The two artists at the center of VOWWS came to their death-pop sound naturally. It can be heard in the music on the band’s new album, I’ll fill your house with an army, as it travels through layers of shadow and melody, anguish, and euphoria. Just don’t call it goth.
“We’re not really big goth rock fans,” singer-guitarist Matt James insists. “Neither of us are big Depeche Mode fans. I know, like, one Depeche Mode record back to front.”
The Australian duo got there by other means, as fanatics for various genres of rock, for movie soundtracks, and the pop avant-garde. They are makers of electronic music with an analog obsession, with feelings and lyrics fueled by tough times as expatriates making a go in the competitive Los Angeles music scene.
“I like a little bit of this and a little bit of that,” adds singer-keyboardist Rizz. “We grew up in the ’90s, we love ’90s grunge, so there’s a lot of that in there. But we also love film scores. He listens to mainly piano music, like Satie—our number one artist on Spotify. It’s pure notes. It’s maybe why it’s hard to define what we sound like because it’s such a mix of things.”
They’ve also attracted some big-name support from the likes of Poppy and members of the Cult, Deftones, A Perfect Circle, Korn, and darkwave godfather Gary Numan. On the road in 2026, VOWWS are set to travel Europe with Kim Dracula through February, play the Sick New World festival in Las Vegas on April 25, followed by several just-announced U.S. dates with Marilyn Manson in May.
In performance, they dress in dramatic shades of black, with Rizz’s face painted in vampiric white and black, as movie footage is projected onto the stage. “We always call ourselves, like, happy, sad,” says James of VOWWS’ music. “There’s a lot of feeling in there that’s not bad. We’re not just depressing.”
The creative couple are sitting in colorful wingback chairs at their apartment near the Hollywood Bowl. VOWWS has always been a committed DIY operation, and this is where a lot of their work gets done. There are guitar cases on the floor, a computer station where Rizz edits video, and a large TV screen silently showing a documentary about the Andy Warhol diaries.
Rizz is dark-haired and dressed in a black track suit, lighting another in an endless chain of cigarettes, blowing smoke through the open sliding door behind her. James, blonde and wearing a T-shirt, is having a mixed drink.
The band’s third album was a long time coming. VOWWS were in the middle of writing songs for their follow-up to 2018’s Under the World when the pandemic hit in 2020 and everything stopped. Before then, there had been live performances and gigs creating music for fashion shows by Comme des Garçons and Givenchy around the world. “It just got cut off at the knees,” says James. “It wasn’t uniquely bad for us, but it was a traumatic thing. And it fucked with us for two years.”
There were some singles in the interim—the driving “Stay Where You Are” and “Impulse Control” in 2020, the growling “One By One” and “Wait,” an elegiac collaboration with Chelsea Wolfe, in 2022. But after talks with one indie label suggested by Billy Corgan went nowhere, VOWWS grew more anxious about the lost time.
Then they met Billy Howerdel, the producer-guitarist-songwriter for A Perfect Circle, and an avowed follower of the darker pop of the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees. He was in need of someone to create a music video for his 2022 solo album, What Normal Was. The song was “Poison Flowers,” and Rizz came recommended by Danny Lohner, a frequent collaborator with Nine Inch Nails and A Perfect Circle. Rizz then directed and edited an evocative, moody collision of images to match the song’s haunting textures—existing found footage layered with material shot largely in the VOWWS apartment.
“We spent a solid two weeks together almost every day, and he’s just wonderful,” Rizz says. Then Howerdel asked VOWWS to open a tour for him, and they shared a bus for a month on the road. “When you live in a hallway with somebody, you really get to know each other.”
They bonded over music, like the soundtrack to the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola film Bram Stoker’s Dracula, an eerie romantic score by the Polish composer Wojciech Kilar. Howerdel also learned of their struggles to move forward and he offered to produce the new album in his private studio.
“We call Billy our American dad,” James says with a laugh.
Through Howerdel, they also met his friend and collaborator, drummer Josh Freese (A Perfect Circle, Foo Fighters, Devo). He appears on four songs from I’ll fill your house with an army, including the album’s noisiest, “Re-Animator.” Also on the album is the rapturous “Silhouette” and the alternately grinding and catchy “Blood’s On Fire.”
“Hurt You” has that classic gothy marching sound, but James says it originated as a “rip-off” of a beat from Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy.” He was drawn to its “really small snare drum. It was really intimate and personal.”
On the swirling “SHUDDER,” the band features Korn guitarist Munky, a full-circle moment for Rizz, who spent her adolescence listening to the nu-metal bands Korn and Deftones. “These guys all know each other, so it was all very easy,” she says of the session. “When Munky came to track, Danny [Lohner] came, and it was like a party.”
“We sort of had this little village that all believed in us and believed in our music and got together,” Rizz adds, “and we were like, ‘Let’s fucking go!’”
The album’s ominous title, James says, is “just a thing from the subconscious,” which also reflects how many of his lyrics are created. “A lot of the time when I’m writing, I sing gibberish to create a melody. Whatever is in your subconscious often comes through in a couple of words, and I’ll just go with it.”
While in the past, the duo learned to make every moment count in the studio, Howerdel allowed the process to unfold over time. “He’s very thorough,” James explains. “He doesn’t like to leave any stone unturned, just as a matter of course. He might know intellectually that he could probably leave the song as it is, but he chooses to go, ‘Well, let’s try that. Let’s try that, let’s try that.’ He really stopped us in our tracks and asked questions about everything. His personality in a nutshell is just curious, fastidious, and deliberate.”
Since completing the album, VOWWS has recruited drummer Adam Pierce and bassist Stu Brooks into the group. Before then, the band had always been the inseparable duo of Rizz and James.
Rizz was born in Costa Rica and emigrated to Australia at age 3 with her Iranian parents. Both she and James grew up in suburban Sydney, but didn’t meet until college. “When I was a teenager, I either wanted to go to film school or music school,” says Rizz, and she ultimately chose music. Her time at the music academy introduced her to other young artists and opened up her creative world.
James and Rizz first came to the U.S. with a band called Captain in 2014. The band was already fraying at the edges and broke up not long after arriving. “It’s like when you have a baby to save your marriage: Like, let’s go to America, make a record,” says James.
Rizz and James decided to continue with a new project, and bounced from L.A. to New York, back to Australia, and then made another try in L.A., landing in a small studio apartment in the heart of Hollywood. “It was a room and we had a blow-up mattress and a TV and a chair,” James recalls. “It was kind of great—like, that whole thing of leaving your old self behind. You also leave all your shit behind.”
Back home, their families periodically read sensational headlines about L.A. calamities, from fires and political upheaval to National Guard soldiers on the streets, and sent alarmed texts: “Are you OK?” But the only real threat to VOWWS’s future in that early time in L.A. was the financial struggle to survive.
“That period is imprinted all over all the music we do, and it was hard,” says James. “It still feels very fragile. I don’t know if that will ever go away, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I don’t want to get too comfortable in some ways.”
Returning permanently to Australia was not an option if they wanted to make music. At one point, they returned home for about four weeks for visa renewal, then flew back directly from Sydney for a show in San Francisco.
“I remember finishing the show, and it was New Year’s Eve in the Tenderloin [district],” Rizz recalls. “There’s, like, a fight happening over there. There’s people screaming over here. There’s a guy overdosing over there. …Australia’s very safe. What an adventure.”
With so much time between the last two albums, VOWWS is already planning the next one. They spent almost a week in the SoCal high desert in a place called Wonder Valley just to get away from the city and write, and now have five songs in progress.
“We’re in a really good creative place at the moment,” says James. “I think it’s come from this last couple of years of struggle that’s led us here.”
Adds Rizz, “I’m so thrilled [I’ll fill your house with an army] is out. It’s never going to take that long again. And we’ve been writing the best we feel that we’ve ever written. And there’s no rules, there’s no pressure.”
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