“We just love making stuff,” said Aaron Graham, one of the members of the indie duo Ray Bull, in an interview.

Graham and Tucker Elkins are about to release an EP entitled Little Acts of Violence on Friday, Feb. 21, ahead of their first ever headline tour. They will be beginning their 19-show tour in Washington, D.C. at The Atlantis on March 7, 2025.

However, “indie” may not even be the best term to describe Ray Bull. They hardly fit into any one box, and as two artists, they prefer to color outside the lines.

Elkins and Graham met at The Cooper Union, an art school in Manhattan, New York, right before the pandemic. The two began as visual artists, and while they still make visual art, they discovered their mutual enthusiasm for making musical art. Around this time, Graham had been using the name “Ray Bull” as a persona for sharing his visual art, so it all seemed to fall into place when he and Elkins began making music together. They took a name that had a bit of history behind it and started creating art in a medium in which they had no prior history.

Many have tried to describe Ray Bull as indie rock or indie pop, and they said that that certainly describes some of what they do, but they see themselves as more eclectic and prolific, with a wider array of genre-bending styles. But if Ray Bull could be summed up into just a few words, I would say they would be poignant and mysterious.

“We weren’t in bands in high school and it was never a dream to play in a band and get on stage and go on tour,” Graham said. “We just loved making things and music kind of happened later. So by the time we came to music, it felt very like an open feel to us, like we didn’t come to it with a specific genre.”

Ray Bull “stumbled into” their upcoming EP, Little Acts of Violence. 

“We’re not really sure what it is,” Elkins said. “It even confuses us a little bit.”

The new EP will feature seven songs, four of which have already been released as singles. The title track, “Little Acts of Violence,” has hints of Sara Bareilles, Declan McKenna, Enya, and even The Killers. 

“We write so many songs that we kind of just have around in waiting,” Graham said. “It was kind of a process of hearing different voices and what people thought of what we had, and kind of just letting the songs fight their way to the top. So it’s like, whatever songs called attention to themselves ended up on the EP. So in that sense, we’re not entirely sure of what they’re saying together.”

So will “Little Acts of Violence” have songs fighting for the top spot? Fans will have to find out when the EP comes out this Friday.

Ray Bull has been working with the record label AWAL to produce this, which is their first time producing music not entirely independently. In the past, Ray Bull has created all of their own content, including the artwork.

“We feel so lucky that we get to be the ones doing it,” Graham said. “We went to art school, have the skill set, and it feels like an essential part of representing ourselves.”

Graham described their songwriting process as a “mentality of mumbling;” their fully formed product hardly ever comes out the first time around. They often start with the chords and the melody, and then mumble to find the right words. They often do, as their lyrics are very poignant, yet vaguely mysterious.

“It often feels like we’re like paleontologists or something, like uncovering bones and brushing things away to see what’s there,” Graham said. “It feels like the words are somewhere in there.”

As is the case for many artists these days, Ray Bull gained their audience through TikTok and other social media platforms. You may recognize them from their mashup videos, where they sing two existing songs overtop of each other. They wanted to share their music somehow, and TikTok seemed to them like the most logical place to start.

“It was like a sink-or-swim kind of mentality, almost, with TikTok these days,” Elkins said. “The more we did [the mashup videos], the easier it was to think of them, because we were getting views and stuff; it’s like a high… Now I feel like we’re hardwired to think of them. It’s almost like a curse… it feels like seeing the ‘matrix.’”

Even though it can be a love-hate relationship with the social media platform, especially with the ever-changing algorithms, they are glad they did it.

“It’s really provided us with that foundation of an audience,” Graham said. “So many people started following us because of that, and then we suckered them into listening to our own music.”

As Elkins and Graham are both visually-minded people, they often come up with creative concepts for their TikToks, music videos, and album art.

While this is not their first taste of the tour life after previously supporting Stephen Sanchez and Ricky Montgomery’s respective tours, Ray Bull is excited to be heading out on their own tour. They’ve played DC9 and the Pie Shop before, but they hope that their first stop at The Atlantis will set the tone for the rest of their 19-city tour.

For more information about Ray Bull’s shows in D.C. and beyond, check their website, and be sure to catch them live at The Atlantis on Friday, March 7.

(Cover Image Photo Credit: Sweet Joey Vermouth)

Venue Review:  Learn More About The Atlantis, parking, food recommendations, and more.

To learn more about Ray Bull, please see the following web resources:

• Webpage
• Facebook
• Instagram
• YouTube
• TIDAL
• Apple
• Spotify
• TikTok
• Bandsintown