Cavetown

Cavetown is the project of Robin Skinner, a Cambridge-based musician known for his delicate and intimately rendered brand of indie pop. Skinner first rose to success as a teenager in the mid-2010s with his popular Cavetown video channel, where he covered popular songs on ukulele and uploaded his own material. By 2018, he had established himself as a popular D.I.Y. singer/songwriter with several independently released albums to his credit, including the breakout hit Lemon Boy. In 2020, after signing with Warner/Sire, he reached the Top 20 of Billboard’s Americana/folk albums chart with his full-length Sleepyhead, and followed it up with 2022′s Worm Food. Cavetown continued to focus on singles over the next year, eventually issuing another EP, Little Vice. Born in Oxford to a musical family, he moved to Cambridge at the age of eight, where his father became a fellow and the Director of Music at Cambridge University. Skinner’s own musical talents were apparent at a young age, and by 2013 he’d begun writing and recording his own songs out of his bedroom studio. He launched his Cavetown video channel in 2014 and began releasing singles and albums through his Bandcamp page the following year. After the viral success of 2015′s “This Is Home” single, he issued Cavetown’s self-titled debut album later that year. Mixing warm, melodic bedroom pop that ran the gamut from gentle ukulele ballads to lo-fi indie rock, he returned in 2016 with his second full-length, 16/04/16. Simultaneously recording new studio songs and maintaining his popular online channel, Skinner experienced somewhat of a breakout with his next album, 2018′s quirky and more expansive Lemon Boy. He quickly followed it with the “Animal Kingdom” project, releasing five split singles into 2019. The installments — “Sandy,” “Comet,” “Ash,” “Shells,” and “Jackson” — were later compiled onto a single mixtape. In 2020, Skinner returned with the song “Sweet Tooth. It was included on his full-length Sleepyhead, which cracked the Top 20 of Billboard’s Americana/Folk Albums chart. A second EP, Man's Best Friend, arrived in June 2021. It was followed in early 2022 by the hypnotic companion singles “squares” and “y 13″ as well as the poignantly romantic Beabadoobee collaboration “Fall in Love with a Girl.” Led by catchy indie single “1994,” Skinner’s next Cavetown album, Worm Food, was released in November of that year. The album reached number 39 on the U.K. pop charts and number 16 on Billboard’s Heatseekers. 2023 brought more standalone singles including the Field Medic collaboration “Glacier Meadow.” Another EP, the low-key Little Vice, was released in early 2024. ~ Timothy Monger