Drax Project Interview at AUSA's 2025 Alfred's Street Festival

Wellington-originating band Drax Project is one of New Zealand's most successful musical exports, with massive international 2019 hits Woke Up Late and Catching Feelings (feat. Six60), as well as dominating the charts locally in New Zealand too with tracks like Toto, All This Time and Atmosphere. Although, if you ask me, all their songs are classic summer bangers alike. The four mates who make up the band are Shaan Singh (Vocals and Sax), Matt Beachen (Drums), Ben O'Leary (Guitar), and Sam Thomson (Bass). They're humble about their success. Humble enough to have performed on our campus live at AUSA's sold-out Alfred's Street festival in O-Week. I took over AUSA's General Manager's office for 20 minutes to talk with the guys about their music.

For people who haven’t heard of your music, how would you describe your sound with 3 words?

Drax Project: Energetic, melodious… pop, or maybe R&B [the band enters a debate over whether R&B counts as three words or one]. We generally say that we kind of have two different energies in our music. It's a completely different energy when we're in the studio recording, and it's really hard for us to have that wild energy we have live on stage, which gives our live album a different feel.

Last album you listened to as a band? Or individually?

Drax Project: We don’t really listen to albums as a band, although we probably should, though aye? We send each other songs to listen to, though.

Ben: We do listen to Voodoo by D'Angelo all the time together, though, we use it for our sound check, and we jammed it on stage in Cairns. A huge influence on us.

Drax Project: Also, Caracal by Disclosure, we took a lot of inspiration from that record. And Justin Timberlake’s Justified, too. We try to make music that sounds like those albums.

Back in the day, what was your go-to student meal?

Sam & Shaan: For us, at the Basin Noodle House, in Wellington, it wasn't on the menu but you could ask them for this $7 large fried rice. Now ask Matt what he used to eat as a student. It was DISGUSTING!

Matt: Canned mackerel, and sometimes add baked beans or an egg for the protein [laughs]. Just a disgusting mix of protein, but great for bulking on a budget.

Ben: Sounds boujee but cannelloni with ricotta. [The rest of the band gawks at Ben.] What? My girlfriend at the time was a vegetarian!

[The band then asked me what my student meal is, to which I replied Hubbard’s Light & Right Peach cereal]

You’re one of New Zealand’s biggest groups, so what drew you to play at Alfred’s Festival?

Drax Project: It's cool to play uni shows! We met at Uni, and our first ever gig was at an O-Week toga party. Honestly, we just love playing gigs. If we’re asked to play a show, we’ll always try to say yes!

What inspired your viral TikTok Blind Beat series?

Drax Project: I think it’s a really unique thing we do, it’s unlike anything else we do or anyone else has done. It's super helpful for coming up with ideas, like: “let’s just try to write like this and see what happens”. Sometimes we have a guitar riff, or something like that, which we like, but we’re stuck for a melody, so everyone goes off and does their take on their own, and then we piece these Frankenstein melodies together, and Shaan sings over it.

Shaan: I think it’s helped me create different situations for different functions. It’s really unlikely we’d make a blind beat and release it as is, but it’s a great way to find out how to put things together.

Matt:Matt: We’ve started making new music, and a lot of what we have came from those Blind Beat sessions, and we wouldn’t have got into that creative space if we sat down and tried to write music.

Shaan: I also think we wouldn’t continue to do it if it wasn’t good social media content too [laughs], so it has essentially been a two birds one stone situation.

What do you feel is the secret ingredient for that “Kiwi Summer” vibe in a song?

Matt: It's gotta be applicable to windows down driving 😎

Shaan: To be honest, I don't agree, I wouldn’t call our music “Kiwi Summer”. It's cool that people see our music like that but I think bands like The Black Seeds, Six60 and Fat Freddy’s Drop are more in that style than us.

Drax Project: We’re not sure what the secret ingredient is, although we want Woolworths to be playing our songs [laughs].

Any advice for Young/Student Bands trying to break out into the industry?

Shaan: The number one thing is just get better [the rest of the band agrees]. Write heaps of music and find people to hang out with who are better at music than you are. Being the best doesn’t help you get better, even if you feel cool.

Drax Project: Have fun! It's meant to be fun, the best stuff we’ve done happens when we’re having fun, and we don't force it but try to make the most of our opportunities. You need to find people you want to hang out with and be around them all the time! Have a crew, people who help you be consistent. Consistency helps you grow. For example, Charli XCX was honing her sound for a long time without much success, but then she released brat, and brat blew up and changed things for her instantly. That's the product of consistency and honing your craft.

If you weren't at Alfred's Street festival this year, I'm sorry, but you missed out. Drax Project held nothing back, giving a high-energy show that could have been in front of a stadium, not just a crowd of about 800 first-years. They even played a new song that doesn't have a name yet. Their advice for those first years? Cs get degrees, and high school friends are cool, but Uni friends are for life. I couldn't agree more. Their performance was close to the sound and set list of their recently released live album, Live At The Jazz Cafe, London. I highly recommend giving it a spin. And for NZ Music Month, you must listen to it ;)