PHOTOGRAPHY Richie Barker
Erin LeCount’s Christmas wish is simple: silence. Or, at least, no messages on her phone. After a year spent moving between endless stages, countless cities, and never-ending creative deadlines, she’s craving a quieter kind of intensity. Christmas, she says, is low-key in her family, but this year feels different. For the first time, she’s found herself planning presents months in advance, collecting small things while travelling that remind her of specific people. “I never thought I was a gift giver,” she admits, “but maybe my love language has shifted, because I’m looking forward to it this year.”
It’s a telling sentiment at the end of a year defined by a stratospheric rise that has seen her named in numerous ‘ones to watch’ lists for the year ahead. 2025 has been LeCount’s most expansive year to date: her first headline show in March, months of touring, composing for the National Theatre’s Inter Alia, and the release of her debut EP, I Am Digital, I Am Divine. For the first time, she felt the immediate response of an audience truly listening. The EP marked a personal milestone – songs she’d carried for years finally finding their moment – but it was the release of ‘Machine Ghost’ that shifted something more fundamental. “It was a real turning point for me,” she asserts. “I knew what I wanted to make next. It was reassuring; I still have direction, I still know what I’m doing. This song is so me, and so honest.” Making it was cathartic, and a reminder that even amid acceleration, her creative instincts remain intact.
That sense of arrival culminated on 5th December at Camden’s KOKO. Her sold-out headline show carried a particular significance; friends and family were in the room, many seeing her perform live in this context for the first time. “It was such a special night,” she recalls. “It took me a few days to sit back, and it was only when I watched videos back that it connected in my head that I’d done it.” There was, she says, a particular energy in the room, the kind that performers feed off instinctively – shortly following the gig, a video emerged online of two young fans getting engaged amid the concert, soaking up the amorous atmosphere from her devoted fans.
But for the rising star, there was no dramatic comedown. The tour continued almost immediately, a show in Ireland the very next day, easing her gently out of the moment rather than snapping her back to reality. In a month, she’ll be back on the road again.
What makes LeCount compelling on stage is not just her technical control, but her presence, and her ability to command attention alone, at just 22, without overdetermining the moment. She’s been performing for years, but only recently has she begun to fully understand herself as a performer. “It’s something I’ve only really gotten to grips with this year,” she reveals. Her setup – a vocoder, drum pads, loop pedals, and keyboards arranged around her – acts as grounding points, places to return to physically and emotionally. Beyond that, there’s an openness she tries not to overthink. “There’s this space at the front of the stage, in front of the microphones, where I try not to think too much about what my body is doing,” she explains. “It sounds so cliche, but I really do just get into it, and I feel the music emotionally.” Movement, for her, begins with sound – how music feels in the body, and how that translates to an audience. “I love choreography, and I want to be the best performer I can be,” she says, “but a lot of it does come spontaneously.”
I love choreography, and I want to be the best performer I can be, but a lot of [my performance style] does come spontaneously.
Offstage, 2025 has expanded her horizons. LeCount is a city person through and through. Touring Europe this year meant first visits to Amsterdam, Berlin, and Paris, alongside a formative trip to New York. The answers might be obvious, she laughs, but the impact was real. New York, in particular, felt like a place where something is always happening, at every hour, and where music bleeds into everyday life. “I love the subway, and I love being surrounded by strangers,” she says. “The background noise – I need it.” Cities offer her a counterbalance to the solitude of studio work, which she describes as inherently insular. Stepping out into crowds, into sound and motion, keeps her tethered to the world her music moves through.
“It’s like I’m trying to trace my references, I think is what I’ve tried to do this year,” LeCount says, describing a process that’s taken her back to the sources behind the art that shaped her. Musically, she’s felt a deep connection to Lorde, whose albums, she says, always seem to arrive at exactly the right moment in her life. “Virgin was inspiring,” she notes, “just with how visceral it felt – the synths, the recycling of the same palette of sounds, the wonky structures. That’s what I love in music.” She also names Jim Legxacy’s Black British Music as a modern classic, praising his use of sampling, his voice, and how embedded he is in culture.
That process has taken her beyond recent releases and into more unorthodox forms of research. While touring, she made a concerted effort to watch films she feels she should know, including cult 90s flick The Craft. For Inter Alia, she immersed herself in Rosamund Pike’s filmography – from Gone Girl to Pride and Prejudice – and spent time at the Royal Courts of Justice, sitting in on trials.
Now, as winter settles in, LeCount is retreating. Hibernation, as she calls it, means time spent in her shed, with her phone switched off, making music without direct aims or strict deadlines. She says winter is when she feels most creative. “All my new project ideas and concepts are born over Christmas time and January,” she explains. “I’m excited to have the space and quietness to allow creative things to come to me rather than chasing after them, which is what I feel like I’m doing for the rest of the year.”
Looking to the new year, the pace isn’t slowing – if anything, it’s accelerating. “I thought this year was crazy, and looking at the schedule and plans for next year, it’s like 10 times as crazy,” she says. What feels different is how closely that pace now aligns with where she’s at creatively. “I’m really ready to work, and I’m ready to let go of one creative project and begin something new. I always feel like I’m three steps ahead and moving slightly too fast, so I think the pace next year matches me, which I’m excited for.”
For now, before it all begins again, she’s keeping her phone switched off.
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