Stef Q&A

Stef, also known as Stefani Colvin, is a pop singer from Nashville, Tennessee. Read on to find out about her biggest inspirations, her live show experiences, and her upcoming EP.

by tosin faseemo

Q: What genre would you describe your music as?

S: I think it depends on the song, honestly. I feel like I get pretty experimental with my sound. I definitely would say pop. I like to call it dark pop, which I know is not a genre but that’s what I like to call it. I think it has indie pop elements as well, but I guess we could just go with pop.

Q: Who are your biggest inspirations when it comes to making music?

S: I feel like it changes often, but recently I’ve been loving BENEE a lot. There’s this girl called spill
tab that’s super cool. Dua Lipa is definitely a big inspiration for me; I think she absolutely killed her Grammy performance. And there’s a band called Sad Night Dynamite that I really like as well. They use a lot of experimental sound.

Q:What’s your creative process like?

S: It just depends who I’m working with. I do have

two people that I would call my camp, my squad that I usually take a majority of songs back to. My producer’s name is Christian Fiore. He’s based in LA; he’s so talented. I can’t wait to see all of his dreams come true. He’s literally one of the best producers I’ve ever heard in my entire life. He’s
so good. And then there’s this girl named Ricky Randall that I love to write everything with and she’s also one of my best friends. I think the funnest part about making music is working with your friends. I love working with my friends. But my creative process, I’ll usually write with a producer and they’ll build a track around an idea I already have or they’ll build a track and then we’ll kind of form an idea and melodies around that.

Q: Do you collaborate with a lot of other people? I know you’re a solo act.

S: Yeah, I’m a solo act. I haven’t released any collabs, but that’s definitely something I’m looking to do in future projects. I have a few names in mind that I want to collaborate with, but I think the writing process and creative process is just super collaborative. Whether I’m working with my friends or random people on a video or song I think it’s always really collaborative for me, which is what I love about it.

Q: What’s the story behind your latest EP that’s coming out soon? How did that get made?

S: So my EP comes out April 30th. It’s called “a glitch in our virtual reality.” It started with a few songs
I had made in LA at the beginning of 2020 right before the pandemic hit. I somehow formed them into this concept album, each song being a sentence long, except the song “switch.” It’s supposed to form a paragraph of a complete thought. Each song represents an emotion having to do with love. I kind of thought of that concept but I needed one more song to go in there, and so I wrote “switch,” which

is the third song on the EP. We wrote that in Palm Springs in June. My two writers and I just went out there and we just stayed in the house the whole time and wrote some really good music.

Q: Before the pandemic did you ever do any live shows?

S: Yes, so I’ve done two live shows singing my own music. I used to lead worship for church and be
in theater. I released three songs in September of 2019. I did a 300 person show in Nashville and it was sold out. That was amazing. I love my band. It was so fun; I had all my friends there. But then I did a show in Knoxville, Tennessee in January 2020 and there were like 400 people there. I was an opener. It was a great practice to perform in front of some people that didn’t know who I was.

Q: Who would you love to collaborate with?

S: Okay, so I have this indie pop song I’m thinking about releasing eventually and there’s a guy in Nashville called Huron John that I think is super cool. There’s an indie pop artist named Ryan Woods, that I think is super cool. I think doing a hyperpop remix or something would be really
fun for one of my songs like 100 gecs or CMTEN. Of course, I have like my dream big artists to collaborate with like Frank Ocean; he doesn’t really do collabs though. But yeah I have like a whole list of people I want to collab with.

stef’s EP, “a glitch in our virtual reality,” comes out on April 30th.