Artist Profile: .com

.com, the indie artist from Corona, California, has been riding the crescent of his spontaneous, loosely-strung writing style for years, and, with each successive release, has shown an increasing mastery over the dreamy, reverb-soaked vocal style that has become his niche, spinning sublime tracks from the depths of his creative foundations.

As a child, .com’s parents would record music videos from MTV onto VHS tapes, a practice that allowed him to re-watch various videos, especially those by Michael Jackson, over and over again. This, along with an older brother who was in multiple hardcore bands throughout his adolescence, left .com with an obsession with music: one that would manifest itself differently in various periods throughout his life.

As he grew up, .com first picked up guitar, attempting to play his favorite songs on his brother’s instrument, and then, once he became proficient, picking up bass and keyboard to augment his growing interest in writing music.

As a high schooler, his first musical venture was in a parody group, inspired by Lonely Island, called the Hawaian eagles. Although it was mostly a joke within his friend group, .com got a taste of what it was like to make music, and, through the process, he came to find himself with a hunger to create on his own: to exercise his unique creative vision.

As his taste for classic rock gave in to the burgeoning indie scene of the time, including artists like Tame Impala and Homeshake, .com had also found a sound he could replicate on his own, and he began to experiment with the dreamy soundscapes that characterize his music today.

“[That music] wasn't too heavy or it wasn't too fast-paced at times. I'm really drawn to that kind of slow, moody vibe., so that's an aspect that I really liked a lot compared to classic rock. I think a lot of the artists I was listening to in high school were all making music by themselves. So, maybe subconsciously, I was gravitating towards that idea of a one-man thing like that.”

His first EP, released in 2019, is representative of these early days of experimentation: a period in which he started to receive external feedback and validation for his music, motivating him to become more serious and delve further into etching out the sound he had been pursuing.

In doing so, he found that he worked best in a fast-paced environment, turning a bare-bones idea into a fully fleshed-out song with lyrics and full instrumentation in just a day. He also found that, after doing just a rough mix, he could get the song out to his growing fan base as quickly as possible, ensuring as direct a connection between him and his audience as possible.

While this workflow certainly suits the indie artist (two of his most popular songs, “Lover For Tonight” and “Ricky’s Song”, were written in this style), he also acknowledges that, recently, he has felt the pull of taking longer to develop the lyrical themes of a song in order to more accurately and deeply express his creative intentions.

“I think it's a give and take; sometimes you want to have those songs that you sit with for a long time and  let the lyrics kind of build over time. But obviously [there are] those songs where you kind of hit like a flow state; everything's happening at once… Sometimes you're not always gonna have that feeling that it's all flowing really well.”

Now, as .com anticipates his upcoming EP, which will be released sometime in September, he plans to shift his focus toward an album: a longer body of work that he says his fans deserve. Yet, despite the shift in focus, it is evident that .com’s transcendent and ethereal motifs will plow onward in whatever direction he chooses to go, cementing him as one of the more exciting artists on the indie scene right now.