“Boisterous, loud, emo”: Meet Frost Children, the sibling duo making maximalist dance music

There are many things the small Midwestern city of St. Louis is known for – its location along the famous Mississippi River, its regional BBQ food, its towering Gateway Arch monument leading a pathway to the west – but its dance music scene is certainly not one of them, local duo Frost Children tell us. “It was pretty hard to find sounds outside of the mainstream growing up,” recalls Lulu Prost, one half of the sibling act. “That’s why we got really into finding sub-scenes online. To us, the progressive house and electro period was so untapped and cool, and none of our friends in high school were listening to it. It felt kinda special.”

Occupying a pocket of land on the border between Missouri and Illinois, St. Louis was the incubator for Frost Children’s musical beginnings. When the duo call in from New York one afternoon, where they relocated impulsively to be somewhere “more inspiring”, they’re mulling over their early obsessions with EDM, Michael Jackson, and falling into SoundCloud rabbit holes. Lulu’s punky blue hair shadows their face as they speak thoughtfully about the pair's childhood together, and Angel sits poised beside them, long white blonde hair falling into her lap.

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Look through Frost Children’s back catalogue, which includes six albums and a huge stack of singles and EPs dating back to 2020, and you’d be forgiven for thinking they were inspired by the crazed cultural impact of bloghouse and electroclash. Although their music could readily be part of that late ‘00s era where frenzied styles like French house and nu-rave were made with huge, growling basslines and marketed in a DIY fashion through blogs like MySpace, they were never actually immersed in that scene – and that’s because it never made it into their St. Louis bubble.

“By the time styles like bloghouse got to us in St. Louis, the vast majority of people had moved on,” Angel explains. “It was never something that had money to be marketed to us, so it never really made it there. We heard all the shit that it influenced, and I like all that shit now. But I didn’t really grow up on it.” 

In the five years since the Frost Children project first got off the ground, Lulu and Angel have steered away from being boxed into one sound or style. “We’re creating a new version of electronic music,” chimes Lulu. “We started this project unintentionally, just for fun and to kill time when the pandemic hit,” they add. 

“It was pretty simple,” starts Angel. “We just kinda decided that we’re both goated at producing, and we started making music together.”

“We make a lot of dance music, but I think pop is really where it started,” Angel continues. “There’s only really two genres in my head, there’s pop and there’s texture music, which are the songs that don’t really have a structure or are more about the space that they create. Then there’s pop music, which is literally everything else. That’s where I feel like I am, I just belong to that camp,” she explains, before Lulu chips in: “I’d definitely rather be under that scope. I never want to lean into the idea that we’re this underground DIY thing, but we are, because we do everything ourselves – the production, the styling… it’s all us.”

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The duo’s latest studio record ‘Sister’ represents a turning point for Frost Children. While Angel describes it as their “most focused project yet”, the 14-track release (whittled down from 23) goes deeper below the surface than their previous works, wrestling with themes like co-dependence and change. It sees them thrust into a world unknown, pulling from the strings of styles like hyperpop, EDM, big room, and even post-punk and emo, featuring their vocals layered across latherings of maximalist production – a “dream genre” they made up, Lulu says. “It’s maximal, catchy, and swaggy. I don’t think I know anything else that sounds like this album, to be honest.”

‘Sister’ is the result of an intense creative “blackout”, Angel explains. “It just sort of happened. You consent to the process and then you blackout for a little bit, and then there’s an album there. We were like, ‘every single song on here needs to be heard’,” she adds. Made while on a writing trip in Mexico City, the record began acoustically to ensure each track has a “performable” element when playing live, then turned into the larger-than-life EDM versions they’ve come to be known for. “Obviously we were listening to a lot of 2010s EDM in the process, which is kinda the only thing that I still listen to,” Angel laughs.

“Lyrically, I feel like a lot of these songs explore that feeling of vulnerability and helplessness, love and reliance,” she says. “The word ‘sister’ was in our heads a bunch, and obviously we’re siblings. I think there’s something sweet and sensitive about that word – it’s how these songs feel. They’re boisterous and loud, but there’s a lot of heartache and emo-ness in the lyrics. It’s really just a statement of who we are.”

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It’s also a testament to their bond, one that’s shaped the way they make music. Angel puts it down to some sort of sibling savant ability, a telepathic communication that transcends language. “There’s moments every day where me and Lulu have the same ideas at the same time, and it happened a lot on this album,” she says. “When you know someone so well that just a look or a sound makes you both think about something, you start to share all these things… it’s really beautiful”.

Up next? Frost Children want to conquer the world – or at least bring their music to every corner of it. While previous shows have seen them support the likes of Yves Tumor and horsegiirL, Frost Children are the headline act on this tour – and it’s extensive, with dates across the UK, Europe, and North America still to come this autumn. When posed with a question on forthcoming plans and prospects, Angel responds: “More Frost Children shit, probably. Even if there was no one there to listen, even if the world disappeared, we would still be doing this,” she says. “Maybe some day I’ll make texture music too!”

'Sister' is out now. Buy it here.

Gemma Ross is Mixmag's Associate Digital Editor, follow her on Twitter