Los Angeles duo Fake Dad examine the all-encompassing effects of depression and overstimulation with the grunge-soaked song “ON/OFF,” taken from their upcoming EP, ‘Holly Wholesome and the Slut Machine.’
Stream: “ON/OFF” – Fake Dad
Feeling your heart beat in your chest and sweat seeping from your head reminds you you’re this living, breathing animal. It also helps re-engage your mind – it’s kind of like hitting the restart button on a computer when it starts acting up.
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Have you ever gone on TikTok, and as you are making your way through the for you page a video suddenly appears saying, “hold up, you have been scrolling for way too long” or “are you scrolling instead of sleeping?”
It is fine to indulge in a little social media time now and then. Sometimes, though, you can find yourself on there for hours. Maybe you have been doing that a lot lately. Oftentimes people will do this as a way to numb the brain and not have to think about overwhelming emotions.
Indie rock duo Fake Dad’s “ON/OFF” is a grunge-soaked single dealing with common occurrences in our modern world. It touches on things a lot of us can connect to such as bed rotting, doomscrolling and serotonin burnout. “ON/OFF” highlights brooding vocals over throbbing drums and fuzzy bass. The song also exhibits gritty guitar from Jeff Frantom (Blondshell).

Formed in 2020, Fake Dad consists of Andrea de Varona and Josh Ford. A mainstay of Atwood Magazine‘s pages for some time now, the bold twosome – bred in New York City and now based in Los Angeles – combine their two distinct creative perspectives to form the perfect sonic language. Fake Dad’s music fuses infectious hooks, ’90s-flavored guitar, and driving bass rhythms into a unique style which, together with honest lyricism, generates a transfixing quality that lingers.
Released November 21 via Father Figure Music, “ON/OFF” features on Fake Dad’s upcoming EP Holly Wholesome and the Slut Machine. Within that offering they built a made-up world of clowns, knights, and demons. This fictional universe was a way to discharge very real feelings.
Atwood Magazine spoke with the duo, discussing “ON/OFF,” their chance meeting, and much more.
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:: stream/purchase ON/OFF here ::
:: connect with Fake Dad here ::
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A CONVERSATION WITH FAKE DAD
Atwood Magazine: “ON/OFF” is a bold indie rock piece seeped in an intoxicating grunge sonic. How did you develop the track’s sound?
Andrea de Varona: For starters, we were listening to Mannequin Pussy’s 2024 album I Got Heaven on repeat coupled with a ton of the Nirvana catalogue so we were really in our ’90s grunge bag. We were also both just coming out of our own respective mental health slumps and various levels of depressive episodes.
The first verse lyrics to “ON/OFF” came spilling out of me while Jeff and Josh were messing around on guitar and bass. We all looked at each other after the initial word vomit and were just like, yeah we all know what this song is about.
Interestingly enough though, the song really started with that background vocal riff you hear in the intro. I was just improvising over a couple of chords Jeff was playing and then he immediately got what I was saying and just ran with it. Felt like he and Josh just really got the dirty, invigorating dialogue I was creating for the track before I even fully reaized I was doing it. Just one of those moments of total synergy that we’re all always hunting down as songwriters.
We often feel overpowered by our emotions making the single “ON/OFF” so relatable. Can you explain the track in more detail and the inspiration behind it?
Andrea: In a lot of ways the societal expectation to “do, do, do” can overwhelm to the point that it acts as an anesthetic to being in touch with yourself both emotionally and physically.
The crux of the emotions behind “ON/OFF” stem from a mutual feeling of all around dejection – being so “plugged in” to the screens in front of us that we actually become disconnected from everything that’s actually with us here in the physical world.

The song examines things like bed rotting, serotonin burnout, and doom scrolling. How have these things affected you?
Josh Ford: I’ve dealt with major episodes of depression that have totally blown up entire chapters of my life. I think that social media, TV, video games, drugs, alcohol, for me they’re all just different ways to do the same thing: create a buffer between myself and feelings I don’t want to feel. Pushing down inconvenient emotions isn’t a new thing, but it is a lot easier than it used to be. I think if we really look at ourselves, we might see that there are whole weeks of our lives where we’re never once alone with our thoughts. But those feelings get banked, and they build up like lint in a dryer, and eventually they will find a way to MAKE you listen to them. Every month (or months) that I’ve spent barely able to get out of bed has been a direct result of the bill coming due on feelings I thought I was smart enough to skate right over. But you never can.
You mention, “laying on the bathroom floor trying to figure out if you are feeling too much, or not enough.” What would you say to others that are experiencing a similar sense of uncertainty?
Josh: Go out and touch some grass. I know it’s easier said than done and it’s also so overstated but there’s definitely truth behind it. One of the many things I’ve learned to value since moving to LA is time spent outdoors just in nature, as unplugged as possible.
Also, before this year I didn’t really understand how crucial it is to spend time moving your physical body. Whether it’s through exercising in a more straight-forward sense or dancing in your room or going for a walk, anything you can do to move your body can give you a real sense of awareness. Feeling your heart beat in your chest and sweat seeping from your head reminds you you’re this living, breathing animal. It also helps re-engage your mind – it’s kind of like hitting the restart button on a computer when it starts acting up.

“ON/OFF” features guitarist Jeff Frantom (Blondshell). What was it like working with him on the offering?
Josh: Jeff is a super talented guitarist, and he has great instincts. Once we really found our rhythm, he would keep throwing riffs and ideas at us like, “do you like this?” and the answer was always yes, so we just kept building this mosaic of great musical thoughts. It seems like they just pour out of him, so the biggest problem we had was ultimately choosing which ideas we actually had room for, and which needed to be carved away. That’s the hard thing about creating an arrangement: just because an idea is good doesn’t mean it fits into this particular puzzle. Sparseness is confidence, busyness is insecurity.
I understand the two of you met at a college party in the East Village and formed an immediate bond. Can you explain more about what that was like?
Josh: It’s so funny telling this story, because the memory feels more and more like a memory of two kids every year that passes. We both had sort of an anxious, earnest energy, so we kind of gravitated towards each other in this crowded room and talked the rest of the night. On our first date, we stayed up until like 5 AM talking. We were both underclassmen at competing music programs at NYU with totally different backgrounds, but it really felt like we shared a fundamental philosophy about what we wanted our music to mean to people.
We both had sort of awkward solo projects that you could probably still find under our names – but we fell into this project together because Andrea won a songwriting competition for a song I (Josh) helped produce that we submitted under the name “Fake Dad.” When it won, and they wanted us to play at this event, we were like, “Shit, now we actually need to materialize a real band.” We never officially stopped making solo music, but it just never felt right to make art without the other person after that.

Who are some artists you both dig that have truly influenced your style?
Andrea: Kathleen Hanna (of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre), Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Amy Winehouse, Billie Holiday, PJ Harvey, and David Bowie. And more recently, Amyl and the Sniffers, Fontaines DC, Mannequin Pussy, and Dora Jar.
Josh: I love artists that kind of seem like they’re pretending to be someone they’re not, like LCD Soundsystem, Chappell Roan, Karen O, Reggie Watts, etc. There’s a special kind of authenticity hidden within the fictional character – maybe the kind of person they were never allowed to be.
In your upcoming EP, Holly Wholesome and the Slut Machine, the two of you have created characters such as angry burger-flipping clowns, star-crossed knights, and masked sleep paralysis demons. What inspired these imaginative ideas?
Josh: In the past year, we have been fixated on posers. Specifically, rock music posers – there’s just something fascinating about music made by an artist who’s pretending to be someone they’re not. In the different subgenres of rock especially, “fake” can be a dirty word. But as we dug into some of their favorite artists from before their time, it became clear that playing a character is pretty deeply entwined with the legacy of rock music.
PJ Harvey was a skinny, 5’4 woman who bellowed about being 50 feet tall and “man-sized.” Stevie Nicks wore her don’t mess with me or I’ll put a spell on you, witchy persona to break through the gender boundaries of rock and roll. Tina Turner was a background singer turned untouchable superstar who reinvented herself through decades of hard fought battles. LCD Soundsystem was an introvert pretending to be the life of the party, and David Bowie was pretending to be a space alien. And yet, there’s a kind of wish fulfillment there: these are people who found more than just creative expression in their art – they found reinvention. Within the false image, they were able to find something true about themselves.
Since the beginning of 2024, this is what we’ve found ourselves doing as well, embracing the freeing process of writing music through the lens of a character, which in turn has allowed us to explore the musical and aesthetic (and at times theatrical) sensibilities of our favorite rock, punk, and new wave legends, as well as better understand ourselves.

What’s on the horizon for Fake Dad?
Josh: We’re gearing up to release a brand new EP titled Holly Wholesome and the Slut Machine. In many ways, this project really feels like turning a new leaf for Fake Dad while also returning to our roots. That is, getting back to what drew us both to this dream of becoming rockstars when we were little kids. A desire to escape into something so deeply that you learn something new about yourself in the process–maybe even discovering a “you” you didn’t fully realize until that moment. “ON/OFF” is one of the tracks off the project.
I’d say beyond Holly Wholesome, what we’re most looking forward to next year is playing more live shows than we ever have in the history of Fake Dad. And really hitting the road in a long ass support tour (or two), we’ll see how it all shapes up! We’re just excited to get the opportunity to play our music live for folks and make those IRL connections because that’s what it’s all about baby. Oh, and look out for our song “So Dramatic!” on the new season of a show that we cannot name yet but I think a lot of people know.
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:: stream/purchase ON/OFF here ::
:: connect with Fake Dad here ::
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Stream: “ON/OFF” – Fake Dad
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