Phoebe Rings plays The Van Buren on Nov. 6, 2025.

Frances Carter

Prepare to hear ethereal soundscapes and candlelight instrumentals as New Zealand dream pop band Phoebe Rings heads to Phoenix on November 6, supporting The Beths, at The Van Buren.

Led by Crystal Choi, Phoebe Rings is making lyrical chill cool again, her voice languishing in the sentiment of her lyrics as if she’s narrating something personal, perhaps about herself, or empathetic to at least one person in her audience by proxy.

The band consists of vocalist and synth player Choi, of course, with Simeon Kavanagh-Vincenton on guitar, Benjamin Locke on bass and Alex Freer on the drums. They released their debut album titled “Aseurai” this past spring, and a stand-alone cover of Beach House’s “Astronaut” this past October.

Choi’s Korean roots are honored in the title song “Aseurai.” In our interview below, she explains its meaning. Choi and Freer took some time out of their busy North American tour to talk to Phoenix New Times before playing at The Van Buren. They talk about their band, its vision, and the inspiration behind their mindful sound.

Phoebe Rings.

Phoenix New Times: What is the state of pop music in New Zealand right now?
Alex Freer: I think it’s pretty healthy! It’s never been easier to make and share music, so living on an island on the bottom of the globe doesn’t seem like such a setback anymore. Lots of people are making music with interesting perspectives, making great music. On the other hand, we are short on places to create and play music, and touring has become so much more expensive, so it’s definitely not perfect.

How did the band come together?
Crystal Choi: It started as my solo project. After I completed my jazz degree, I got really interested in writing more pop-based songs. So the first EP is all songs I wrote and arranged with a little bit of help from the others towards the end.
Freer: At the time, we were all writing and recording music for our own solo projects, as well as for other bands, and I think it made sense to combine our efforts; it can be really lonely making music by yourself and having no one else to vibe off.
So for the debut album, we all wrote songs and workshopped them together.

Where does the name Phoebe Rings come from?
Choi: The Phoebe ring is the outermost ring of Saturn. Sadly, it’s slowly disappearing!
Freer: So we’re hoping to eclipse the Phoebe ring in terms of search term popularity now!

The intro to “Get Up” has this relaxing ’70s disco vibe. Are you heavily inspired by that decade?
Freer: There’s definitely a lot of older artists that we were inspired by making the album — Tom Jobim, Margo Guryan, Chic, Fleetwood Mac, Taeko Ohnuki, YMO — we like a lot of production, and sounds from the ’60s to the ’90s. We don’t want to sound pastichey or like a tribute band, so it’s more about incorporating those influences with a twist.

Aseurai is a song sung in Korean. It’s also the title of your first album. What does it mean?
Choi: It means ‘faintly, in the distance’ in Korean, and it’s not normally a word that is used in daily conversation. It had a hopeful meaning to me, and it helped me write the rest of the lyrics about my grandmother passing away.

On your self-titled EP, the song “Spisskey” is a love letter to a castle. Why did the structure move you so much?
Choi: While being on a van in Slovakia (I was on tour with Princess Chelsea), I saw a giant castle that was up high on a hill. It was big but quite far away, and it looked majestic but also lonely at the same time. Being at least a couple of centuries old, I thought it held many memories of people, but the thing that’s only remaining is itself.

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Crystal, you seem to have a psychic curiosity about things. Do you consider yourself an empath? What moves you to write about objects and things and not about yourself?
Choi: I think it inevitably all leads to myself because I’m the one who’s imagining it/it’s from my perspective! But yep, I do consider myself an empath, when other people are feeling sad or are struggling in their life, I struggle too, haha.

Do you think being described as ‘dream pop’ accurately depicts what you do?
Freer: We like the dream part! ‘Pop’ is a hard term to wrestle with these days, as although we like writing songs with more traditional pop song structure, what we do is a million miles away from a Sabrina Carpenter song. I think we really enjoy the dream’ part, as we like textures that meld together, and I think our individual approaches to our instruments can contribute to quite a dreamy texture.

Your music takes listeners on a journey. This type of storytelling takes people away from the now. Is this intentional?
Freer: It’s mostly in our personality and our world views, I feel. Music can be a really therapeutic and transportative experience, and we are trying to achieve that somehow.

Where does Phoebe Rings go from here?
AF: We’re currently on tour supporting The Beths around the USA, and very excited to visit Phoenix for the first time! After that, most of us will be heading home to a New Zealand summer to do a lot of sleeping, I imagine, and we’re going to reconvene early next year to start work on our next release. And hopefully, we’ll return to the US and abroad in 2026.

Phoebe Rings opens for The Beths at 8 p.m. on Nov. 6 at The Van Buren.