Fox Thoughts Are Still Figuring It Out: Inside 'Demo 2026'

Photos by Alexia Abarca

When Fox Thoughts released Demo 2026 in February, the project was subsequently described as a band still trying to figure itself out.

We got to sit down with Fox Thoughts' Laxon Sumawiganda to discuss the project, the band, and all things music. 

Sumawiganda shared that several months later, that uncertainty hasn't exactly changed. If anything, the process has gotten bigger and more complex. The band is “absolutely in the trenches” trying to figure out how songs written and recorded largely in isolation translate to a live setting, how their writing and creating styles fit together, and how they can move toward a full-length without losing the rawness that defined the demo. “We are, you know, still in [our]… fetal stages,” Sumawiganda said.

The demo was never intended to be a final statement about what Fox Thoughts is debuting as. It was more of a snapshot of a band discovering what it could be. Now, with a handful of shows under their belt, that process is continuing. 

The demo itself began long before Fox Thoughts existed, and most of those songs began as relatively intimate singer-songwriter pieces. “All the songs on the demo were written before I met anyone in the band. It was literally just me.” Sumawiganda continued: “I think they were like singer-songwriter kind of songs, right? I think they're very vocally and melodically driven, and some songs are even lyrically very heavy… that's kind of the centerpiece for some of the songs.”

That intimacy wasn't necessarily a deliberate attempt to make something stripped down. It was largely a product of circumstance. “Not even, like, ‘y'all, I want to be fucking John Mayer or Bright Eyes or something.’ It was just like, ‘Oh, I live in a condo, I don't have anyone to jam with.’... I have a baby, and my wife and I are trying to hang out. I'm not trying to, like, blow her ears off, you know? So it's always written in these, like, intimate settings, and I think that is the foundation of a lot of these Fox songs.”

His approach to arranging those ideas is similarly open-ended. “I like to think of things in whole musical phrases, so it's not just the guitar and the singing. For example, we need a counter melody, but like, how about it's drums instead of guitar, or what if it's a piano, or what if it's just like nothing altogether and we just make it more staccato.”

That process is changing now that the band exists and the writing process has become faster and more collaborative. “I still do come up with it on the acoustic guitar,” he said, before describing the next step: “And then I'm almost immediately going to my laptop. Recording it and getting the basic idea together and then, like, talking to the room.” The result is a new batch of songs that is already being shaped by the rest of the band. “It's being a lot more influenced by everyone else.”

Sumawiganda also compared the project to Severance, describing it as something made “in a vacuum” while the band works to understand exactly what it wants to sound like. “We're trying to figure it out. Like, what is this project where it can feel really visceral and raw and… and yet, like, have a polished feel and kind of have, and this isn’t even the goal, but like, more of like a mainstream sort of appeal, right?”

That constant back-and-forth tension is partly a result of how the demo was created. “The problem with doing it in a box literally in my kitchen, where most of it's recorded, is that you really only understand what it's all like from a recorded, very processed, very controlled setting, and you don't really know how that plays out live… So we're trying to answer that question, too, like, do these songs translate live? And do they resonate with that kind of audience?”

For Fox Thoughts, experimentation doesn't just happen within the band. Their approach to collaboration is also rooted in the local music community. Two tracks on the demo feature members of other bands: Under Negative Intent and Pain Spiral.

For Under Negative Intent, the relationship was personal. Sam has been a family friend for years, and the two families are close. “I sent him ‘Lotus’… I don't know, sometime in, like, 2025. And he just, like, really loved it.”

The collaboration also fit into a broader idea behind the release: that Fox Thoughts is meant to represent a group rather than one individual. “This release is all about… I wanted it to be about us, but like, no one person was, like, the focal point, you know?”

The Pain Spiral collaboration came from a different place. Two of Fox Thoughts’ band members “were both in Pain Spiral, and I've always been a fan of that band and the way they write. I was like, ‘oh, why don't I write a part that kind of makes sense for Adrian,’ their vocalist, and his cadence.”

If step one was getting the project out into the world in its recorded form, “I guess step two is figuring out how all this makes sense in a live setting,” Sumawiganda continued. At the time of the interview, Fox Thoughts had only played five or six shows, all within roughly two months. Most had been hardcore bills, with one melodicore bill, meaning the band hadn't yet had the chance to see how its music fits into some of the scenes that might seem more immediately adjacent. “We don't really know how to maximize that until we play as many shows as we can and been like, ‘oh, okay, this is how it feels like.’”

The answer isn't always obvious from the demo alone. The band discovered that “Out In The Wind,” for example, doesn't necessarily make sense in every live setting. But at The Echo, with a proper soundcheck and the right setup, the song suddenly clicked. “Even people [who had been to a show] were like: ‘Oh, this is the best this song has ever sounded live.’”

The next arena the band is tackling is that of what comes next. “I think 11 songs we're working on right now, and we're probably only going to choose five of them in addition, or six of them in addition to, like, what's on the demo and the release.”

The immediate response when the current streaming-era preference for releasing a constant stream of singles came up was a resounding “I fucking hate that. I hate that so much.”

But Fox Thoughts is, in fact, planning to release singles. Just not for the reason you might expect. “The purpose of us doing or actually trying to go maybe sometime this fall, like October, is to know what… one, what it feels like to record an entire project with someone else, where we can focus more on the content, on the music, and not worry about, like, the technical.” The band also wants to know whether a more polished production approach actually works for the music. “And even if I hate it, I'm, like, still excited to experience it and be like, wow, I never want to do that again, you know.”

When talking about long-term goals, Sumawiganda shared, “I wouldn't be doing it, and everyone else is… I'll speak for everyone in this band. We wouldn't be doing it if we didn't want to take this all the way.”

To make 2026 feel like a successful year, there was a baseline Sumawiganda established: release more music and continue playing shows. “However, that's not enough for me. I think it would be really starting the process for the full-length [album].” The plan is to begin moving toward a full-length by the end of the year, with new music potentially arriving in spring.

There is one final challenge, though. “The part that everyone hates and that I, like, have such a grave disdain towards, and I'm trying to balance. Which is how you figure out the social media promotion, self-promotion aspect without losing integrity? Maybe I should just get over myself, or maybe I shouldn't, and, like, that's kind of what keeps Fox Thoughts, Fox Thoughts.”

The demo documented a project in process. The next releases and coming shows will test it. And eventually, Fox Thoughts will decide what all of those experiments add up to. For now, they're still in the trenches, and they're committed to seeing where that leads.

TOP8’s Take:

Fox Thoughts’ debut is a fantastic starting point for the band that experiments with different sounds and introspective elements throughout each track. The six-song project is a 19-minute journey that will make you intrigued by what the band decides to come out with next. We greatly anticipate their next steps!

You can follow Fox Thoughts on Instagram or explore their merch store. Find and listen to Demo 2026 on Spotify or Apple Music.

Spin the record and look out for Fox Thoughts’ next live show. As the band encourages, jump into your passion projects and keep trying to figure it out.

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