Alice Phoebe Lou is a South African singer-songwriter based in Berlin. Lou spent her childhood in Kommetjie on west coast of the Cape Penninsula in South Africa. She took piano and guitar lessons as a child. When she was 14 years old she was fond of trance music and started to take photographs from concerts, sometimes even getting paid for them. In 2010 she spent her summer holiday in Paris living first with her aunt but soon moved to live with a friend and started earning money by fire-dancing.
Having a gap year after graduating from high school in South Africa in 2012 she returned to Europe, first to Amsterdam and then to Berlin. In Berlin she started to sing and play guitar as she found out that this was more lucrative than fire-dancing. After her gap year she contemplated attending university in South Africa, but eventually decided to purchase a battery powered amplifier and return to Berlin instead. In Berlin she performed on S- and U-Bahn stations and parks. After one month in Berlin, she played on a television programme. In April 2014 she self-released “Momentum” EP. The song “Fiery Heart, Fiery Mind” from the EP featured in the soundtrack of the 2015 released film “Ayanda”. She also started to play in venues.
In April 2016 Alice Phoebe Lou released her album “Orbit”, produced by Matteo Pavesi and Jian Kellett-Liew. She was nominated for best female artist at the 2016 German critics choice awards in Germany and was invited to several German TV programs for interviews and performances. She toured in Europe, South Africa and USA in 2016 and played three sold-out shows at the Berlin Planetarium. In December 2017 she self-released nine track “Sola” EP and a book titled “Songs, poems and memories”. The same month it was announced that her song “She” from the film Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story was shortlisted for the Oscar in the Best Original Song category. “She” was released as a digital single in 2018 with a music video directed by Natalia Bazina. In 2018 edition of the Berlin Music Video Awards, the music video ”She” was nominated for Best Song.
In July 2019 A Place of My Own (Mahogany Sessions) EP containing four songs from Paper Castles album recorded live was released in digital format accompanied by a YouTube video of the recording session. In August video for the Lost in LA was published. The song is from her Sola EP.[In December Paper Castles album was listed at number 19 in the NBHAP magazine’s 50 best albums of 2019 list and 7th in FMS magazine’s top 35 albums and EPs of 2019 list. In May 2020 she released ten track live album Live at Funkhaus from the December 2019 Funkhaus Berlin concert. Further, a short documentary filmed and directed by Julian Culverhouse about Paper Castles tour was published. In June Touch single was released. A purple 7 inch vinyl containing Witches and Touch was released in September. In November it was announced that her third studio album titled Glow would be released in March 2021. In December single and video of Dusk from the coming Glow-album was released. In February 2021, second single Dirty Mouth was released from the upcoming album with a music video. Glow was released in March 2021.
In December 2021, she released the ten track album Child’s Play without any advance announcements. In February 2022, while she was touring in west coast of USA, her side project Strongboi released new song Fool Around. Strongboi released in 2022 two further singles, Unconditional and Cold from their coming debut album Strongboi that was released in February 2023. She continued touring through the summer of 2022, and in autumn she had a North America tour supporting Billy Bragg. Touring continued in 2023 and in March 2023 the title track Shelter of her coming album was released as a single in digital formats followed by a music video about month later. The second single, Open My Door, was released digitally in April 2023 and the third one, Lose My Head in June 2023. Shelter album was released in July 2023.
