We recently connected with Cole Soileau and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Cole, thanks for joining us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

It takes everything to be successful. All the way from educating yourself about the industry to actually going for it.

I came up from nothing and I’m from a small town where there’s nothing. I’m not a big Artist at this time, but I’ve made it pretty far on my own and this is what every artist has to do in the beginning.

My advice is just to stay really dedicated and to never give up on your dreams because ambition is far less stressful than laziness and if you got something that you really believe in, then you need to take it all the way with no doubts. You’re gonna have hurdles in this business. You’re gonna have to treat yourself like a brand, content creator, setting up an image that stands for everything you’re about like it’s similar to hunger games almost.

No matter what anyone tells you.. if you know you’ve got something going on, double down at all costs.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

From a very early age, I was always drawn to music especially, but I started to break it down, and I really found that I was mostly wanting to focus on learning the drums; so after three months of drum lessons, I stopped going, and then I just started learning on my own watching various, legendary Nirvana performances and obsessing over Dave Grohl for the longest time and his ability to hit harder than any other drummer I’ve ever seen at the time. I said, “I wanna f*cking do THAT as my job!” so I continued on with the drums, but on the way up, I picked up the ability to play guitar, and I was somewhat good at it enough to at least play power cords and write songs which, of course I looked up Cobain for in the beginning. Around this time, SoundCloud was popping off and Lil Peep was at the top of his ring. Billie Eilish just dropped “when we fall asleep where do we go?” and Post Malone started coming out with bangers like the album “Bentleys and Beerbottles”.. I remember it being a very hot time for music, but nothing I appreciated at the time because I was so stuck in nu-underground rock and 90s – 2000s bands . I was stuck in my obsession with alternative rock and grunge from an early age harboring bands like L7, Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Pandora’s Bliss, Senium, Recreator, Deftones, Chevelle, Linkin Park, Seether, and Silverchair. I remember sitting in art class bored out of my mind painting my stress of the day away on projects I didn’t really care for and that’s really when I discovered this band called “stereo lab” and I was listening to “the pixies” more too and I kind of just had this long lost craving to be in an underground rock band and blow up in my small town like some of these people did. I later got into Sonic Youth and garbage, and Dinosaur Jr. but mostly around that time, I was listening to bands like the wipers and the Melvins. The more I dug into it I kind of became obsessed with Seattle music and how the scene blew up so quickly just with a few bands. It was astronomical odds and they were all so good.

After I got out of high school things got really weird. At this point, I had been in two bands that both flopped and I had nothing going for me other than the ambition to somehow make a self-titled album. Originally it was gonna be 13 tracks, but then I decided as I went along to go up to 16.

Around 2020 I started dropping music, like for real, and trying to basically ‘Dave Grohl’ everything by recording/overdubbing all the instruments myself, but then I found that it was more efficient to start using beats from these YouTube producers I was finding because I was just trying to get into music and needed a ‘fast-track’ to setting up a sound to evolve from. I didn’t always have the team or the gear to customize instrumentals the way I would like them to be or to be able to record them myself all the time, so majority of times, in the early days, I would find a beat/instrumental I really loved and then I would lease it, or buy the exclusive if I could afford it. Budget was really, really hard for me coming up and I didn’t come from any kind of money, so budget has always been a thing that’s held me back the most. What didn’t hold me back and how I was able to counter this was developing the skills to work with limitations to create masterpieces.

Around this time, it had been about two years since peep had passed, and already other current musicians like Machine Gun Kelly were getting slammed for trying to like ‘copy’ him or something which I thought was stupid because I thought he was a very talented, very unique, and very genius songwriter. Matter of fact, the reason I’m bringing up Peep is because he had a big influence on me in the start and is still up to Cobain level on his influence to me musically. Around 2020, pop punk was coming back in a new way and the incorporation of trap elements was interesting to hear in manifestation, but I was already thinking of doing trap grunge in 2016 and so the idea was nothing new to me.

The sound I have now has been manifested somewhere around my teen years with all the angsty, heavy, more raw sounds and themes I was used to listening to, but didn’t get recorded until way later. The original schematic for my sound that I wanted to go with was that I was going to be an artist that was going to produce wet, bombastic drums with orchestral guitars and it was going to have this early 90s alt rock kind of sound or feel but I was gonna combine it with trap elements like 808s and synthetic high hats and even the vocal productions sounding futuristic with the use of certain types of auto tune, compression, and delay. Personally, I think the fact that auto tune was never able to be used when grunge was popping was a huge missed opportunity.

Now fast-forward to 2025 and you have Artist like me, Trxy, Scarlet House, and even Ekkstacy creating it in some form to fit our own molds.

So I started dropping music in 2020 with the confidence that this would become my sound, and this was what I was trying to do, but then I felt the pressures of having to impress everyone enough for my music to potentially get some ears, I was always told the music I was trying to make wasn’t marketable and I just wanted to prove people wrong that my soundscape design idea is one of the most genius that has ever existed.
Growing up, I listened to a lot of Linkin Park and Chester Bennington is also one of my secret top influences because of how he was there for so many people, but nobody could ever be there for him. I feel like I’m a mixture of Kurt, Gus, and Chester in my soul.. but I’m also really appreciative of not only 90’s-2000’s influence, it’s also 2017 SoundCloud influence and the roaring 2020s vision of what this could sound like if taken on properly.
A lot of people compare me to peep, but I would be happy with a cobain comparison. I would be happy with something like Chester more often because I don’t hear those too often because of the way my voice sounds and how I stack my vocals brings a level of nostalgia back to 2017 emo rap/soundcloud wave for a lot of people and that’s cool and all, but if I’m gonna carry a torch, I would want to do it in a way that gives back to the industry and in a profitable, healthy way for everyone.

What I’m doing for music is heavily beneficial for both the listener and The Artist and sometimes I feel like it’s gonna take over soon again.. like grunge is coming back, but it’s futuristic.. it’s not the same again.
It’s more nostalgic invoking and it reminds me of a time I never got to experience and that’s essentially what I want to do for my fans. This new age not necessarily meant to copy what was in the past but to evolve it in a new direction. It’s really hard to explain what is in my head when I say this, but you’re just gonna have to hear when my new record comes out. I’m currently working on my new EP “The Nuclear Christ” and it’s about world corruption using God‘s name to destroy the planet with some kind of reverse religious tactic because we all know what Trump is doing if you’re aware. It was based on a nightmare that I had and it felt prophetic, so I decided to run with my prophetic insights like I normally do like I even predicted in “Hide Behind A Smile”, how the UFOs were in the sky, and everyone was freaking out about it… now look at the cover, that specific cover art was finished roughly around late 2021

So fast-forward now 2025 I have a 16 track album out and I am on 18 different radio stations across the US at this moment promoting my new single “Ocean (ft. Mauiwowi)”. I have a new EP on the way and I’m in 2 side projects that are full-fledged.

It’s safe to conclude my genre range, if you even want to try to put a label on me, are obviously, primarily alternative.. it’s alternative rock, but it’s also ambient wave and post indie punk fused with emo trap elements and has many hooks in the songs to get it stuck in your head FAST. Sometimes I don’t use the trap elements. It just depends on the mood and the type of song that I’m making. I do what I want.

In the future, I’m moving more into a Shoegaze- Grunge Rock kind of really Deftones, Scarlet House – influenced – type stuff, but currently I’m open to likely collaborations to open the doors, so that I can get to making this kind of music more often to whip my familiarity with the genres back in check again.

What sets me apart from others is that my sound is very visceral and speaks to people in a very personal way that only certain people could understand, but once that impact is made and people really catch on to what I’m doing, I think it could really be like a global thing. I often appeal to my audience from a very raw, unhinged, authentic angle and I’m kind of wording lyrics in my songs as an attempt to connect on a deeper level to tie our trauma bonds while still delivering a sense of nostalgia or hope to break free of the chains that bind us.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Make content around what you’re doing and try to be as consistent as possible and never give up unless you need a break.

If you find a good piece of content that you can boost like none of the other ones are boosting then that’s your bet. Mess around with Meta ads and Google ads too. Collaborate with people who understand social media better than you and do a lot of research.

My advice is stay concise to what you’re promoting but also don’t sell your music to people, but just be educational and share your experiences. Try to be as relatable as possible all while being as authentic as possible.

Yes the more numbers you have the more doors will likely open, but it doesn’t mean you’re not talented from the start just because your content isn’t popping off at first. Keep going.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

So, this is kind of going to take a dark turn, but my mother committed suicide in 2021 and I lost everything I ever knew. It quickly changed me into someone else I’d never even known to exist. I became a lot more weary, closed up, depressed, and extremely self abusive for a very long time and I had to move to Austin and figure out a way to make it on my own after leaving that small town in Louisiana I’ve been stuck in for almost half my life at that point.

Sh*t was really low for me at this point
and I was just doing whatever I could to survive all while trying to chase my dreams even further, but I tried to do everyone right and I tried to do the right thing no matter what and I tried my best to be more kind to people and not let my anger get the best of me. I often would stay in my apartment and I wouldn’t leave unless I had a show or had to go to work. I hated going out and every dime I made either went into bills or whatever I had left to progress on my album. I self funded that album and it took three years to make, and I put my entire soul essence into it. It started to become really crushing that she was gone, and that I hadn’t gotten anywhere with my music since then to try to make it up to her.
Her loss has affected me like no other, but It also has pushed me to do things I never thought I would achieve. Bless her soul and she’s the reason I did all of this. Prior to her loss, I was in an abusive relationship with a narcissist. He broke me down, thinking that he was gonna build me up, but it just caused me to get into music and try to write as much about it as I could like an escape plan. This pretty much equates to why my last album was so dark, visceral, and can be hard to listen back to. Pro tip: most artists hate their own art for a reason.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/ColeSoileau
• Youtube: Cole Soileau
• Soundcloud: Cole Soileau
• Other: All my links are in the tree. Thank you for this amazing opportunity. I will never forget it.