Vancouver’s novas have a pretty personal first single on their hands. “Oh Moon” starts with intimate vocals and guitar-led indie rock, gradually opening up into a bigger, brighter chorus with some real weight behind it. It’s melodic post-rock and alternative rock with a singer who’s spent a fair bit of time around heavier music, and the song finds her trying to work out whether she can trust somebody again after getting hurt.
Alex Badger had been in some difficult relationships and was still learning to trust her own decisions when she began writing it. The possibility of letting somebody back into her life was making her nervous, and she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that another disappointment might be around the corner.
“I started writing oh moon when I was stuck in a place of fear and discomfort. Letting someone back in felt like such high stakes. Mostly because I was relearning how to trust myself again after some difficult relationships.”
Kick back and let these sounds wash over you. Watch the band’s new video for “oh moon” below.
There’s also a strange philosophical thread running through the chorus. Alex had been listening to the podcast “Philosophize This” and had come across Ernest Becker’s ideas about death, particularly his theory that much of human behaviour comes from our attempts to deny mortality. People fall in love, create things, chase success and try to leave something of themselves behind. In Alex’s reading of those ideas, the pain of losing a relationship or watching something fail can be tangled up with a much deeper fear of death.
She put some of that into the line “If Iโm not scared of dying does that mean nothing can hurt me?”
Alex hasn’t read Becker’s books, as she’s happy to admit, but hearing those ideas at that moment gave her a different way of thinking about getting hurt.
“At another time that topic might have brought me dread but then and there it gave me courage to just live and fail and maybe get my heart broken again. Iโve recovered from disappointment before, I can do it again and come out with more wisdom than before.”
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The music around those words has an interesting history of its own. Most of the people now playing in novas came through Vancouver’s heavier bands, and they’ve been bumping into one another at shows for well over a decade.
There’s a whole generation of local hardcore and metal history in their previous projects. For guitarist Nathan Moore, one name keeps coming back: A Textbook Tragedy.
“I think I speak for everybody by saying most people in the Vancouver scene would be nowhere without the mention of A Textbook Tragedy. They built foundational blocks for local alt + metal shows in the early 2000โs, where many of us began to think โmaybe we can do this tooโ.”
That last bit says plenty about the kind of gigs these musicians grew up going to. You’d see a band doing something that seemed almost out of reach, meet a few people afterwards, start rehearsing with friends, and before long you’d be playing some of the same rooms.
Chris Revill, now on bass in novas, was already involved in that world through Callahan. The band shared plenty of bills with A Textbook Tragedy, including gigs outside Vancouver as both groups toured around Canada.
One of those old shows is still documented in an August 2007 listing: A Textbook Tragedy and Callahan at Pub 340 on 19 August. Chris was there.
“Yes I remember that show! Pub 340 was a hot venue in those days. A Textbook Tragedy and Callahan actually played together quite a bit in that era, as both bands were aggressive in their touring activities, which allowed for shows in multiple cities throughout Canada.”
He remembers A Textbook Tragedy as a band doing something genuinely different from the other local groups of the time. Those shared shows were a big part of his earlier years playing music.
Pub 340 is also among the places he misses from that period, along with Smiling Buddha Cafe, The Brickyard, Seylynn Hall, Mesa Luna, the Media Club and Railway Club. Some shut down, others changed, and Vancouver’s smaller music scene has lost quite a few of its old meeting places.
Alex spent a lot of time at 333 Clark, going to hardcore, punk and metal shows. She’s especially concerned about how many independent all-ages spaces have disappeared as property prices have climbed.
“Weโve lost a lot of independent all ages music and art spaces over the last decade or more due to soaring real estate costs, gentrification and strict liquor enforcement. I went to countless hardcore/ punk/ and metal shows at 333 clark.”
It’s easy to see why those old places keep coming up when the novas members talk about one another. Their friendships go back to gigs, tours, mutual friends and the occasional fairly random meeting.
Ty Kingston, who plays guitar in novas, met drummer Nathan Pope in Medicine Hat back in 2011, when Pope helped put on a festival and played his first show with Fall City Fall. Their bands went on to tour together several times, and the two eventually played in Bastian together from 2020.
A year after that first meeting, Ty came across Nathan Moore when their respective bands opened for Misery Signals in 2012. He’d also known keyboardist and violinist Noah Edwards since around that period, although they became closer when Bastian did a short run with No Liars in 2018.
Chris and Ty properly met in 2017. Ty’s roommate was auditioning for Bastian at the time and suggested Ty as another guitarist. They’d seen each other around gigs before, but hadn’t really got to know one another.
Alex’s memories are a little less concerned with the gigs themselves. She met Pope outside the Rio Theatre in the summer of 2013 through Alex Marusyk, who played with Nathan Moore in Elysian Sun. That summer involved beers at the London Pub and a lot of frisbee.
Nathan Moore was coming to Poor Traits shows by 2014, where Alex remembers herself “screaming my face off”. Ty initially came into her life through a bandmate from Take The Earth Beneath Us whom she was dating at the time. Eventually she and Ty became gym buddies, and he occasionally accompanied her on her solo stuff.
All of that was happening years before anyone was seriously considering novas.
Alex had been writing and performing since she was a tween. She fronted rock/emo band Poor Traits and spent a lot of time around Vancouver’s heavier acts, but she’d gradually ended up working more in indie music.
Part of that came down to her voice and the kind of songs she wanted to sing. Part of it was what she’d experienced as a woman trying to find a place in a male-dominated heavy music scene.
“For me, feeling overlooked meant being asked to play a supporting role again and again. I was singing backups on a lot of records and finding harmonies in the studio for friends’ projects, even writing behind the scenes but fronting a band of that genre felt out of the question.”
She’d been contributing to other people’s records and helping them write, yet the idea of fronting another rock band had begun to seem unrealistic. She’s also careful about where she places the responsibility.
“Some of that was on me. I watched people around me doing what I dreamed because they put themselves out there, while I stayed quiet and waited to be noticed.”
By 2023 and 2024, Alex was busy working with various producers and independently releasing songs. She describes that period as burning the candle at both ends.
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Then came a barbecue at Ty’s place.
He offered to help with production. Alex knew what a good musician he was, although his metalcore background and her own songwriting seemed like an unusual combination. She had her indie songs, he’d spent years playing much heavier stuff, and neither had really planned out a new band.
“Heโs one of the most talented musicians I know but with him being from a metal core background and myself writing sad indie girl bops it wasnโt an obvious route to take.”
They decided to try a session anyway. Alex brought along half of “Oh Moon”, which she’d written on acoustic guitar. The two spent a day working on it, and the song grew considerably beyond its original form.
Afterwards, they both went away thinking about what they’d made. A couple of weeks later, when they met for another session, Ty suggested starting a project together.
Alex had already been thinking the same thing.
They went ahead and wrote the album. Then, once the songs were pretty much done, they started inviting their old friends to join.
“The album was essentially finished by the time weโd got the other guys involved. Pope was first to join and he recorded the studio drums on the album. Besides that, Ty did all the instrumentation on the record.”
So the album that will introduce novas as a six-piece was, for the most part, made by Alex and Ty, with Pope handling the drums. Ty took care of production, recording, mixing and mastering, while Jackson Gardner engineered the studio drum sessions. Alex wrote the lyrics and worked with Ty on the compositions.
The other musicians brought plenty of experience when they joined. Nathan Moore had played the intricate guitar parts of progressive rock band Elysian Sun and the big, heavy grooves of deathcore project Between Seas. He’s interested in bringing some of those less predictable guitar patterns into future novas writing.
Pope has an almost absurd number of previous bands to his name, including Fall City Fall, Colour in the Clouds, Youth Fountain, Royal Tusk, Year Over Year and Bastian. He’s also been playing with Kill Chain, Bayonet Dismemberment and Cliffside.
Noah fronts the Victoria pop-punk band Poor Sport, who have opened for Spiritbox, and has years of experience writing, touring and working as a solo musician.
Ty, meanwhile, isn’t overly sentimental about everything he’s done before novas. He played in Take The Earth Beneath Us and Bastian, but he’s pretty candid about some of the decisions made along the way.
“I played in Take The Earth Beneath Us and Bastian, and I literally try to carry over as little as possible from those projects because we made a fuckton of judgement errors and lacked foresight and execution.”
He leaves the specifics of those mistakes to himself.
Chris has his own adjustment to make with the new band. After years playing heavier music, he’s expecting a bit of trial and error finding the right venues and other groups to share bills with. novas have obvious connections to hardcore and metal, but their current sound leaves plenty of room for indie rock and alternative music.
Nathan is hopeful they’ll be able to play with bands across those styles. He also thinks there’s something recognisably Vancouver about the melancholy in their music.
“Vancouver is a huge part of our sound. Itโs rainy and grey for more than half the year, so Iโd say we come by our moodiness honestly.”
These days the six of them have a rehearsal room off Terminal in Vancouver. There’s quite a mix of backgrounds in there, with Alex on vocals, Ty and Nathan Moore on guitars, Chris on bass, Pope on drums and Noah handling keys and violin.
The first “Oh Moon” video was made while the line-up was still changing. Delaney Kai played keyboards during the shoot but later left the band, with Noah taking over as keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist. That’s why he isn’t in the first clip.
Ty, Alex and Brandynn Leigh Pope came up with the video concept and direction together. Brandynn handled filming, as well as the single’s cover artwork and promotional photography, while Ty took care of the edit.
They’ve already been filming another DIY video, too. Brandynn was back behind the camera, with Ty directing and editing. Alex reckons it’s been one of their more ambitious shoots so far.
For the moment, “Oh Moon” gives them a chance to introduce the softer, melodic side of what these musicians can do together. There’s already a full album recorded, and the six-piece can now work out what novas will become with everyone involved in writing new songs.
Alex still returns to that first single herself, sometimes for reasons that have little to do with having a record to promote.
“Yes writing this song did change how I saw the situation. It was like the song came from somewhere else and it was coaching me out of this misery. I actually come back to listen to oh moon sometimes in moments of anxiety and uncertainty and it softens my edges. It brings me out of my head and into my heart and reminds how to trust and allow.”
“Oh Moon” was released on 6 November 2026 and is the first single from novas’ debut full-length, due in June 2027. You can find the song here and check out the band’s music video and further details on their official website.
The artist helped fund this feature by covering our production time. The writing and editorial decisions remain entirely ours.
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