Phebe Starr grew up on a farm outside a small town in regional New South Wales, teaching herself guitar by ear with a cheap nylon acoustic and a classical radio for company. With no real scene around her, she built her own, writing songs from a young age and eventually finding her way onto triple j with early single Alone With You, which went on to soundtrack TV series, film placements and a Samsung campaign while she was still figuring things out onstage in small rooms.
From there she worked in chapters rather than “eras”: the Zero and Chronicles EPs, the neon-tinted Ice Tea Liberace and, in 2022, her debut album Heavy Metal Flower Petal, followed more recently by Dirt. Across those records she has opened for acts like Of Monsters and Men, The Paper Kites and Tigertown, played SXSW in Austin and picked up write-ups from places like Harper’s Bazaar, NYLON, Interview and Rolling Stone AU/NZ.
Her songs sit in that sweet spot where indie pop, electronic textures and singer-songwriter storytelling overlap, but the through-line is always the writing. Phebe is drawn to the messier parts of love, faith and self-worth, and she tends to let those themes unfold slowly across a record rather than aiming for one big statement. Onstage and in interviews she talks about making music as a long game, something she would still do if the industry side fell away.
Air, from Heavy Metal Flower Petal, is one of the clearest windows into that world. It is a breakup song that sounds more like a reckoning, circling the question of how many times a person can absorb the same hurt before something gives. Lines like “Don’t ever say you’re sorry and not mean it” and “How many times can the heart break” set the tone, while the production sits in a slow, suspended space that feels more like late-night processing than performance. Critics have called it a glimpse into the “introspective and therapeutic” core of the album, and her stripped-back live version filmed in Highland Park, Los Angeles, shows just how much the song holds even when you peel away the studio polish.
MORE MOODS
Jack Gray Australia
Jack Gray performs Winter City like a late check-in from the road, all cold-air pop hooks and touring fatigue, the sound of an Australian kid looking around a foreign skyline and turning the homesick feeling into something you can sing along to.
Chris Lanzon Australia
Chris Lanzon leans into New York, Falling Apart with that late-night, headphones-on energy, turning the roof into something closer to a diary page than a stage. It’s restrained, bruised pop songwriting, all small details and a hook that lingers longer than it should.
Cody Jon Australia
Cody Jon runs through Becky’s Plan and dirty dancing with his usual grin-and-eye-roll energy, turning the roof into a teen movie scene: tight hooks, flirty asides, and a crowd locked into every chorus.
Kirsten Salty Australia
Salty performs Limbo in a slow-burn pop groove, circling the in-between of a relationship that never quite defines itself.