew up in a place that didn't always love them back."
The Interscope years: three EPs and a Lord Huron duet
The first single to travel was "Cowboy" in 2021, which Billboard placed on its list of the 25 best songs by LGBTQ artists of that year so far. "Harshest Critic", co-written with Adam Melchor, followed in May 2021, and the debut EP Faking My Own Death arrived that August. The same year produced the collaboration that put Ponthier in front of a far larger audience. They sang on "I Lied", from Lord Huron's album Long Lost, performed it with the band on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in May 2021, toured with Lord Huron that September and played the Austin City Limits festival. In January 2022 they were announced as support on Bleachers' tour.
Two more EPs came out through Interscope: Shaking Hands With Elvis in June 2022 and Breaking the Fourth Wall in May 2024. Among the co-writers along the way was Rick Nowels, on "Hell is a Crowded Room". A headline run named The Karaoke Queen, after the single of the same name, went out in mid 2025.
Then the label relationship ended. Interscope dropped Ponthier before an album had been made, and the debut that followed was released independently. It is a detail that reviewers of the record kept returning to, because the album is in large part about starting again.
A new name, then a first album
On 15 October 2025, in an interview with Them, Ponthier came out as nonbinary, took the name August and asked to be referred to as they and them. They described the feeling as "elation": "Being myself and knowing that other people can see me and have the ability to see me how I want to be seen is like, I never thought that would be possible." The album was announced in the same window. "Betty" was released as a single on 24 October 2025, following "Karaoke Queen", and Ponthier told Rolling Stone the record dealt with "gender envy, reconnecting with childhood, escapism, generational trauma and queer joy".
Everywhere Isn't Texas came out on 13 February 2026. It runs to ten tracks, including "World Famous", "Ribbons & Taxes", "Handsome", "I'm Crying, Are You?", the title song, "Betty", "Karaoke Queen", "Angry Man", "Bloodline" and a reprise of the title track. The title song was co-written with Dan Wilson and Ethan Gruska, "Betty" with Audrey Hobert, and the production credits run through Matthew Neighbour, Laiko, Gruska and Wilson. The release was marked with a performance at Spinster Records in Oak Cliff, Dallas.
The reviews were warm without being uncritical. Writing in the Shepherd Express on 13 February 2026, Jon M. Gilbertson called it "modern pop of nearly instant accessibility", heard a voice "almost as intelligently inviting as Laufey's, nearly as coyly pop-smart as Sabrina Carpenter's", and still thought Ponthier "could stand to be brasher". Jesse Roth at Staged Haze, a day earlier, picked out nineties pop-rock influences and a taste for horror, science-fiction and fantasy imagery, and concluded that the album "does not just introduce August Ponthier. It leaves you sitting with their words", offering "clarity, comfort, and confrontation in equal measure".
Where things stand in September 2026
The most recent development is not a record but a book. The Dallas Voice reported on 3 July 2026 that Ponthier had signed with Dutton, the Penguin Random House imprint, for a novel also called Everywhere Isn't Texas, due in June 2027. The publisher's description says it "follows a queer employee at a used electronics store in '80s small-town Texas who is drawn into an alternate dimension through a mysterious TV", which sits neatly with the genre imagery critics noticed on the album.
The touring year has been built entirely on support slots, which is where an independent artist with one album tends to live. In June 2026 Ponthier opened for Orville Peck, sharing the bill with Kaitlin Butts at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia, on 14 June. From late July they joined Of Monsters and Men's Mouse Parade Tour through the Midwest and the West Coast, and the same paper noted that a set of Southeast dates with Lord Huron would follow. The Dallas Voice also pointed out, with some regret, that no Texas dates were on the list.
The New York stop is the one to circle. Ponthier opens for Of Monsters and Men at Central Park SummerStage on 23 September 2026, with doors at 6pm and a show running from 7pm to 10pm. It is a hometown show of a kind, given that Brooklyn has been home for nine years, and it is the largest outdoor stage on the run.
What the show is like now
This is not a band show. Ponthier is touring as a duo, with a guitarist named Kristin, and the sets are short because they are opening sets. The clearest record of one is the Wolf Trap date on 14 June 2026, where the set ran from 7pm to 7.45pm and took in nine songs. Eight of them are identified: "Skin", "Betty", "I'm Crying, Are You?", "Everywhere Isn't Texas", "Fixer Upper", "Evil Woman", "Faking My Own Death" and "Handsome". "Fixer Upper" and "Evil Woman" were both live debuts, which means new material is already being road-tested four months after the album.
Marc Shea, reviewing for Parklife DC on 18 June 2026, described the music as "stripped down and powerful" and the set as "very personal and sincere". Between songs Ponthier talks, and the talk is part of the format: about the songs themselves, about growing up in Texas, and on that night about their outfit. There is no production to speak of, and the shape of the set leans on the album, with one song each from the first EP and the back catalogue to anchor it.
For anyone buying a ticket to one of the Of Monsters and Men or Lord Huron dates, the practical expectation is a forty-five minute opening set of two voices and a guitar, most of it drawn from Everywhere Isn't Texas, delivered while the room is still filling. The audience that already knows the record will get the title song and "Betty"; everyone else gets a songwriter explaining, in plain terms, where the songs came from.
The show, now
Ponthier is currently playing opening sets as a duo with a guitarist named Kristin, and there is no band or stage production. At Wolf Trap on 14 June 2026, supporting Orville Peck, the set ran forty-five minutes and nine songs, mostly from Everywhere Isn't Texas, with "Skin", "Betty", "I'm Crying, Are You?", the title track, "Faking My Own Death" and "Handsome" alongside two live debuts, "Fixer Upper" and "Evil Woman". Parklife DC called the music "stripped down and powerful" and the set "very personal and sincere", with Ponthier talking between songs about the material, growing up in Texas and their outfit. From late July 2026 the same format has opened Of Monsters and Men's Mouse Parade Tour across the Midwest and West Coast, with Central Park SummerStage in New York on 23 September 2026 (doors 6pm, show 7pm to 10pm) and select Southeast dates with Lord Huron to follow.
Researched from en.wikipedia.org · dallasvoice.com · kxt.org · shepherdexpress.com · stagedhaze.com · parklifedc.com · setlist.fm · cityparksfoundation.org
Pictures
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons, credited
Justin Higuchi · CC BY 2.0
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