Felix III, the rising queer, Mexican-American artist from Brooklyn, renowned for his End of Times Electronica. With a distinct fusion of emotional dance tracks and ambient elements, Felix III effortlessly spans synthpop, electropop, new wave, and ambient genres.

Using music as his healing tool, Felix III weaves a tapestry of hope, urging others to embrace their inner light. His compositions serve as a sanctuary, inspiring listeners to overcome obstacles and find solace from their own battles.

From a past without a band or released songs, Felix III’s journey has taken a remarkable turn. Collaborating with the exceptional Trevor V, they’ve brought three captivating songs to life, gracing the stages of music festivals and discovering an audience that sparks newfound self-belief.

Beyond personal triumphs, Felix III’s journey has blossomed into “The Cult,” a vibrant community fostering expansion and growth. Join them, adorned in your finest white attire, and let your sparkle reignite in this radiant space.

A psychedelic journey to the center of the artist’s mind, ‘Full Speed Ahead’ employs cosmic imagery, revving synths, steadily crescendoing rhythms, and experimental sounds (including Star Wars samples) to create a transcendent electro-pop experience.  Felix is fearless in his exploration, musing on identity, ego, and transformation, while turning his deeply personal experiences into a universal anthem for self-discovery. 

Can you maybe describe your journey coming from a small town to New York?

It was easy because I knew from the time I was like six that I was going to end up in New York City. I used to, and mind you, my neighbors were a mile away from each other, so I would pack a bag, like old style, like vagabond with a knapsack tied around a stick. 

And I would tie it around there with my toys, and then I’d go to the end of the driveway and I’d wait there all day and I’d go home and my grandma would say, “Oh, nobody took you today?” well, maybe tomorrow they’ll come getchu.” She knew there wasn’t a single person that was ever going to pass by. 

So the minute I got to New York, it was exactly what I thought it was going to be and more, and I was like, oh, this is home. This has been home the whole time. The buildings, the bustle and streets, the energy, the creativity, all of it was just like, oh, this is great. I mean, figuring it out financially and all those other things is its own beast, but the energy is all around you to grab. Totally. 

I know you’re busy releasing new music, and we met a couple of weeks ago and I thought, well, we can talk about whatever you want to talk about, but we’d start with how creativity came into your life. 

My dad, he strummed the guitar, but he would play the same things over and over and over again, and he always wanted me to play the guitar, but I really had no interest at all. I always wanted to play the piano, but when I was a kid, we were really, really poor, so I couldn’t get lessons and I didn’t have access to a piano or a keyboard. So I started out doing theater as a kid because you can just do theater. And then that led into me studying ballet at a conservatory, and they gave me a full scholarship if I came in early and cleaned all the mirrors in the dance studios. So I would come in an hour early and get the mirrors spotless, and they gave me unlimited classes, so by the end of my run in ballet, I was our lead male dancer. But music was always calling to me, and I just really had never tapped into that until I moved to New York City and I had a roommate who was a piano major and he was a classical pianist, and just being around him made me want to create music. So I bought myself a digital piano. I sold a bunch of clothes and ordered from some weird website that I didn’t know if the piano was actually going to arrive. So then this huge, super dated, clunky keyboard arrived and I was so happy and I started writing all my songs on that thing. 

I’m curious if we go back to you coming into creativity through dance and if that influences or informs how you think about music. 

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, I did ballet and modern dance, and that doesn’t ever leave your body. And in fact, dancers love a lot of the stuff that I do. I get videos from dancers who especially love the slower songs.  I think I do write from a dancer’s perspective in a lot of ways, even though I don’t really use that for my shows, it’s still in my body. 

We talked to another artist who has composed in the same space with a live dancer and actually used the movement of the body and that kind of just real time kinetic sensibility to inform the music as well. I’m curious, do you see dance when you’re in some places when you’re writing? 

No, I don’t, but I see pictures. I don’t write from melodies. Some people hear melodies in their head and they construct a song around the melody or the riff or whatever it is. For me, I have, it’s kind of like scoring a film. I picture a scenario in which something’s happening for my song After Hours, for example, I thought about, well, this is kind of a yes to your question. I imagined myself taking an elevator down to hell, and when the doors open, all hell breaks loose, and you get to live your wildest, darkest fantasies. And so that’s how I started writing the song. And then the melody came from the images in my head. And with full speed ahead, I imagine myself on a spaceship that’s looming near, it’s like seeing a black hole in the distance, and instead of backing away from it, it puts on warp speed and goes right into it to see what’s on the other side. And not only what’s on the other side, but what am I on the other side? 

So in person, you’re lovely. And in some of your songs, there’s this, there’s so many dynamics. What are you channeling when you’re lyrically performing? Where is that coming from? 

I mean, I think it comes from a well of experience and a well of dark things and happy things. And it’s also ancient. It makes me feel connected to my ancestors, which I actually didn’t even realize that until recently-  we’ll probably talk about it later in the interview. But an experience I had in June where I basically went to the underworld Xibalba,  which is the Mayan afterlife or underworld, really, and kind of realized how much I had pulled from my ancestors. 

So you’ve shared the story about full speed ahead and you just hinted at it, so I think it would be interesting to hear a little bit about the experience that led to a spaceship looming near a black hole. 

Yeah. So when I wrote this, I imagined this person in a spaceship that was going to a black hole, and he goes warp speed and says, okay, let’s see what happens. What happens after I am spaghettified on the other side? Am I still me? Am I pieces of the ship? Am I pieces of the other people who are possibly in the black hole already? It’s about pushing yourself. For me, it was about pushing myself outside of the limitations and the walls that I’d kind of already built around myself. Because I think that as you go on as a human or as an artist, time puts the walls around you. You start believing what people say, right? You are not enough this, you’re not enough, that you’re too this, you’re too that. Whatever it is, everybody has their own little fortresses that they built up to protect themselves. For me, the song was like, okay, this is not a fortress anymore. This is a prison, and it’s time to break outside of it. To kind of go back to your question, it was a way to liberate myself, because if you say, this is what I’m doing, then you’re going to do it. If you say, I have to go full speed ahead now, it’s going to be really painful and it’s going to be challenging, but it’s better than where I’m at right now. Something’s got to be better than this moment, so let’s move outside of it. So that’s kind of where that spaceship came from. 

When you think about what the song means to you today, is there a change in what it means today versus when you started writing it? 

Yeah, I think that I wrote it from a really dark place, and now I can kind of see the other side didn’t have to be dark. I was actually just looking for something to bring me back to life in a sense. So yeah, the integration is real. It didn’t just stop at me, it steeped into everything around me. Changing my relationships, setting up boundaries, saying, oh, this isn’t working for me, and that’s okay. This person doesn’t have to be for me anymore. This space doesn’t have to be for me anymore. It also just made me realize, oh wow, I have a voice, so I should be using it more. I’m limiting myself on what I think I am, when in fact what I think I am is not exactly what other people think. So just put my work out there and the people who are interested are going to come. I started making music to make myself happy. 

You reached out and 40 seconds later I was like, oh, we have to talk to Felix. This song (Pink Velvet)  is about tukus lingus. We need more of this in the world. 

Well, I just feel like there are so many straight people getting famous for queer baiting, right?

Why are there not a lot more queer artists who are visible? And also there needs to be queer love anthems, there needs to be queer sex songs. There needs to be all these different forms of representation. I’m just one of the many type of queers that are creating stuff. My perspective is my own, and there should be a million others totally doing their own versions because there are millions of others just like those other types. So I guess my whole mantra is just be yourself. So just be yourself. Yeah. 

Yeah, it’s common sense, but sometimes that’s the first thing that goes out the window. 

It’s very hard to be yourself because it’s easier to just do what everybody else is doing. It’s actually very, very challenging to cultivate your own personality. But I won’t go on that tirade today. 

What is the next song you will release?

I’m in between two songs. One is called Hurt Me and the other one is called Cloud Diving, and I don’t know which one yet. I’m going use my broadcast channel, and that’s actually how I chose Full Speed Ahead. So I go to the broadcast channel and I’ll post polls right on my Instagram broadcast channel, and I’ll say, well, here’s a snippet of each of these songs. Which one do you want more? And everybody voted for full speed ahead. Okay. Yeah. And I gave them just the first 20 seconds of the song. Of course, the first 20 seconds, and I’ll probably do that again. I think it’s going to be one called Hurt Me, but You Never know. 

ADD TO PLAYLIST + STREAM: FULL SPEED AHEAD

Felix III: Instagram / Spotify / Apple Music / TikTok