EP Review: Fame Is A Bedroom

While we’re stuck in a long, grey Aotearoa winter, Indy’s sophomore EP Fame Is A Bedroom beams in like a postcard from her New York summer. Warm, vulnerable, and a little bit magic, the project feels like sitting on the fire escape with her at golden hour, listening as she unpacks all the things she’s been too afraid to say out loud until now.

The opener Savior sets the scene immediately with its guitar arpeggios and descending bass line. The very first line, “You picked up my habits, but you kicked me to the curb last Saturday,” is already a mic-drop moment. Her lyrics are confessional, detailed, and full of the raw storytelling that makes this EP so compelling. Both lyrically and musically, you hear the way she’s processing the memory in real time, especially as the bridge builds into the kind of scream-it-into-your-hairbrush climax that’s basically made for late-night bedroom concerts (which I, personally, have done with this song many times since its single release). “You were my savior / I was the prey” might just be the lyric that defines this one: simply yet devastatingly painting the picture of leaving a tumultuous relationship with an older man as a young woman, an experience many listeners know too well.

Then comes Up In Flames (The Wayland), and Indy shifts into an even more intimate space. She sings in this gentler part of her voice that feels almost like she’s letting you in on a secret. The melodic contrast between the stripped-back verses and soaring choruses is gorgeous, and when the drums kick in on the second verse, it’s one of those chef’s kiss moments of production. The electronic layers never swamp her voice, instead lifting it, adding colour without overwhelming you. By the outro, the whole track feels like motion, like she’s taking you somewhere: windows down, night drive, motorway lights blurring as you pull away from the city and everything it represents.

Idol is, at least for me, the gut punch song of gut punch songs. Many will assume it’s about her sister Lorde – the line between admiration and envy of someone the whole world worships while you know them even more beautifully behind closed doors. As someone who idolises my own older sister, I felt this track like a bruise. Indy nails the messy mix of love and longing and jealousy so perfectly it feels universal. Lines like, “I’m the moon to your sunlight / I only shine in the nighttime” and “We’ve got the same hands, but I’ve got my own scars” are sharp and tender all at once, like they were lifted straight from Indy’s journal. Honestly, they spoke to my life so deeply, there were moments I felt she could’ve been singing my own diary right back to me. What makes the song land even harder is how much space she gives it – the airy, spacious instrumentation leaves the guitar lines and lyrics in full focus, as though the music itself is pausing to let us take it in. All of these things make Idol not just my favourite on the EP, and not even just my favourite song of Indy’s so far, but one of my favourite songs ever.

Grace lightens the mood again, picking up the pace after Idol’s brooding. By the first chorus, the beat shifts things into a more kinetic, pulsing rhythm. But the real gem here is the outro, where almost everything drops out except for a piano hammering single chords under Indy’s voice. It’s haunting, unexpected, and the perfect setup for what comes next.

Because then Sail Away bursts in, immediately shaking you awake. This was a single, and when it came out it basically lived at the top of my Spotify stats for a month straight. It’s dance-around-your-room perfection (again – speaking from personal experience here), and a track that feels clean, intricate, and intentional in every production choice. But it’s not just a sonic high. It’s a thematic closer too. The lyric “Sail away / So when you end up at the bottom / You’re not mine / It’s not my problem!” is a triumphant finish, a final refusal to let heartbreak or doubt define her. It’s the sound of someone stepping fully into herself – as a woman, as an artist, as Indy.

Listening start to finish of Fame Is A Bedroom, it’s clear that Indy isn’t just a songwriter, but a poet who knows how to let language breathe against music, how to craft bridges that pull you to the edge before releasing you into something brighter, bigger and freer. Each track feels like a short film, imagery and visuals flashing behind your eyes in explosions of colour as the EP blooms from one song into the next.

I first fell in love with Indy’s music when her single East Coast went viral on TikTok last year, and this body of work only confirms what that hinted at: she’s carving out her own lane, carefully and intentionally. She’s not trying to be anyone else’s shadow – she is not, and she never was. Fame Is A Bedroom is her stepping into the light, on her own terms.

This EP is proof that Indy is an artist worth paying attention to, and a reminder that maybe “fame” and “bedrooms” are closer than we think. Both are places where we perform, both are places where we come undone. And maybe, as Indy seems to be figuring out, that’s where the truest version of ourselves lives.