Breaking in, breaking out, breaking the rules with the most talked about musical performance at sxsw 2025

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Interview: Slash Need

Breaking in, breaking out, breaking the rules with the most talked about musical performance at sxsw 2025

Javier Juu

21 March 2025

Fierce and boundary-pushing, the post-punk/goth-electronica act from Toronto, Slash Need ignited Swan Dive at sxsw with their raw and unfiltered energy. Their music plays, surges, and claws its way through your senses like a violent signal demanding to be felt. With a new LP on the horizon, we caught up with Dusty Lee, Alex Low (Lex), and dancers Stella and Camille, for a quick chat before their explosive set at Swan Dive during the Mothland sxsw 2025 showcase.

Calling it a performance barely does it justice—it was immersive, theatrical, visceral, and commanding. The crowd moved between head-banging and something resembling hypnotic dancing, swept up in the raw energy of the moment. Air thick with amyl nitrite, they pushed post-punk electronica into something more primal with their magnetic stage presence and unshakable crowd control.

Visually, their world is just as striking as their sound. Every prop and set piece is handcrafted, fully DIY—proof that high impact doesn’t require a massive budget, just vision and grit. That same ethos seeps into their music, where chaos meets precision, and every show feels like an unpredictable, beautifully unhinged spectacle. Before they took the stage, we sat down to talk about digital clubbing during the COVID-19 lockdown, the driving forces behind their sound, and what’s next on the horizon.

So…I ran into y’all at Club Quarantine…

Dusty Lee: No, wait… you were there??

Yeah, yeah! Your performance blew my mind. Club Quarantine felt like a breath of fresh air, a glimmer of hope that soon we’d all be back to clubbing. I can be a bit of a club kid myself. Y’all debuted “Hole One” that night, right? Was that its debut? How did that come together?

DL: Club Quarantine are from Toronto, and I knew some of them from the queer scene there. They reached out to us to perform at one of their digital parties, and we were already working on something at the time. We sped up the process, finished the video, and sent it over. It was exciting to be creating, making music, and sharing it with a community—even during COVID. That was a really special opportunity.

It’s so wild that you got to see it! The video is insane. We filmed in a garbage dump in Toronto that we broke into. We thought, ‘How do we make a video where we’re kind of rewriting Alien?’ So we found this old landfill, climbed the hills, and filmed it. On our way back down we realized the workers had locked us in. We saw a car drive off and we’re like, ‘awh fuck!‘

I texted my roommate to Uber us some bolt cutters, but then Lexi was like, ‘Wait, I think I can figure this out.’ There was this little lockbox with a number code for a spare key. And right as the bolt cutters were about to arrive, Lexi punched in ‘2020’ and it just opened.

That is hilarious, but also this is exactly what happens when punk meets electronic. “We broke into this place, we recorded a music video here… and thank you, and goodnight.” The video feels so raw, so DIY…

DL: We literally made it with zero money.

And that’s what’s so beautiful about it. It proves you don’t need a budget to create something impactful—you just work with what you have.

Alex Low: Yeah, and this one [pointing at Dusty] is amazing at making something out of nothing.They made that entire alien costume—fake hands, everything.

When you’re making music, is there a specific feeling or atmosphere you aim to create?

DL: When we make music, I’m searching for something that feels honest and urgent—something that translates whatever I’m feeling inside. It’s like I’m trying to build a world that people can step into, but also a world that I can step into—more vividly, more texturally. Finding community within that feeling is freeing. A lot of our music comes from frustration, from feeling at a loss, from struggling to speak when you need to. There has to be a place to rage, to let that out, and to find people who get it. That’s what matters to me.

That honesty really comes through. “Hole One” speaks to that—it hit me.

AL: You don’t need much. Get some lights, some smoke, throw it all in a dumpster, and suddenly, you’re in a whole new world. You create what you want to step into.

Everyone should own a pair of bolt cutters [laughs]. Any musical influences that shape Slash Need or your creative process?

DL: So many! We all love different genres, but Peaches is a huge one—Toronto icon! She’s punk, DIY, femme-forward, sensual, and all about liberation. She put out Fuck the Pain Away when she was 33. That always stuck with me because we started this band [when I was] in my mid-20s, and for a long time, I thought, ‘I can’t be a musician—it’s too late.’ But Peaches proved to me that music can happen at any stage of your life.

During the pandemic we shifted our sound towards a more goth-industrial sound. I was really into Ministry and Nine Inch Nails at the time and really listening to that. Lex has been a long time industrial fan, and we have been working together and figuring out how to bring that sound together…. Oh! Also, Prodigy! 

AL: Yes! Prodigy! I don’t know who its making what sound. They’re a band, but i don’t know who is playing what, it’s just a bunch of creatives and there are no rules—literally just jamming.

I love that.

DL: We also started incorporating dancers a few years ago after I stopped wearing a mask on stage. I wanted to keep that sense of mystery and anonymity, but also create space for people to imprint themselves onto the performance. I wanted the crowd to feel like they could be up there too. The dancers aren’t just an addition—they’re part of the band. Everything works together.

What’s coming up next?

DL: We’ve got an album coming this year, and we’re looking at doing some touring. We’re working hard. There’s a new music video and single dropping in the next month or so. It’s been a minute. We had to move out of our space—life, blah blah. We’ve had two labels approach us, and we keep putting it off, but it’ll happen. It has to happen. It’s going to happen.

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