Photo by Michael Hanni
Do you ever come across a band and immediately find yourself getting lost in their world? green star certainly evokes that feeling. The buzzy London shoegazers feel like stepping into a place halfway between a dream and its disintegration, where shimmering melodies meet walls of distortion, tenderness gives way to noise, and nothing ever feels entirely settled.
The band’s journey began when Pedro Soler and Alberto De Torre met while studying graphic design in London, later connecting with Lilah Bobak through an internet forum, before drummer Daniel Rowson joined the picture. Encompassing fields from film, graphic design, to contemporary dance and music, each member brings a different creative language to the table. (Perhaps the internet isn’t always such a bad place after all. If it can give us Brockhampton, The Internet, and green star themselves, maybe the occasional questionable online encounter is worth the risk of forming a great band..)
Two days before the release of their new EP, silver + dust, I caught up with Lilah and Pedro as they travelled across Europe. Pedro had just come from working Fashion Week, and the band had been playing shows across the continent, including Germany, before heading to Lisbon. Among their adventures was a unique performance on a beach with an open-back setup, where Lilah remembered turning around to see surfers and skaters enjoying the night behind them–an experience straight out of a fever dream.
Alana: Do you guys have any personal favorites from the upcoming EP?
Lilah: We absolutely love “atomic paradise.”
It was one of the last songs that we ended up adding and finishing to the EP. So it’s very exciting–it came together really quickly. Pedro brought the song in.
Alana: I was about to mention the title of the songs when I was looking through the tracklist. They intrigued me so much.
That and the story and mythology behind the entire EP. Visually and as a story concept, I was wondering how did that come together? Did you settle on it before the music or did it develop alongside the songs?
Central to silver + dust is a striking narrative concept where an unguarded, lost angel enters an unfamiliar metropolis, shedding layers of her purity with each interaction. As the sprawling city slowly consumes her, she drifts through an ethereal space where emotion, memory, and setting bleed together until nothing remains but dust. Unfolding in scattered pieces, every encounter reshapes her perception, resembling a dream that slowly dissolves upon waking.
This mythology anchors the immersive universe green star constructed for the EP, where fleeting moments carry profound weight and transformation occurs almost imperceptibly. A quiet sorrow permeates the angel’s journey, capturing how an untouched existence is inevitably altered by its surroundings and experiences. Yet, silver + dust finds its elegance within this ambiguity, allowing tenderness and disillusionment to exist side by side. Much like the city itself, the narrative remains fluid, inviting listeners to unearth their own personal meanings within the interplay of memory, loss, and endurance.
Pedro: The story of Silver was kind of a little short film I did a few years ago. But I never ended up delivering it in a way that was profound and deep. I think one of the first tracks that we decided to add to the EP was “silver + dust.”
And that struck me a lot, that narrative again, which was two completely different things. From there, we just gravitated around the concept before the music. A lot of the lyrics and a lot of the themes talk about the mythology of the character.
Which was a very interesting process – we were writing every song by time. It’s like we’re contemplating these narratives and putting ourselves into the narrative. The whole mythology was developing throughout the writing and the creation.
Alana: The music video portrays the angel, Silver, do you have more music videos coming?
Pedro: We’re going to have a round of visualizers. We’re still kind of sweeping and also playing a lot and stuff. We want to conclude this narrative.
But I think for now, it’s going to be a run of a bit simpler visualizers. That idea of the destruction of the angel. A bit more graphic, a bit more related with the artwork side of things.
Kind of like the second video almost concluded this. Almost the death of Silver and the submission to the dust. Almost disappearing into the source. So the next is going to be just glimpses of that feeling, I guess.
Alana: Do you guys think about green star as a visual world as much as a musical one?
Lilah: We like to curate a visual world alongside social media and all these different platforms. We love to emphasize the importance of creating this whole new world and project itself, rather than just focusing on, “Oh, we’re a band and we make music.”
Especially because we have these thoughts and these inspirations going on behind the music. And to have such a talented team, especially with Pedro, where he can make all these videos come to life. It’s important to push that forward to create a whole new something that feels special, very unique to us.
It’s exciting to play with different things, you know?
Alana: You all come from different creative disciplines, I was wondering whether for this era or maybe in the future, what’s something else that you would want to experiment with? Possibly bringing a non-musical medium into your world..
Lilah: I really, really, really want to play with lighting in the live shows.
Especially coming from a dance background. When you create theater pieces, you spend so much time with lighting designers and creating this whole other journey. That I think would be so exciting when we get to a level where we can control.. not just the colors, but what’s happening.
Pedro: I mean, I guess we’ve always seen the project as very multidisciplinary. So any kind of format or medium is always fun to experiment with. We’re also used to being part of different mediums at the same time.
We just want to bring everything together and build something bigger than just the name of a band and the songs of the band. That’s kind of our goal for the next year. Developing that side of things. How we can bring all these things we like into the band in a way.
Alana: Would you consider doing an entire concept album?
Lilah: I think it’s definitely an intriguing idea. It tickles the mind. I know we’re thinking about it. There are no decisions yet on what we are aiming to do with the albums.
Pedro: I think we never try to force where the album takes us. Or where the music takes us. It comes quite naturally.
For me, this process was super interesting. I feel like now that we’ve started writing the songs, I’m a bit more independent. But things are starting to connect. Worlds and spaces. I think this EP was extremely icy and white and clinical.
Alana: Is there something one of the others does creatively that maybe you guys would like to try yourself?
Lilah: I take a lot of inspiration. I love when we write the songs. For example, I get to take a look at Alberto’s notebook of his lyrics and we workshop some lyrics together, which I think is exciting.
When we come together with different lyrics and start changing things and fitting everything in. This EP was already something new because my lyrics are very poetic.
It was interesting to think about the idea of the angel is Silver, and bring that in as a guiding force. That was something new.
Alana: In the topic of your writing process, I read that you guys write separately at most times and then bring those fragments together. Everyone contributes without necessarily knowing the full picture.
I’m curious, has that process ever completely changed the meaning of something one of you originally wrote?
Pedro: I think, same thing with the concepts. The reality is that we write the lyrics separately, but we do write all the instrumentation first and together. We share similar ways of reacting to the world.. Our surroundings. Without saying, we have some sort of guidance. Of how we are feeling.
With the instrumentation, the arrangement of the songs. Then that’s where it gets fun. We bring lyrics and most of the time, they don’t connect.
But that pre-occurring, funny contradictions, juxtapositions of things. It makes it a bit more rich, with it also being different voices that brings a different layer. A different narration.
We’ve never been in a situation where it doesn’t make any sense. Maybe one person has already finished their part and that part influences the other one. We never put too much attention. It’s just natural.
Alana: What felt different about making silver + dust compared to bleeding swirls?
Pedro: Silver is closer to the music we want to do.
For bleeding swirls there were a lot of drafts, and a lot of references we used to love. But we didn’t know the technical abilities or resources to do it. It was the first chapter.
For this one, it’s more mature. The lyrics, conceptually, the visuals, the whole thing.
Alana: You’re based in London and the weather impacts a lot, sonically. If you had been formed somewhere warmer, do you think you would sound completely different?
Lilah: Me, Pedro and Alberto are all born and raised in sunshine and happiness (laughs).
We chose to be here. I think we all find something beautiful about the gloom. It’s gloomy right now!.
But I don’t often find it that depressing. It is an interesting juxtaposition. It has been fun to play in sunnier places as well. When we play in sunnier places, we try to adjust the set. Maybe we start playing a bit faster.
Alana: Like the surfer festival.
Is there anything unexpectedly beautiful that you have seen in London that subconsciously found its way to your music?
Pedro: I think the whole idea of London is reflected in the lyrics. The way the city is constructed, and how people operate in the city.
A lot of my lyrics come from a position of being difficult to connect in general. Difficult to connect to yourself, being difficult to be outside.. In many ways, that is very reflected there.
Alana: Lilah, can we talk a bit about your background as a dancer? I find it so beautiful.
I was wondering, does being a dancer change the way you physically experience music?
Lilah: I have been a dancer forever. That is something that is part of who I am. I would not know what the other way is.
I love love love love groove since I am a bassist. So I’m always thinking about that. But also It affects how you move or how we move around on stage and the manner.
I don’t think I think about the connection specifically, but it definitely affects and infiltrates in a way that can be apparent when you look closely or try to examine it. But I can’t put my finger on it.
Alana: You said you wanted to incorporate lighting into your live set. Would you also want to bring out choreography?
Lilah: We have dabbled with this idea. I think for live shows, it’s something difficult where I think all the musicians’ movements should be natural and authentic. Especially with music, like you’re playing, and whatever comes out that’s what’s real and raw.
I think for music videos, playing with movement direction in the future, going into more choreographic lens, areas like that. Or Incorporating dancers into a live show. Finding a new way to do that, rather than just dropping a dancer in the middle of the set, not knowing how to interact with that. That has been on my mind.
Alana: You guys are so visually connected with your visual world. It would be really cool to see. And you’re doing a headline tour in December, right?
Lilah: Yes!
Alana: What do you guys hope the audience will feel when leaving your shows?
Pedro: Intensity. We don’t expect crazy moshpits or anything… Just kind of like this sense of disturbance, love, romanticism. Which is funny cause I imagine the crowd being like “What is going on?” But I like that!
I think we want to bring the character Silver in a visual way as well.
Maybe there is a way that narrative can be understood through the set list too. We love to trigger atmospheric elements in between songs – so maybe bringing in elements from the world Silver lives. But definitely bringing a level of narrative that feels right, not forced.
Alana: With your background with filmmaking, when you are making songs, do you always think of the visual world behind it instantly? Do you sometimes make the visual world first, then you think, “I need to make a song for this”?
Pedro: Definitely. Images come straight ahead.
It’s not very linear. Sometimes the music comes first. But both come together very quickly. If I create a visual or a little video, I imagine certain sounds. The other way around also happens naturally. I have been doing this for a while now. It’s kind of like a muscle memory.
Alana: Is there a song that feels completely different live than it does on the recording?
Lilah: I would say “silver + dust” is one that we debuted live a while ago. Immediately.
I don’t think we had a set structure. It was our first hour-long set. We were like, “Let’s just play everything!” Now we have been letting it sit. It changed a lot in the production, post-production, everything. It turned into this whole new song that we absolutely love.
Now we are trying to find a way to infiltrate back into the live and make it feel full because there are lots of electronic elements. I think I’m really excited to see how we can turn that into even bigger than its full potential live.
Alana: Do you guys have any big goals or dreams for this new era?
Pedro: We are just excited. I think an album is a big statement for a band.
But also just being consistent… We have been really happy with this project, so being consistent with this level of creativity. Just being able to keep writing good music. Hopefully to play outside, the USA would be amazing.
As green star gears up for their headline tour this December and looks toward ambitious future goals, their unique artistic ecosystem continues to expand. By seamlessly weaving together film, contemporary dance, graphic design, and atmospheric storytelling, the quartet are building a cohesive world that extends far beyond traditional musical boundaries. Whether they are deepening the tragic, dreamlike mythology of Silver or allowing distinct creative fragments to organically collide into rich new compositions, and with so many different creative ideas feeding into their music, I doubt they’ll be running out of places to go anytime soon.
