Chazwick Bundick has spent his career making it impossible for anyone to predict what a Toro y Moi album will sound like. Chillwave. House. Funk. Lo-fi pop. R&B. Each record has shifted the coordinates while maintaining something ineffably Chaz about the whole thing.
Hole Erth, his eighth studio album, released in September 2024 on Dead Oceans, is perhaps the most extreme pivot yet. Pop-punk energy. Autotuned rap. Collaborations with Don Toliver, Kevin Abstract, and Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. If you came in expecting Causers of This Part Two, Hole Erth will disorient you. That is the point.
Les Sins and the Side Projects
Bundick's side project Les Sins, his more explicitly dance-oriented alias, has been dormant since a joint EP with AceMo in 2020. The last full-length under that name was Michael in 2014. But the influence of Les Sins bleeds into everything Bundick touches. The rhythmic adventurousness, the willingness to let a groove dictate structure rather than verse-chorus convention, is present across all his work.
The fact that Les Sins has been quiet while Toro y Moi has absorbed its energy suggests that Bundick no longer needs the separation. The main project has become capacious enough to hold everything.
The Tour and What Comes Next
A winter 2025 North American headline tour with Panda Bear as support ran through February and March. An unplugged reworking of Hole Erth, titled Unerthed, was announced for later in 2025.
Bundick also released the Sandhills EP in 2023, a smaller project that served as a bridge between the lush production of Mahal and the rawer energy of Hole Erth.
The Career
Toro y Moi is one of the most consistently interesting artists in independent music. Not because every album is a masterpiece, but because every album is a genuine attempt to do something he has not done before. In a landscape where artists are rewarded for repeating themselves, Bundick's refusal to stay still is its own kind of excellence.
