At just 15 years old, Alex Young was living a dream many aspiring musicians could only imagine: opening for giants like Skrillex and Diplo in the throbbing heart of America's EDM scene. Yet, a decade and a half later, the artist now known as Villager has undergone a profound transformation, trading sugar-rush drops for the nuanced, idiosyncratic sounds of UK club culture.
The Disillusionment of Teenage Stardom
Hailing from Bethesda, a comfortable Washington DC suburb, Young's ascent was meteoric. Armed with a Soundcloud account and a talent for creating trendy bootlegs, he found himself catapulted into adult spaces while still a child. "I sacrificed a bit of my childhood to be in these adult spaces," he reflects. The surreal peak came when he was paid $10,000 to DJ a spin class at age 16, a moment that crystallised his growing disconnect from the music itself. "You kind of expect these things to make you happy," he admits, noting the strange paradox of his early success.
His teenage experience was a whirlwind of weekend festival sets—after which he'd be promptly escorted out for being underage—and weekday schooling. While it made him "a cool kid in high school," it left him searching for a deeper musical meaning.
A Radical Reinvention Inspired by UK Sounds
Young's first major pivot was to step away from DJing entirely. He shed his birth name as a stage moniker and began a deep dive into a new sonic world. He immersed himself in the UK canon of electronic music, listening to Radiohead and stations like Rinse FM. "I was really falling in love with music," he says. This education led him to abandon laptop production, instead embracing hardware sequencers and samplers to build organic, loop-based tracks.
Now 29, his output as Villager draws clear inspiration from the pioneering UK artists of the early 2010s, such as Blawan, James Blake, and Pangaea. His music—featuring transcendent synth lines and omnivorous rhythms—is a world apart from his EDM past. This reinvention hasn't gone unnoticed; his EPs have garnered praise from elite tastemakers including Ben UFO, Four Tet, and Jamie xx.
Finding Context and Confronting Addiction
A crucial part of Young's evolution was experiencing dance music from the dancefloor, not just the stage. "My entire relationship with dance music had always been from the stage, looking at the crowd," he explains. Experimenting with drugs initially offered a new lens, famously leading to a ketamine-fuelled epiphany where he finally "got" dubstep. However, this relationship soon spiralled into a serious addiction.
By the end of 2025, the problem accelerated, forcing him to cancel a support tour with Disclosure and seek help. His recovery coincided with the creation of his alt-pop album Old Friend, a project that blends influences from Thom Yorke to Bruno Mars and allowed him to expunge the dissonant feelings about his career. "I feel weightless now," he says, exhaling as if unburdened.
His journey has come full circle in poignant ways. His first UK show in November 2024, on a lineup curated by Four Tet at London's Drumsheds, felt like déjà vu. Walking into a green room conversation between Floating Points, Four Tet, and Caribou was, he says, the new equivalent of his teenage "meeting Skrillex" moment. With a publishing deal through Fred Again's manager and a writing credit on Halsey's album Manic, Alex Young, aka Villager, is finally figuring out what this music thing is all about.
