Sydney’s Mega Fäuna return this month with softmore, a record that feels both expansive and intimate. Built on layered harmonies, cinematic textures and a distinctly Australiana indie sensibility, the five-piece — featuring members of The Buoys, Sweetie and Wiles — have quietly carved out a sound that’s dreamy, emotionally rich, and unmistakably their own.
With the album arriving on March 19 via Blossom Rot Records, we caught up with the band to talk about the first single sleep deceit, creative influences, and the community that surrounds them.
Hey Mega Fäuna, where are you writing to us today from?
Hello! We are based on Gadigal land.
Your new single sleep deceit is the first release since Fibonacci Sequins. How does it feel to be entering this new chapter of Mega Fäuna?
Tess: sleep deceit feels like the beginning of a new era for us. Since releasing Fibonacci Sequins, we’ve all grown so much as musicians, and as a band we’ve become far more intentional about the world we’re building together. That first EP captured us in a moment of instinct - everything was new, and we were following our curiosities wherever they took us. I still love listening back because you can hear the spark of something forming.
But this new chapter feels different. We’ve spent the time between releases really figuring out our voice - not just what we want to sound like, but what we want to say, what textures feel true to us, and how we can push ourselves without losing the heart of what makes us Mega Fäuna. There’s a confidence in these new songs that comes from having lived a bit more, played a lot more, and learned how to trust each other’s instincts in a deeper way.
To me, sleep deceit is the first glimpse into a version of the band that feels more expansive. We’re giving ourselves permission to be bolder, stranger, softer, louder or whatever the song calls for. Entering this new chapter feels exciting because it’s the first time I feel like we’re not just discovering who we are, but really claiming it.
The song explores the feeling of someone lingering in your dreams even as you try to move on. What inspired that theme, and how did the idea develop into the track?
Freyja Fox: I wrote it a while back about a long term crush, but recently, it became real for me again in the writing of this song with a new unattainable crush! I feel like there's this space between asleep and awake where reality becomes confused for me. This song is a conversation between myself and my own mutinous mind, which isn’t complying with my wishes. The song explores the battle of trying to lay a crush to rest & yet they keep turning up in your dreams despite your best efforts to move on. I felt like my own mind was rebelling against me in a way that was beyond my control, and rather than fight it, this song is about what it would be like to just embrace it, and to let the dream world become reality.
Originally the lyrics contained a reference to the character Bastian in The Neverending Story who becomes increasingly immersed in a fantasy world, causing him to lose memories of his real life. I really related to this idea while writing the song.
Mega Fäuna is made up of members from bands like The Buoys, Sweetie and Wiles. How does bringing those different musical backgrounds together shape the songwriting process?
It's so cool to see where we are all at now across different bands, but Mega Fäuna actually had very different origins. Tess was already in The Buoys, but when Freyja and I began Mega Fauna the goal was to connect with women who didn’t already play in bands , or even play instruments at all, and who weren’t already orbiting the same familiar friendship circles that so often shape independent music scenes.
Since starting Mega Fäuna we all really blossomed and are now involved in all these other creative projects.
Our songwriting process is really collaborative, and because we hail from such a diverse array of different projects, ranging from electronic music, to devo country punk, to rock, to shoegaze, we tend to naturally approach things from different angles and somehow those instincts meet in the middle and become a Mega Fäuna song. There’s this real generosity in the room where nothing is too precious; ideas get pulled apart, rebuilt, stretched into shapes that we wouldn’t have imagined alone.
I think because we all grew in such different directions after forming this band, we’ve become even better at listening to each other. We bring our own histories, but we don’t let them dictate the room. Instead, they give us this huge palette to work from, where a single riff or lyric can shift depending on who picks it up next. It keeps everything alive, keeps us surprising, and keeps us very us!
Your music sits comfortably within an indie Australiana lineage. What artists or records have influenced the sound of Mega Fäuna the most?
Some of the bands we draw inspiration from are Annie Hamilton, Clea, The Preatures, Julia Jacklin, Snowy Band, Stella Donnelly, Jade Imagine, Body Type and Bridge Dog to name a few. Not only are they amazing musicians making interesting music that pushes the boundaries, but they are mostly female led outfits. Having female led musicians to draw inspiration from in our communities is really important because it builds our own confidence in our craft and community.
There's a huge back catalogue of iconic Aussie outfits that have inspired our songwriting over the years too. Divinyls, The Go Betweens, Deadstar, Paul Kelly, INXS, The Church, The Go-Betweens to name only a few…
