“We’ll have to make sure to play different sets, if you’re gonna be there all three nights!” says Simeon Kavanagh-Vincent, guitarist/synthesist of New Zealand quartet Phoebe Rings, who are, indeed, preparing to play three Philadelphia shows next month, when they open Union Transfer for fellow New Zealanders The Beths on December 6th and 7th (The 6th is sold-out, but you can still get tickets for the 7th.), followed by a December 8th show co-headlining Johnny Brenda’s with Speedy Ortiz (with @ and Dylan Baldi providing support) for a Carpark Records 25th Anniversary Show, which Simeon tells me is worth checking out even if you do catch them with The Beths: “We’re really excited to play some headline shows with a full set. We’re excited to play some deeper cuts at those shows… And there’s an intimacy in the smaller venues that it can be hard to replicate when you scale up.”
While Carpark (also home to our phriends Dean Wareham and Madeline Kenney, in addition to a former home of The Beths themselves) released both Phoebe Rings’ debut EP and LP, during a recent phone chat with Kavanagh-Vincent and Phoebe Rings founder, vocalist, and keyboardist Crystal Choi, I find out that the band are actually yet to meet the Carpark gang IRL, although Crystal says she’s been a big fan of the label and how they’ve worked with Phoebe Rings: “It’s definitely been an honor. They have all been very nice and patient at times when I was a little late with deadlines [laughs].”
Crystal, Simeon, and the rest of the Phoebe Rings crew, which also includes bassist Benjamin Locke and drummer/producer Alex Freer, are longtime friends (and fans) of The Beths. “I found this out just yesterday, I thought our drummer, Alex, just went to high school with Jonathan [Pearce] from The Beths, but they actually went to kindergarten together! I went to uni with the drummer [Tristan Deck],” Crystal tells me. And Simeon says that Phoebe Rings’ opening sets have been getting really “heartwarming” responses from The Beths’ North American fans, who have turned out to at-least–nearly capacity every night.
The band have been on the road supporting The Beths since October 30, for Phoebe Rings’ first-ever North American tour, which was announced this May. However, when I ask about some of the highlights of 2025, Crystal admits that she wasn’t entirely sure that the tour wouldn’t fall through: “With the visas, we didn’t know if it would be happening, so just that it’s all happening is very exciting!” before going on to say, “It’s honestly all been standing out a lot to me, because it’s my first time in the States, and everything is so big here… Normally, we play probably like 300-cap rooms, and all of these have been at least 1,000.”
This isn’t the first major touring Phoebe Rings has done this year. This spring they toured New Zealand and Australia (including a few dates with The Beths) and this summer they played throughout Asia, which Simeon says was a huge highlight: “It’s been a very big year of going overseas for us. We went to Taiwan for a festival and then a little run of shows in Korea and Japan… It felt a little bit like a dream… I’m still not sure it happened [laughs].” And Crystal says that taking the band to Korea was an especially exciting experience: “I come from Korea originally, and it was their first time going there, and it was like the experience of taking your friends to your hometown, showing them around, telling them what to eat!”
Phoebe Rings are currently touring behind their debut LP, Aseurai, which dropped this June, the follow-up to their self-titled EP, which was released last October. While Phoebe Rings began as the solo project of Choi, the EP marked the start of the “band,” and Aseurai marks an even deeper level of collaboration, which Crystal tells me is definitely nice, even if a bit more complicated at times: “I think it has been a much more enjoyable, and also heartwarming, process… It creates a more time-consuming process, but you feel like you really earned it when you’re listening back!”
Since the release of Aseurai, Phoebe Rings have dropped a two-part cover series. Last month they put out their take on “Astronaut” by Beach House (a favorite of all four band members) and a rendition of Yoon Sang’s “Through the Hidden Hours” in the original Korean. And Simeon says that after these dates wrap in DC on December 11th, the band plans to, “hunker down… write some more songs together and keep pushing the creative process.” He also tells me that Phoebe Rings recently had an encounter with a fan that might have just come to define the sound of the quartet: “We had an interaction with a fan that led to a slightly funny merch item. We’ve always been billed as a Dream Pop band, from the start, and we had a fan who was like, ‘I don’t know about that. I think you’re more Sleepy Disco,’ so we put that on a hat! We’re gonna coin that!”
*Get your tickets for 12/7 at Union Transfer here.
**Get your tickets for 12/8 at Johnny Brenda’s here.
