Drax Project’s music is a sleek combination of pop, jazz and hip-hop influences that reflects the four musicians’ wide-ranging individual tastes.
• The band started in 2013 as a two-piece, with drummer Matt Beachen and saxophonist Shaan Singh busking on the streets of Wellington, New Zealand. Bassist Sam Thomson joined soon after. “Drax” is a combination of “drums” and “sax”.
• Guitarist Ben O’Leary joined the group in 2014, when Drax Project began playing original songs instead of covers and moved off the streets, into bars and clubs.
• Beachen, Singh, and Thomson all studied jazz at the New Zealand School of Music. O’Leary knew the others through the Wellington music scene.
• The foursome made their first EP, 2014’s Drax Project EP, with a friend of O’Leary’s who needed to do a recording as part of a university project.
• Drax Project broke through in their home country with the 2017 single “Woke Up Late”, then reached greater heights with a 2019 duet version featuring American pop singer Hailee Steinfeld. The song appeared in a 2019 episode of the MacGyver reboot.
Hometown
Wellington, New Zealand
Genre
Pop
Similar to: Drax Project
Discover more music and artists similar to Drax Project, like SIX60, Mitch James, Shawn Mendes