EGOISM

GOISM are part of that steady line of Sydney bands who start as friends sharing headphones on the bus and end up with a devoted following and a genuinely distinct sound. Scout Eastment and Olive Rush began writing together as teenagers, eventually turning their high-school project into a full-time concern that sits somewhere between dream pop, indie rock and the softer edges of shoegaze. Over time they’ve grown from a duo into a trio with drummer Adam Holmes, but the core remains the two voices and the way they wrap around each other.

They cut their teeth in the inner west, opening for acts like Last Dinosaurs and Phantastic Ferniture before finding a national audience through triple j Unearthed, where tracks like Sorry and What Are We Doing? marked them as one of the local bands worth keeping tabs on. Unearthed later tapped them as a Feature Artist, and in 2020 they received a Level Up grant aimed at helping independent artists stay afloat while touring shut down. That period produced the On Our MindsEP, a release that critics picked up on for its mix of bright, melodic guitar work and quietly heavy subject matter.

From there, the scale has gradually grown. They’ve supported artists like Upsahl, Last Dinosaurs and Teenage Dads, turned up on festival posters from Lost Paradise to Vivid, and in 2025 released their debut album And Go Nowhere, which reached the Australian Artist Album Chart and arrived with the self-assurance of a band that has worked out what they want to sound like. Coverage around the record has framed it as a coming-of-age moment, joining the dots between those early bus rides and a fully realised dream-pop outfit comfortable on big stages.

Lonely But Not Alone, the song they bring to the roof, lands right in the middle of what they do best. Released in 2021, it was their first new music after On Our Minds and premiered through triple j Unearthed with comparisons to the hazier side of The 1975’s catalogue. The track is built on a woozy groove and reverb-soaked guitars, but the heart of it is the writing: lines about needing touch, borrowing love for a night, and staying in a situation you know you should probably leave. It is less a big breakup anthem and more a snapshot of the in-between, where loneliness and intimacy blur.

What keeps EGOISM interesting is how all of that sits together: the shimmering, almost euphoric sound, the lyrics that quietly undercut it, and the shared vocals that make each song feel like a conversation rather than a monologue. On record, that tension has carried them from local curiosity to one of the more reliable names in Australian dream pop. On a rooftop, with Lonely But Not Alone hanging in the air, you get the same thing in a more direct form: a band that understands how to make a sad idea feel strangely consoling.