toast

Florida native Marcus Hidalgo, known professionally as toast, is the latest young talent to make waves on the Indie-Pop circuit. While making music for most of his life, the artist only began his career recently — and in his second year in the industry, he’s managed to gross over 690k Spotify streams while landing himself on multiple Spotify-curated playlists. The artist’s unique rock and indie-pop influences are seen in tracks like “don’t tlk” and “iwsywm,” both of which received significant streaming success. They are amongst the five singles released by the artist this year alone, including his latest song, “strawberry lemonade.” We recently spoke with toast about his dream collaborations, future plans, and more!

How did you start making music?

I’ve been playing and making music for most of my life, but my friend and I started making music together as toast almost a year ago for fun. It was just mashing cool video game sounds together and putting beats on top of it. 

What would you say is the perfect occasion to listen to your music?

I always imagined people listening to my music while taking a late night drive to McDonald’s, or while playing Mario Kart. 

What’s helped you develop your unique style, which we’d describe as a well-crafted blend of pop, light rock, and indie?

I think what helped develop the style was simply the music and artists who we are huge fans of, and being inspired by that. Also, we never wanted to chase a specific “genre” rather, just make a cool sound and put a beat with melodies on top and see where it goes. I never knew exactly what to call it. 

Who would be your dream collab?

Dream collab would have to be either boy pablo, Huron John, or Matt DiMona.

Are there any future projects fans can look forward to?

As of right now, the goal is to drop a single every month and see what happens. It may lead to an EP somewhere in the near future…

Speaking of the future, are there any new directions you want to take with your career? If so, what?

Some new directions I’d love to take would be to do more live stuff. House shows, gigs, or whatever that looks like, I’d love to perform these songs live a lot more soon. On top of that, I’d love to do more video work as well for music videos and content to put out for my audience.  

Favorite non-music activity?

If i’m not doing music, I’m either playing Animal Crossing or I love making and drinking coffee at home.