April 5, 2026 • 11 mins
Pop-duo Foley has just spent four weeks on the Hot 20 singles chart, peaking at number 1, following their EP release 'Like an Actress'.
The duo is made up of Ash Wallace and Gabriel Everett.
Ash Wallace joined Andrew Dickens to chat defining genre, the New Zealand music community, and aspirations.
"I think it's always hard to narrow your own music down," Wallace said.
"You know, you think of all your different influences and tastes, and it's always hard to really pin it down to something."
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk sed B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I want to East Monday.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
How do you like this journey?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Pretty good day. It's out of New Zealand. It's a
New Zealand band. The band is called Foley. They just
released an EP called Like an Actress. It's been a
big success, spent four weeks on the Hot twenty Singles chart,
peaking at number one. They've got a big hit song too,
called Honey. They've just though announced a New Zealand tour
kicking off in May. Because this band lives in Sydney.
(00:52):
So Foley is Ash Wallace and Gabriel Everetts and joining
me right now is Ash. Good morning, Ash, good morning,
Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure. We
couldn't have Gabriel because he's sick. He is He is
all right. I had not heard of you until this interview,
so I've been listening to you quite regularly. A lot
(01:12):
of people describe your music as dream pop. Now is
that a thing? Is that how you would describe your music?
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Yeah, I mean it's definitely a thing.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
I think the dreaminess kind of comes from a lot
of the guitars and the synthse that we use is
kind of that sparkly, shiny feeling. And yeah, I would
definitely describe our music as that. I think it's always
hard to narrow your own music down, you know, you
think of all your different influences and tastes and it's
always hard to really pin it down to something. But
I like to think of our music as just like
(01:44):
pop with a little something extra. You know, it's got
a little extra sparkle or a little extra edge to.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
It, and it's got it's got your beautiful vocals floating
over the top as well, which makes it rather dreamy
as well. There's quite a bit of good New Zealand
dream pop around at the moment, you know, uplifting, optimistic,
light airy, but very catchy and very hooky.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Absolutely yeah, I mean New Zealand definitely punches above its
weight in terms of pop artists. I think we're just
like an incredible music community. So and moving to Australia,
I found that even more. Like, I'm really proud of.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
The music that comes out of New Zealand and yeah,
we smash it now.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
The name Foley, I know Foley as being the guy
who puts the sound effects on a movie, and I
wondered whether that is the inspiration or is there something deeper.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
No, absolutely that we kind of like to think of
it as like soundtracking our own lives with our music.
And you know, the foley artist in a movie is
very much kind of adding that icing on the cake,
I think, and really enriches the cinema experience, if you will.
So yeah, we kind of just lean into that and
like to think of it as all the little extra
bits that.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
We're adding to our own lives.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
And then we look back across the music and have
this kind of journey to enjoy.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
And of course there is the sound quality, because your
stuff sounds amazing. And the funny thing is you've actually
got a song out at the moment CALLEDMTIC.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
We do, we do?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, Okay, now, okay, sorry, go ahead, it's okay, it's okay.
We're talking trans Tasman. So there's there's some delays and
I apologize. So you're Ash Wallace, Gabriel Everett is ill.
You're two young, good looking people. The obvious question is
are you a couple.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
No, we're not.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
We've been best friends for a very very very long time,
And yeah, we're really lucky to have that relationship. I
think like making music together, it's a very intimate kind
of collaboration, you know, you really have to have a
lot of trust and respect, and we were friends for
a very long time before we made new music together.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
So I've always just felt so.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Lucky that we have that kind of relationship to go
into songwriting together.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
It's the best.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
And you met it the Smoke Free rock Quest, which
is another example of how rock Quest is so good
for New Zealand artists. It's so good for networking, et cetera.
But now you're in Sydney, why are you in Australia.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Honestly, we came to Australia because for pop music. As
much as I was saying there's so many amazing artists
in New Zealand, we still are unfortunately, you know, we
are pretty small, and I think with pop music, you know,
Gabe and I are really ambitious about where we want
this project to go and who we want it to reach,
and we were finding ourselves on tour a lot in Australia,
(04:30):
coming back and forth between New Zealand and Australia, so
it just made sense for the time being to spend
some time over here and have boots on the ground
and get to perform to some new crowds and some
bigger crowds. But we're back in New Zealand all the
time because we just can't keep all a I love
it too.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Much, of course, absolutely. So your latest release, like an actress,
it's an EP. You've done two albums, this is your
third EP. I see that you too has just released
an EP as well, and extend to play, you know,
a mini album if you will. What do you like
about that platform, the EP as opposed to having to
do a full album.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
That's a great quest.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
I think sometimes in the creative process, you start writing
and it feels like a lot of songs are coming
out that all make sense together, and then the album
really feels right. And for us this EP, we'd just
gotten to Sydney. We were writing with a lot of
new people that we hadn't worked with before, and the
creative process looked really different. So it was still really
(05:29):
satisfying and amazing. But I think a lot of the
songs didn't feel like they fit together in the same way,
and then these five just felt perfect together. So I
think it just shows itself. To be honest, I know
that's a very whimsical answer, but it's sort of It
sort of just kind of tells you what it needs
to be. And for this that felt like an EP
and I'm sure the next one will, you know, hopefully
(05:50):
be an album.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
So we could have won, but well no, I stall
with it.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
I still love it individual tracks in a body of work,
so that that has a theme and it all comes
together because too many people these days are listening to
a playlist that's curated by a computer and they're just
hearing random songs. But the artists are in a phase
and then a period of time and they're making a
group of songs that are related and into related and
if you group them together EP or album or you know,
(06:14):
just a single, it's because it is what you want
to do as an artist.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Yeah, absolutely, and you know, it really is a slice
of your life in the sense that you know, from
a time perspective, you write all this music in quite
quick succession. So I always think and when I listen
to other music as an audience member, like I love
to listen in the way that the artists intended, so
I get a real kind of snapshot of what they
were experiencing at that.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Time, like to I like to read liner notes too,
and you never get those these days where that's another story.
You've played all around the world. Did you play in Korea?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah? We did.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Yeah, we played in South Korea in October last year,
and it was quite a bucket list moment, it was. Yeah,
it was really incredible. Such a beautiful country and such
amazing fans. They're so excited and passionate. It's a real
fan culture kind of country.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Well how does that work? Are you invited or do
you just go I'm going to Korea?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Yeah, I mean sort of a combination.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
What happened for us was we had a song that
came out in twenty nineteen, Cooled Kohla, and we had
no idea for many years that it had actually gone
quite viral in Korea because they use completely different streaming platforms,
but they have an instead of Spotify, they use a
streaming platform called Malon, and one day, I think in
about twenty twenty three or twenty twenty four, we just
(07:35):
kind of randomly had a look on there and checked
it out and saw that we actually had a huge
audience in South Korea that we had no idea about.
So from that point we decided to kind of put
some feelers out and see if we should go on
tour there.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
And then there was a lot of venues that wanted
us to come and so cool. Yeah, so it was
a bit of an exchange, but really cool.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, really cool. Absolutely. Now finally you're coming back to
New Zealand. It's been a year or so and you're
doing a little mini tour. You're doing christ Shirt, you're
doing Wellington, you're doing Auckland, You're doing places like Miao
and Whammy in Auckland. So these are what five hundred
and six hundred seat sort of places. What can we
expect from the tour?
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Oh gosh, we're so excited because, as you say, it
has been about a year, so it's fun to come
back and kind of bring a new show that we've
been curating over that time.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Playing in career, playing in.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Australia, we've learned a lot I think about being a
band and being on the road together and we're bringing
all of that back to New Zealand and it's I
know everybody probably always says this, like my favorite place
to play is home, but it really is something special
and the crowds of New Zealand have just always felt,
I don't know, so so close to my heart when
(08:40):
I'm on stage, you know, there's just an extra connection.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
So well, really excited.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I heard the story of the very first person you
saw who had a fan tattoo. When people when people
start tattooing you the name of your band onto their
skin to keep for life, you know you've actually hit
their heart. Right.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Yeah, I actually didn't know that she was going to
get at tattooed. She asked me to sign something and
I honestly leant onto like a rubbish bin and just
like wrote Folly on a piece of paper and then
next thing we knew it was tattooed on her ankle,
which was quite the surprise.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
So cool, crazy, You're coming in May once again. You're
playing what May seventh dark Room, christ Church, May eighth
Whammy in Auckland and May ninth Mew which is in Wellington.
Your name is Ash Wallace, your band mate is Gabriel
and together that you are Foley and you're doing so
well and I think we need to take some time
to actually play some of your music. So we're going
(09:32):
to play Honey, which went all the way to number
one on the New Zealander Tail road Top twenty your
number one song, tell me a little bit about Honey
and will play it?
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Yeah, I mean it was so cool at the Sweet
number one. It was such a special moment.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Honey.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
We actually filmed the music video for this while we
were in South Korea, which was really cool. But this one,
I guess, is just about you when you're having an
argument and your relationship and you maybe take it a
little bit too far and realize that you might be
pushing it. So it's a bit of a kind of
self deprecating like oopsie.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
That's really fun.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
As well as it's been an absolute to delight having
you on the program. Thank you so much to a
well and congratulations from being a New Zealand sixty's overseas.
Thank you for your time today.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
From mob side.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
Cannot plea drink in all that I have been body
my nose for enof So Fun, So Divided, last copy So.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
So Don't yet?
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Is the last time?
Speaker 5 (10:44):
Don't know? Sage me?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
How's that?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Oh? Isn't it Glommery? They call it dream pop. It
is the band called Foley f O l e Y
from New Zealand's
Speaker 1 (11:28):
For more from US Talks B listen live on air
or online, and keep our shows with you wherever you
go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk sed B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I want to East Monday.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
How do you like this journey?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Pretty good day. It's out of New Zealand. It's a
New Zealand band. The band is called Foley. They just
released an EP called Like an Actress. It's been a
big success, spent four weeks on the Hot twenty Singles chart,
peaking at number one. They've got a big hit song too,
called Honey. They've just though announced a New Zealand tour
kicking off in May. Because this band lives in Sydney.
(00:52):
So Foley is Ash Wallace and Gabriel Everetts and joining
me right now is Ash. Good morning, Ash, good morning,
Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure. We
couldn't have Gabriel because he's sick. He is He is
all right. I had not heard of you until this interview,
so I've been listening to you quite regularly. A lot
(01:12):
of people describe your music as dream pop. Now is
that a thing? Is that how you would describe your music?
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Yeah, I mean it's definitely a thing.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
I think the dreaminess kind of comes from a lot
of the guitars and the synthse that we use is
kind of that sparkly, shiny feeling. And yeah, I would
definitely describe our music as that. I think it's always
hard to narrow your own music down, you know, you
think of all your different influences and tastes and it's
always hard to really pin it down to something. But
I like to think of our music as just like
(01:44):
pop with a little something extra. You know, it's got
a little extra sparkle or a little extra edge to.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
It, and it's got it's got your beautiful vocals floating
over the top as well, which makes it rather dreamy
as well. There's quite a bit of good New Zealand
dream pop around at the moment, you know, uplifting, optimistic,
light airy, but very catchy and very hooky.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Absolutely yeah, I mean New Zealand definitely punches above its
weight in terms of pop artists. I think we're just
like an incredible music community. So and moving to Australia,
I found that even more. Like, I'm really proud of.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
The music that comes out of New Zealand and yeah,
we smash it now.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
The name Foley, I know Foley as being the guy
who puts the sound effects on a movie, and I
wondered whether that is the inspiration or is there something deeper.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
No, absolutely that we kind of like to think of
it as like soundtracking our own lives with our music.
And you know, the foley artist in a movie is
very much kind of adding that icing on the cake,
I think, and really enriches the cinema experience, if you will.
So yeah, we kind of just lean into that and
like to think of it as all the little extra
bits that.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
We're adding to our own lives.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
And then we look back across the music and have
this kind of journey to enjoy.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
And of course there is the sound quality, because your
stuff sounds amazing. And the funny thing is you've actually
got a song out at the moment CALLEDMTIC.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
We do, we do?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, Okay, now, okay, sorry, go ahead, it's okay, it's okay.
We're talking trans Tasman. So there's there's some delays and
I apologize. So you're Ash Wallace, Gabriel Everett is ill.
You're two young, good looking people. The obvious question is
are you a couple.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
No, we're not.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
We've been best friends for a very very very long time,
And yeah, we're really lucky to have that relationship. I
think like making music together, it's a very intimate kind
of collaboration, you know, you really have to have a
lot of trust and respect, and we were friends for
a very long time before we made new music together.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
So I've always just felt so.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Lucky that we have that kind of relationship to go
into songwriting together.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
It's the best.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
And you met it the Smoke Free rock Quest, which
is another example of how rock Quest is so good
for New Zealand artists. It's so good for networking, et cetera.
But now you're in Sydney, why are you in Australia.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Honestly, we came to Australia because for pop music. As
much as I was saying there's so many amazing artists
in New Zealand, we still are unfortunately, you know, we
are pretty small, and I think with pop music, you know,
Gabe and I are really ambitious about where we want
this project to go and who we want it to reach,
and we were finding ourselves on tour a lot in Australia,
(04:30):
coming back and forth between New Zealand and Australia, so
it just made sense for the time being to spend
some time over here and have boots on the ground
and get to perform to some new crowds and some
bigger crowds. But we're back in New Zealand all the
time because we just can't keep all a I love
it too.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Much, of course, absolutely. So your latest release, like an actress,
it's an EP. You've done two albums, this is your
third EP. I see that you too has just released
an EP as well, and extend to play, you know,
a mini album if you will. What do you like
about that platform, the EP as opposed to having to
do a full album.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
That's a great quest.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
I think sometimes in the creative process, you start writing
and it feels like a lot of songs are coming
out that all make sense together, and then the album
really feels right. And for us this EP, we'd just
gotten to Sydney. We were writing with a lot of
new people that we hadn't worked with before, and the
creative process looked really different. So it was still really
(05:29):
satisfying and amazing. But I think a lot of the
songs didn't feel like they fit together in the same way,
and then these five just felt perfect together. So I
think it just shows itself. To be honest, I know
that's a very whimsical answer, but it's sort of It
sort of just kind of tells you what it needs
to be. And for this that felt like an EP
and I'm sure the next one will, you know, hopefully
(05:50):
be an album.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
So we could have won, but well no, I stall
with it.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
I still love it individual tracks in a body of work,
so that that has a theme and it all comes
together because too many people these days are listening to
a playlist that's curated by a computer and they're just
hearing random songs. But the artists are in a phase
and then a period of time and they're making a
group of songs that are related and into related and
if you group them together EP or album or you know,
(06:14):
just a single, it's because it is what you want
to do as an artist.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Yeah, absolutely, and you know, it really is a slice
of your life in the sense that you know, from
a time perspective, you write all this music in quite
quick succession. So I always think and when I listen
to other music as an audience member, like I love
to listen in the way that the artists intended, so
I get a real kind of snapshot of what they
were experiencing at that.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Time, like to I like to read liner notes too,
and you never get those these days where that's another story.
You've played all around the world. Did you play in Korea?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah? We did.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Yeah, we played in South Korea in October last year,
and it was quite a bucket list moment, it was. Yeah,
it was really incredible. Such a beautiful country and such
amazing fans. They're so excited and passionate. It's a real
fan culture kind of country.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Well how does that work? Are you invited or do
you just go I'm going to Korea?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Yeah, I mean sort of a combination.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
What happened for us was we had a song that
came out in twenty nineteen, Cooled Kohla, and we had
no idea for many years that it had actually gone
quite viral in Korea because they use completely different streaming platforms,
but they have an instead of Spotify, they use a
streaming platform called Malon, and one day, I think in
about twenty twenty three or twenty twenty four, we just
(07:35):
kind of randomly had a look on there and checked
it out and saw that we actually had a huge
audience in South Korea that we had no idea about.
So from that point we decided to kind of put
some feelers out and see if we should go on
tour there.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
And then there was a lot of venues that wanted
us to come and so cool. Yeah, so it was
a bit of an exchange, but really cool.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, really cool. Absolutely. Now finally you're coming back to
New Zealand. It's been a year or so and you're
doing a little mini tour. You're doing christ Shirt, you're
doing Wellington, you're doing Auckland, You're doing places like Miao
and Whammy in Auckland. So these are what five hundred
and six hundred seat sort of places. What can we
expect from the tour?
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Oh gosh, we're so excited because, as you say, it
has been about a year, so it's fun to come
back and kind of bring a new show that we've
been curating over that time.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Playing in career, playing in.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Australia, we've learned a lot I think about being a
band and being on the road together and we're bringing
all of that back to New Zealand and it's I
know everybody probably always says this, like my favorite place
to play is home, but it really is something special
and the crowds of New Zealand have just always felt,
I don't know, so so close to my heart when
(08:40):
I'm on stage, you know, there's just an extra connection.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
So well, really excited.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I heard the story of the very first person you
saw who had a fan tattoo. When people when people
start tattooing you the name of your band onto their
skin to keep for life, you know you've actually hit
their heart. Right.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Yeah, I actually didn't know that she was going to
get at tattooed. She asked me to sign something and
I honestly leant onto like a rubbish bin and just
like wrote Folly on a piece of paper and then
next thing we knew it was tattooed on her ankle,
which was quite the surprise.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
So cool, crazy, You're coming in May once again. You're
playing what May seventh dark Room, christ Church, May eighth
Whammy in Auckland and May ninth Mew which is in Wellington.
Your name is Ash Wallace, your band mate is Gabriel
and together that you are Foley and you're doing so
well and I think we need to take some time
to actually play some of your music. So we're going
(09:32):
to play Honey, which went all the way to number
one on the New Zealander Tail road Top twenty your
number one song, tell me a little bit about Honey
and will play it?
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Yeah, I mean it was so cool at the Sweet
number one. It was such a special moment.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Honey.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
We actually filmed the music video for this while we
were in South Korea, which was really cool. But this one,
I guess, is just about you when you're having an
argument and your relationship and you maybe take it a
little bit too far and realize that you might be
pushing it. So it's a bit of a kind of
self deprecating like oopsie.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
That's really fun.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
As well as it's been an absolute to delight having
you on the program. Thank you so much to a
well and congratulations from being a New Zealand sixty's overseas.
Thank you for your time today.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
From mob side.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
Cannot plea drink in all that I have been body
my nose for enof So Fun, So Divided, last copy So.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
So Don't yet?
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Is the last time?
Speaker 5 (10:44):
Don't know? Sage me?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
How's that?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Oh? Isn't it Glommery? They call it dream pop. It
is the band called Foley f O l e Y
from New Zealand's
Speaker 1 (11:28):
For more from US Talks B listen live on air
or online, and keep our shows with you wherever you
go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio
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