Leon Thomas On Lollapalooza, Bruno Mars, & His Next Album

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Leon Thomas is very focused on live music right now — so much so that he crafted his latest EP Pholks to be a showcase for his performance skills. “Selfishly, I wanted to make a record that I could have a fun time performing live, so a lot of these songs were built for the stage,” Thomas says, the morning after he belted out the R&B bangers in front of a mud-covered Lollapalooza crowd. While a festival show is the perfect arena for the newly minted Grammy winner to share his atmospheric melodies, his admittedly “mellow” vibes are a stark contrast to the frenetic high-energy of headliners like Charli XCX or Tate McRae. But that doesn’t shake him.

“It’s just presence, you know? There’s nothing wrong with mellow music,” Thomas says in a small Q&A put together by Lol...