Ecca Vandal

Louis Trichardt, a sister's records, a jazz degree

Ecca Vandal was born in Louis Trichardt, in the far north of South Africa, to Sri Lankan Tamil parents who had arrived there as refugees. The family moved again during her childhood, to Australia, and Melbourne has been her base since. Her first musical education came secondhand, through an older sister's record collection — gospel, soul, hip-hop and 1990s R&B — and turned into a formal one when she enrolled at the Victorian College of the Arts to study jazz as part of a Bachelor of Creative Arts.

That schooling accounts for a lot that the punk shorthand around her misses. The harmonic turns and the refusal to hold a single tempo for long are the habits of someone trained to improvise over changes; the phrasing and the cadence come from the hip-hop and R&B she grew up hearing. The two sit together in her writing rather than taking turns.

She began putting out music professionally in 2013 and released a first EP, End of Time, in January 2016. The groundwork was done in the Melbourne scene rather than through a talent pipeline, and the partnership that still shapes every record — with co-writer and producer Richard "Kidnot" Buxton, who is also her partner — dates from this period.

The 2017 debut and the doors it opened

The self-titled debut album arrived on 20 October 2017 through Dew Process, co-produced by Vandal and Buxton. Three singles led it out across that winter: "Broke Days, Party Nights" on 28 July, "Future Heroine" on 22 September and "Price of Living" on 13 October. The guest list was a statement of allegiance rather than a commercial play — Dennis Lyxzén of Refused, Jason Aalon Butler of Letlive, and Sampa the Great.

Reviews were strong on both sides of the equator. DIY and NME both scored it four out of five; Hysteria gave it a perfect ten and Kill Your Stereo 83 out of 100. A ten-date Australian national tour followed in November 2017, and her first UK shows came that December, opening for Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes.

What the record bought her was access. Over the following years she opened for Queens of the Stone Age across Australia, played Download and Reading & Leeds, and took on commissioned work including a project with League of Legends. On paper it was the trajectory the industry expects after a well-received first album. In practice it stalled, and the reason was not a lack of offers.

The gap, and what came out of it

Vandal and Buxton went to Los Angeles for pop writing sessions and found the process hollow. "It was all very surface-level and formulaic. I was just bored by it," she told NME. The pandemic years narrowed things further: "It felt like the world was only interested in 15-second snippets of music." Rather than feed that, she stopped feeding it anything, and the gap between albums stretched towards nine years.

The second album was built in Buxton's childhood bedroom over close to two years, with deliberate rules about what was allowed in. "We cut out everything that didn't serve us — the timelines, the metrics, the pressure to 'stay visible'," she said when the Australian dates were announced. The stated aim was a complete album rather than a supply of clips, and the result runs to 17 tracks.

LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW was released on 22 May 2026, her first record for Loma Vista Recordings, and reached number 12 on the Australian albums chart. Backseat Mafia's Deb Pelser scored it 90 out of 100 and called it "a restless and unpredictable record that tears through punk, rap, electronica and alternative rock" — "abrasive, funny, vulnerable and deliberately chaotic all at once" — from someone who sounds like she has "spent nine years quietly building pressure until the whole thing finally bursts through the walls". Writing for DIY, Kyle Roczniak heard punk colliding with hip-hop on "BLEACH", synth-led R&B across "LEVITATE PART 1 + 2", jazz piano under saturated drums on "DID A LITTLE MORE TO FORGET", and straight punk rock in "SORRY! CRASH!".

A year spent in other people's arenas

The touring year that followed was largely built on support slots at a scale her own headline shows have not yet reached. She made her Coachella debut on 11 April 2026 with a ten-song set, then opened Deftones' Australian arena run alongside Interpol — Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney on 2 May, Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne on 10 May. A Jimmy Kimmel Live! appearance followed in the United States.

Europe took up the summer: Impact Festival at Tauron Arena in Kraków on 3 June, Release Athens at Plateia Nerou on 15 June, and a Deftones bill with Idles at the Royal Highland Showgrounds in Edinburgh on 27 August. Her name had been attached to Deftones' Berlin headline show, with Turnstile, as early as 9 February. At All Points East in London she was the only artist booked across two separate days — supporting Deftones at the Outbreak day on 23 August, then returning for the 28–30 August weekend headlined by Tyler, The Creator, on a bill that also held Turnstile, Danny Brown and Faye Webster.

The industry verdict landed on 24 September, when the 2026 ARIA nominations were announced. Vandal took seven: Album of the Year, Best Solo Artist, Best Independent Release, Best Alternative Release, Best Video for "CRUISING TO SELF SOOTHE", Best Cover Art with Kathryn Vinella and Sean McDonald, and the Michael Gudinski Breakthrough Artist award. Only Genesis Owusu and Tame Impala were nominated more often, with eight each. The ceremony is at Sydney's Hordern Pavilion on 18 November.

Her own account of the shift is less about scale than about what gets sung back. "Lyrics I was afraid to sing in the studio are now being sung back to me," she told DIY.

The headline run, as it stands this month

The LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW headline tour opened in Europe in September — La Maroquinerie in Paris on 12 September, Manchester Academy 3 on the 14th, Village Underground in London on the 15th, doors at 7.30pm and on stage at 9pm. These are club rooms, and the point of them, by her own description, is length: longer sets and new material played in full for the first time.

North America followed, with two nights at the Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles on 28 and 29 September, a set at Ohana Festival in Dana Point on the 27th, then Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco on 3 October, Barboza in Seattle on the 6th, Holocene in Portland on the 7th and Globe Hall in Denver on the 10th. Toronto on 15 October and New York on 17 October are still ahead, with the run finishing on 24 October at the Masquerade in Atlanta.

Three Australian dates close the campaign: The Brightside in Brisbane on 6 November, Howler in Melbourne on 7 November and Oxford Art Factory in Sydney on 13 November. Tickets went to presale on 10 and 11 June and on general sale at 11am on Friday 12 June through her own site. No support acts were named in that announcement.