Devon Ross Brings Her Postpunk Sound to Miami

"Music has always been in my life," Devon Ross says as she takes a hit from her vape pen. The actress/model and now musician is about to release her first quartet of songs packaged as a debut EP, Oxford Gardens. It's a fun, no-nonsense, lo-fi medley of melody and noise that she initially recorded in a closet in Paris.

While she may be a newbie to creating music, whether by genetics or osmosis, her debut record sounds fully formed. "My dad is a musician," she tells New Times over Zoom. Her father, Craig Ross, has played guitar with Lenny Kravitz for the last 30 years. "He was playing Neil Young to me on the way home from the hospital. He got me obsessed with the Beatles and the Stones. He was like a gatekeeper who would tell me what music was good and what was not good," she adds.

As a kid, she took some bass guitar lessons and dabbled with songwriting in high school. "I'd write chord progressions, but nothing stuck lyric-wise." That is until this past summer when she said she was going through some big life changes. "A breakup. Friend changes. I wasn't settled and comfortable. I needed to get my feelings out, and it propelled me to create. I wasn't consciously making an EP. I wrote one song and liked it and was like let's do another."

Oxford Gardens was influenced by music from yesteryear that Ross discovered for herself, from '90s indie rock like Pavement and Sonic Youth to '70s bands like Television and Patti Smith. She singles out the track "Swim" from the EP as the standout. "It has a special place in my heart since it sounds to me like how I felt lyrically and musically. It was my emotions in sonic form. The guitar freak out was catharsis," she adds.
After Ross finished Oxford Gardens, she reached out to one of these musical heroes, Thurston Moore, formerly of Sonic Youth. She had played the role of Regina on the HBO miniseries Irma Vep, for which Moore, coincidentally, had been in charge of the music. "I met Thurston and his wife [Eva Prinz] at Cannes. We hung out and got to be friends." When she finished her EP, she sought his expert opinion on her music. "I sent him my demos this summer just to get his input. [Moore and Prinz] said they'd love to put them on their label [the Daydream Library Series]. I was just going to put them on Bandcamp," she says.

To celebrate the EP's release, Ross is headed to Miami to perform at a pair of shows.

Why Miami? Though Moore and Prinz live in London, Moore was born and grew up in Coral Gables, where some of his family still resides. It's not uncommon to spot him around town on occasion.

Moore's label, Daydream Library Series, will hold a showcase with Ross and a couple of her labelmates, Miami locals Las Nubes and Seafoam Walls, at Bar Nancy on Monday, February 19. Then, the following evening, on Tuesday, February 20, she'll perform at her record release party at Sweat Records. "I'll be doing a two-piece with me singing and my boyfriend playing guitar. We're going to change it up a bit for each day," she says.

It's the start of what sounds like a busy 2024 for Ross. She has a trifecta of films she's worked on set for release, including Depravity, My First Film, and Vindicta.

She's also working on more music and enjoys the differences between the two art forms. "They're such different ways of getting creative fulfillment," she adds. "Music is more solitary. Movies are so collaborative with all these people working together to have a story come to life."

Daydream Library Series. With Devon Ross, Las Nubes, Seafoam Walls, and Marlon Sexton. 8 p.m. Monday, February 19, at Bar Nancy, 2007 SW Eighth St., Miami; nancy305.com. Tickets cost $18 via eventbrite.com.

Devon Ross. 5 p.m. Tuesday, February 20, at Sweat Records 5505 NE Second. Ave., Miami; sweatrecordsmiami.com. Admission is free with RSVP via eventbrite.com.