NOFUN!’s Levi Evans: "LA, and the whole of America right now, is pretty scary. Right before we left there was the ICE stuff..."

High school classrooms, inspiringly “dull” LA parties, lawless backyard gigs, and garages-turned-makeshift tattoo parlours have all, at one point or another, provided the backdrop for what’s been a joyously chaotic journey to date for the many-headed, genre-splicing collective NOFUN!.

Initially emerging in Los Angeles in 2022, as a unique union of sonically diverse yet similarly boundary-pushing artists, the ten-piece made no secret of their mission this summer, with the launch of their aptly titled World Domination Tour. For NOFUN!’s Levi Evans, it will be particularly special to cap off the run of European dates in Ireland – having grown up in Dublin before moving Stateside with his family (including his father, U2’s The Edge) as a teenager.

“Usually I come home for Christmas,” the 25-year-old says of his trips back to Ireland. “But it’s crazy – there’s been such a mass exodus, at least with my friends. All my guy friends moved to Australia, and are working construction and that sort of thing. And all my friends who are girls have moved to New York.

“I’ll come back and be like, ‘How’s so-and-so doing?’” he adds. “And people will be like, ‘I haven’t seen so-and-so since I’ve seen you.’ It’s mad.”

Levi Evans

Levi first caught the attention of Hot Press through his work as a solo act, with his debut single, 2021’s ‘Back In My Head Again’, clocking up millions of streams. More releases under his own name soon followed, including his latest, the Idling Outside EP, which came out earlier this month.

But like many of the other individual members of the NOFUN! collective, Levi’s approach to his artistry is multi-faceted – and during his younger years in Ireland, he initially opened up creatively through drawing and visual art.

“I used to want to be an animator,” he says. “Then, when I moved to LA, I took an after-school music production class, and just fell in love with that. I’ve always played instruments, but that was really when I started becoming passionate about music as creative expression.”

The future members of NOFUN! entered Levi’s life organically – from meeting Swann in high school, to bumping into Huebline during a brief stint at the University of Miami. When the burgeoning creatives all found themselves in LA – and as mutual friends made their way into the mix – they started to forge their own community.

“We first started NOFUN! just to throw events,” Levi explains. “We felt that the LA scene could sometimes be a bit dull, and everyone a bit too cool. Garrett Gloom went to this one event, and he was so bummed out by it, because no one was having any fun. So he was like, ‘We should throw our own events – and call it NOFUN!’

“We decided to throw a backyard show, and got everyone in the community that we were in to play,” he continues. “We didn’t know if anyone was going to show up, but we basically packed the whole backyard, with about 300 people.”

From there, collaborations between the informal collection of artists occurred naturally.

“It was just a symptom of creatives sharing the same space,” Levi reflects. “We ended up making lots of music – songs that had eight people on it at a time. We were like, ‘What are we going to do with this?’”

From those first releases under the NOFUN! umbrella, it was clear they had tapped into something special – which Jonah Levine recognised right away, when he stumbled across one of their videos on Instagram.

Jonah, who came from an audio engineering background, and had spent 10 years working in documentary films, was living in North Carolina at the time. But he decided to fly out to LA to catch one of Levi’s solo shows, and shoot a video with another NOFUN! member, ZooDeVille.

“I was like, ‘This is dope...’” Jonah recalls. “And I moved to LA, just a couple of weeks later. No one even knew! I got a tattoo in Garrett’s garage, and I slowly started hanging around – which slowly led to me adding production to songs.”

He eventually took on a management role, and became both NOFUN!’s live drummer and live production coordinator. As he and Levi explain, each member of the collective wears multiple hats – allowing NOFUN! to exist as a thoroughly DIY and independent operation.

“Having so many creatives, we’re able to cover the whole spectrum of what it really takes to be an artist – from the visual stuff to the merch,” Levi elaborates. “Mother Wata screenprints for us. We bought a screenprinter, and a bunch of blanks – and now we’re literally in the backyard making merch.”

“Without spending a dollar, we can shoot our videos, record our music, mix it, master it, distribute it, put it on YouTube, and send it to blogs,” Jonah resumes. “We want to be independent and DIY, for as long as forever. There’s no advantage, for us, to signing away the rights to something we’re not even going to make money on, like streaming.”

NOFUN! are also in no rush, Jonah says, to present a “perfect, polished show – where there’s fake vocals coming through the speakers, and all the music is already pre-recorded...”

“We all are musicians, and we like to show our craft,” he continues. “You can only do that when you go up, make mistakes, and have fun. And that doesn’t really exist in pop nowadays.”

Inspired by classic collectives like Odd Future, BROCKHAMPTON, N.E.R.D. and Wu-Tang Clan, NOFUN! have drawn on the strengths of their individual members’ backgrounds, to carve out their own space between alternative rock, hip-hop and punk-pop.

“Swann’s from France, Dave Coresh is from Chicago, Garrett Gloom is from North Carolina... so it’s really all over the map,” Levi notes. “It’s great having all those influences, and all those cultures. The diversity that we have is very unique.”

“And everyone brings this immense energy, because everyone’s home scene has all those different strongpoints,” Jonah nods. “It’s really cool to get all that in one place.”

The success of the group also signifies a shift in wider listening habits, with categorisations like genre meaning less and less to modern audiences. Levi witnessed that for himself when NOFUN! opened for Inhaler in Luxembourg last month.

“I was sceptical – I didn’t know how the audience was going to take us!” he laughs. “Ours is very much in-your-face, heavy stuff, compared to Inhaler’s rock and indie sound. When Jonah sent me the flyer, I thought it was a joke!

“But it was amazing, and everyone loved it,” he adds. “It was a pleasant surprise – like, ‘Okay, maybe we can play for anyone…’”

Of course, the gig also gave Levi an opportunity to catch up with his old friend – and fellow U2 progeny – Eli Hewson of Inhaler.

“It was great,” Levi smiles. “We grew up together – he went to DSP [Dalkey School Project, an Educate Together primary school in Co. Dublin] as well. I grew up with four sisters, so him and John [Eli’s younger brother] were like my brothers growing up.”

Although his connections to Ireland remain strong, Levi – having spent so much of his life on the other side of the Atlantic – has also been outspoken about the current state of America. On the day Trump’s deeply controversial, Medicaid-cutting ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ was signed into law last month, Levi took to Instagram to remark: “They do not care about us. WAKE UP.”

“LA, and the whole of America right now, is pretty scary,” he reflects now. “Right before we left there was the ICE stuff. With everything going on, we want to shout it out in our shows, and use our platform to talk about these bigger issues.

“Artists have been quite censored, and have not really addressed these difficult situations,” he adds. “But in this community that’s built around art and music, it’s our obligation to talk about these things – especially right now, at a time where there’s all this turmoil.”

But as Jonah notes, NOFUN!’s lyrics and live show are also about urging “people to come together”, and celebrating what it means to “be a community” – an ethos that they’re both looking forward to championing at this year’s Electric Picnic.

“I’ve been once, but only for a day, when I was a lot younger,” Levi says of the festival. “So this will be the first time I’m really experiencing Electric Picnic as an adult. I’m really excited, because it’s such a legendary festival. I’ll also be playing alongside a bunch of my friends – KhakiKid, who I’m close with, is playing too.”

Levi's also buzzing to introduce the other members of NOFUN! to the Irish music scene.

“That will be really important – because it’s booming right now,” he enthuses. “There’s so much great material coming out of Dublin, especially with hip-hop. And obviously Fontaines, with their punk/alternative rock stuff. It’s great to be tapping into that community.”

Contemplating the future of the NOFUN! collective – and their label, NOFUN! WORLD – Jonah says the group are ready “to take it as far as it can go.”

“None of us have any back-up plan, besides this,” he states. “And none of us ever thought that this would get as far as it has. Because of those two things, we’re willing to really put it all out on the stage – and leave it out there every time.”

• Levi Evans’ new solo EP, Idling Outside, is out now. In addition to NOFUN!’s Electric Picnic set on Saturday, August 30, the collective play the Workman’s Club in Dublin on August 29. 

Read the full Electric Picnic Special in the current issue of Hot Press: