Introducing Those Who Dream, the emo-pop Perth duo blossoming into a break-out act

Just yesterday we posted our Australian artists to watch in 2021 feature, and already we’re finding ourselves with the need to update it with more stars of tomorrow.

To some, Those Who Dream - a Perth-raised duo composed of brothers Josh and Cooper Meyer - are an act they fell in love with amongst the depths of 2020, most likely through TikTok (where the pairing, like many emerging breakthrough acts in the last year, have tackled flashes of viral fame with some 60k+ followers). To everyone else, however, Those Who Dream are an act that are going to come crashing into their 2021, with the excitement and energy that’s captured the onlookers of the social media platform’s dominative alt/indie-adjacent worlds.

Those Who Dream aren’t exactly a new addition to Australia’s punk-rock world. In 2017, they made a debut with a four-track collection of tracks called Life In Cyan, a light-hearted and playful 15-minutes of dancing emo-rock and pop-punk that plucked from influences like Fall Out Boy and Paramore. Their sound fell somewhere in the middle, with hearty choruses and pacing riffs causing a ruckus amongst little snapshots of personality - the sense of playfulness that arises through Coward’s ticking sound-breaks and Red Chair’s union of racing alt-rock verses with almost-Porter Robinson-esque breakdowns.

In 2020, however, the duo have stepped their presence up - and that’s where social media came in. Faced with the unexpected free time brought by the coronavirus lockdown (albeit a short one in their home city of Perth, on Australia’s west coast), the duo channelled their creative energies into building themselves up and growing their audience so that when live music would return, they’d have energy and potential surrounding their first show back. TikTok brought the bulk of that, injecting Those Who Dream into the platform’s alt/emo algorithm to the point where they became synonymous with the musical side of that algorithm.

They became an act that felt representative to the many teens that found themselves on that sub-section of the app. They bonded over shared musical backgrounds - emo pioneers like My Chemical Romance and Sum 41 meets newfound heavyweights like Yungblud and Poppy - and nostalgia over Avril Lavinge and late-2000s pop culture; flexed knowledge on the niche edges of emo and alt culture past, present and future; and brought together members of Perth’s specific alt world as a means of connecting people in the loneliness of forced lockdown.

It’s no surprise that it ended up being a success on TikTok, but when they released a championing return to music in the form of Monster earlier in 2020, they found a crossover beginning to merge; the song racking up streams while a virtual concert in May saw them cover acts like Twenty One Pilots - amongst songs of their own - as people all over the world watched on. 

A lot of that would come down to how brilliant the song is (Monster feels like a nod to the acts that fuelled their earliest exploration of emo and punk-rock, brought forward into 2020 with a modern and refreshing look), but it’s also a testament to how the duo have put themselves forward in a time where everyone else held themselves back - and the power of a platform that’s quickly becoming the dominative force of current-day music.

The duo released a live take of Monster and their 2019 single Violet back in October and, next month, will showcase the explosiveness of their live show at Perth’s HQ, with a show on February 6th. We’re sure there’s plenty more coming up too, so don’t get left behind and introduce yourself to Those Who Dream before they truly become a reckoning act of Australian emo and punk in the twelve months ahead.

Follow Those Who Dream: FACEBOOK