INTERVIEW: KRXS

I had a very different childhood. My mom was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer when I was five, so I grew up knowing life was fragile in ways other kids didn’t. Even though I had a great dad and a close group of friends, I always felt like something was missing. I wrestled with questions about my faith, fairness, and why my family’s life looked different.

It wasn’t until my friends started dragging me to shows that everything shifted. In those sweaty pop-punk and hardcore pits, screaming A Day to Remember and Silverstein lyrics at the top of my lungs, I realized there were a lot of people who felt the same anger, confusion, and hope that I did.

For the first time, I didn’t feel alone. No comparing families, no pressure to be perfect, just raw emotion, honesty, and community. That’s where I learned that music could be a lifeline. And ever since, I’ve wanted to create music that gives someone else that same feeling of belonging.

‘XOXO’ was shaped by one of the hardest periods of my life, a breakup, homelessness, losing a close friend, and dealing with addiction. Because of that, the songwriting became way more intentional and I also ended up finding true love by the end of it. Most of the album starts with my guitar riffs or vocal melodies, and Snoody and Tre built the production around that foundation.

On my first album, only about half the songs were custom-built; the rest came from beats that helped me find my emo-rap identity. But ‘XOXO’ is fully crafted. Tracks like “MiRRORS,” “LiVE4ME (DiE4ME),” and “PSiLOCYBiN CONFESSiONS” really show the evolution, especially with the development of my scream and the layering Snoody did.

It feels like the first time my vision was executed 100% the way I always heard it in my head.

Most of the balance comes from starting songs on guitar and letting the emotional core guide the arrangement. The choruses lean more into the pop-punk side, and the verses bring in the 808s, trap elements, and rap cadences. When they collide again in the second chorus, bridge, or outro, that’s where the energy hits the hardest.

To me, being punk is about spitting truth, breaking rules, questioning norms, and creating something new. I’ve always hated being boxed in. With this record it’s like we smashed the box, cut eye holes in it, wrote our truth all over the outside, and turned it into a mask to look back at the world with.

You can hear that blend especially clearly in “WAY BACK” and “same mistakes.”

Tre, Snoody, and the Arizona underground scene played huge roles in shaping ‘XOXO.’

Tre Scott is a legend in our scene, he helped shape The Dropout Kings, and working with him on tracks like “XPECTATiONS,” “same mistakes,” “ANiMALS,” and “MiRRORS” pushed me creatively in ways I really needed during a rough time. He has also worked with Magnolia Park and Futuristic so being in that grouping is an honor.

Snoody (Mike) handled the bulk of the production with me and truly brought my vision to life. His work on “Weightless” was the spark that kicked off the whole direction of the album, and from there we built the rest of XOXO together. Mike wasn’t only working with me, he was also part guru like my own personal Rick Rubin, he really helped me and did an excellent job bringing out the best in me.

Without Mike and Tre’s expertise and professionalism this record wouldn’t have happened and I am very thankful to get to work with them. Getting features from Maus Gomez of Tv Tragedy and Eddie Wellz from Dropout Kings reminded me why I fell in love with the scene in the first place, raw, real, unapologetic creativity. Those guys are real Arizona music scene heroes to me and getting to work with them and become friends with them was really a dream come true for sure.

Life is heavy, but it’s also beautiful and I try to reflect both sides. We’re living in a time where people are waking up to a lot of painful truths, but also finding new reasons to hope.

So the album mixes entertainment with honesty. A song like “ANiMALS.” is a song about chasing a party with a girl but also a message about being comfortable in your own skin, stopping bad habits and regaining control in your life, while a track like “WAY BACK” is about nostalgia and good vibes, it’s also about losing friends and feeling obscure. The balance is intentional, I want listeners to feel seen, but I also want them to feel uplifted.

I’ve been through some dark times, and the one thing that’s always grounded me is something my mom said: “You only need one thing to be thankful for and one thing to be hopeful for.”

Music is both of those things for me. It’s therapy. When I was finishing my first album, I was deep into an Adderall addiction and drinking way too much. “same mistakes” was written right after a relapse. Finishing that song actually helped me stay sober, it became a message to my future self about who I wanted to be.

So the positivity in my music isn’t fake. It’s the result of choosing hope over and over again.

Absolutely. I have a whole acoustic album in my head already, that feels overdue. I also really want to experiment more with EDM-influenced collabs, remixes, and more emotional rap synth-driven production. I have my eyes on a few big collaborations with some national artists in the works as well.

I don’t ever want to make the same album twice. The next project is going to feel familiar but also way more expansive.