Bedroom Pop Mastermind STROIK Out Now
THE TRAGICALLY LOST LEGACY OF LO-FI POP MASTERMIND STROIK
CELEBRATED WITH LONG-OVERDUE DEBUT ALBUM,
65TH AND YORK – PURCHASE/STREAM
NEW SINGLE, “LA LA LA,” JOINED BY OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO
65TH AND YORK AVAILABLE NOW
VIA UNFILTERED RECORDS AND CAVEMAN ARTS SOCIETY
DOCUMENTARY FILM, DREW STROIK: UNKNOWN POP WIZARD,
OFFICIALLY ACCEPTED INTO THE CULVER CITY FILM FESTIVAL
The posthumous legacy of late pop mastermind STROIK is finally acknowledged with today’s arrival of his long-overdue debut album, 65th and York, available everywhere now via Unfiltered Records and Caveman Arts Society. A never-before-heard collection created by a truly exceptional – yet sadly lost – musical voice, 65th and York includes such strange and beautiful songs as the uplifting “La La La,” joined by an official music video directed by the late filmmaker/musician Joshua Stoddard (Red House Painters, Ivy, Fountains of Wayne) and premiering today on YouTube.
WATCH “LA LA LA” OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO
PURCHASE/STREAM 65TH AND YORK
Produced by Stroik with longtime friend and musical collaborator Bruce Driscoll (Freedom Fry, Blondfire, Ivy, Camera2) and Unfiltered Records founder Andy Chase (of the iconic indie pop band Ivy), 65th and York also includes the effervescent “Wash and Repeat,” available everywhere now. The posthumous track is accompanied by a buoyant official music video streaming now at YouTube following its exclusive premiere via Magnet, which declared, “(Stroik’s) intimate lo-fi pop is masterful in the way it makes its imperfections a charming conduit for humanity’s myriad flaws.”
WATCH “WASH AND REPEAT” OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO
65th and York was first unveiled this summer by the tender first single, “Desert Time,” co-produced and co-written by Andy Chase and available everywhere alongside an official lyric video streaming now on YouTube. “Desert Time” was met by immediate spins on Los Angeles, CA’s KCSN (88.5FM) by legendary DJ Nic Harcourt as well as online attention from such outlets as Zillions Magazine, which raved, “With its gentle fusion of indie pop, dream pop, and lo-fi bedroom vibes, ‘Desert Time’ is a whisper from another time that's at once intimate and panoramic. It's a bittersweet welcome from a voice not heard with enough frequency in life, but one that carries a new resonance now.”
In addition, Stroik’s all-too-brief life and career will be explored in the upcoming short film, Drew Stroik: Unknown Pop Wizard, set to arrive next year. An official selection in the Culver City Film Festival and a semi-finalist at Brooklyn, NY’s Dumbo Film Festival, the documentary is preceded by an exclusive trailer streaming now at YouTube.
LISTEN TO “DESERT TIME”
WATCH “DESERT TIME” OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO
WATCH DREW STROIK: UNKNOWN POP WIZARD (2026) TRAILER
In November 2022, the music world tragically – and unknowingly – lost one of its most special and irreplaceable voices, Stroik. At only 35 years old, Drew Stroik passed away, leaving behind a catalog of over 100 unreleased songs, all created while privately struggling with poverty, loneliness, and substance abuse in the notoriously dangerous city of Pueblo, CO.
Stroik’s songs are imperfectly perfect pop masterpieces, imbued with heavy doses of relatability and human emotion. Though he referred to them as “generic pop,” to the world at large, they are far from that. Every single one of Stroik’s raw, esoteric, and mesmerizing tracks was made using the same main tools – a guitar he got for his 12th birthday and a Yamaha keyboard made of plastic, meant for children or beginners. The combination of strange synth textures and uncorrected finger-played drum sounds and patterns, fused with his soft, warm, honest voice, adds up to something that is specifically, spellbindingly “Stroik.”
Born in a suburb of Chicago, Stroik displayed an innate connection with music from an early age, captivating everyone with his infectious, quirky sense of rhythm and his intense love for melodies that always seemed to stretch his modest vocal abilities to the very limit. Stroik possessed a rare ability to perceive music in the most mundane, everyday moments, headbopping and snapping his fingers excitedly to the tunes that others often overlooked. With toy guitars and his electric piano, he would play along to his favorite Disney soundtracks until, enchanted and exhausted, he fell asleep. Stroik and his loving mother found themselves living above a funeral home owned by his grandmother and her boyfriend, who, as fate would have it, was the father of Veruca Salt bassist Steve Lack. The iconic 90s alt-rock band would often rehearse in the funeral home’s basement, filling young Stroik’s ears with music, and he would frequently sneak down and bang on the drums.
Stroik and his mother relocated frequently, from Florida and West Hollywood to Las Vegas and ultimately Cary, NC, where the teenager’s demeanor irrevocably changed and he began to feel like an outcast. Recognizing his true calling by the age of 17 – but with no connections in the music industry – Stroik used email as his gateway to reaching his heroes, sending a nonstop barrage of his demos to everyone who inspired him. One of the few responses came from Ivy’s Andy Chase, whose NYC-based label Unfiltered Records had released records by The Postmarks, a band Stroik loved.
Chase saw immediate promise in Stroik’s spellbinding tracks and asked him for the master files so that he could spend time polishing the songs further. However, to his horror, Stroik – unaware that external hard drives could be used to back up his work – had made a habit of making an mp3 and then deleting the files from his old computer as soon as they were finished. Undeterred, and smitten with Stroik’s unique and undeniable genius, Chase signed Stroik, then only 23 years old, to Unfiltered Records. But in order to make an album, Stroik would have to start recording his songs again from scratch. Chase introduced Stroik to his longtime friend and musical collaborator, Bruce Driscoll (Freedom Fry, Blondfire, Ivy, Camera2), and over the subsequent frigid winter of 2010, Stroik began weekend treks away from North Carolina to Driscoll’s tiny studio apartment on New York’s Upper East Side, where he began recreating and polishing his original demos.
With Chase involved in the production and mixing, an album began to emerge that encompassed both the innocent, unprofessional charm of Stroik’s earlier efforts with the impressive credentials that his collaborators were known for. Photos and music videos were shot, artwork was completed, and a publicist was brought on board surrounding Stroik’s impending debut album. However, within months, Stroik’s personal struggles got the best of him, and the label was ultimately forced to sever ties, derailing what could have been his breakthrough moment.
In his last effort to recognize the talent that Stroik truly was, Chase gave Stroik all his newly finished Unfiltered Records recordings back to him, but for reasons no one will ever know, Stroik never released them or any other music. Perhaps it was the pervasive self-doubt and defeatist attitude that always seemed to follow him like a dark cloud, or perhaps it was the ever-increasing depression and mental instability that ultimately took his focus away from his art. It remains a mystery, but in the decade following his sudden departure from Unfiltered Records, there was almost no visible proof that Stroik even existed.
However, Stroik, in fact, never stopped writing and recording his enthrallingly original music. Eventually his path led him to Pueblo, CO, where he struggled to make ends meet while keeping his mounting addictions and depression a secret from the rest of his family. Sadly, Stroik lost his battle with substance abuse to one tiny fentanyl-laced pill.
Three years after his untimely passing, Stroik’s music is all that remains, with 65th and York finally allowing the world a gateway into his singular, complex creative mind. To know Stroik was a wonderful whirlwind experience of chaos and grace, and listening to songs like “Wash and Repeat” and “La La La” is much the same. Life’s joys and sorrows are always precariously intertwined, and this yin and yang was ever-apparent within Stroik’s music. Though Stroik is gone, 65th and York gives listeners a long overdue chance to revel in this powerfully gifted, one-of-a-kind artist and dream about what might have been.
STROIK
65TH AND YORK
(Unfiltered Records, and Caveman Arts Society)
Download Hi-Res Album Cover
Tracklist:
Apart From the Truth
The Real Thing
Wash and Repeat
La La La
In The Fresh
Number One Blind
Home
Desert Time
Halfway
House of Manners
Lonely People
The Other Way
Get A Little
James
CONNECT WITH STROIK
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