An Indie Pop Artist Who Has Lived in Five Countries Makes Music for the Outcasts
ELLIOKI describes their work as music for the outcasts. ELLIOKI’s Your Man, a bittersweet indie pop single released on 25 September 2026, shows exactly which outcast they mean. It is the queer teenager who knows they will never be one of the boys asking a girl to dance.
You will find ELLIOKI among queer artists from every genre in our playlist below, and the full run of coverage sits on ELLIOKI’s artist profile. Your Man came to QueerPeople.News by way of PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Give it a spin, then stay with the rest of the story.
Every Queer Teenager Who Only Got to Dance as a Friend Will Hear Themselves in ELLIOKI’s Your Man
The opening lines set the scene quickly. The boys chase the girls and ask them to dance, and the narrator knows they will never be one of them. Then comes the hard part. “If I asked, you’d listen,” the song goes, but they would only dance as friends, again.
That last word carries the weight, because it tells you this has happened before. So the chorus asks for something plain and direct: “I’d like to be your man.” Each chorus ends on the same five words: your man, not your friend.
That is the listener Your Man is written for. It is for anyone who spent their teens as the trusted friend and never the date. It is also for queer listeners who missed the usual teenage firsts, from the dance to the flowers. In fact, the second verse is full of exactly those things. The narrator promises flowers, hours of talk and no games. Then, just before the last chorus, the narrator makes the case outright: it is better to fall for friends.
ELLIOKI wrote the song alone, and it runs just over two minutes. For all its longing, the lyric never turns bitter. Instead, the narrator keeps promising to be different.
From Nightskyel to a Self-Made Debut EP
ELLIOKI has been making up songs for as long as they could talk. Still in their early twenties, they have lived in New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Portugal. They also speak English, Spanish and German. At 13 they picked up the guitar and began making acoustic songs under the name nightskyel.
Today they make their records themselves, a point they repeat under their YouTube videos. Their 2024 debut EP, YOUTHS DEPARTURE, was fully self-made, and it looked at the harsh side of growing up. cemetery is about death, while time weighs enjoying the present against mourning the good of the past. Next, memories is about feeling cut off from your childhood self. Finally, for the better is about growing apart from someone you cared for. Your Man returns to growing up, this time inside the high school years themselves.
Where Fans of FINNEAS and Jeremy Zucker Fit In
ELLIOKI names FINNEAS and Jeremy Zucker as their biggest inspirations, and both are useful signposts for new listeners.
FINNEAS solo-produced his first album, and he later said the process left him feeling lonely. So he made his second album, For Cryin’ Out Loud!, with a band in live studio sessions in Los Angeles. It came out in October 2024, and ELLIOKI has covered its title track on YouTube. Their own records, meanwhile, sit at the earlier, self-produced end of that story.
Jeremy Zucker began making music in his bedroom while he was still at Ramapo High School in New Jersey. Years later, he wrote Comethru soon after leaving college and moving back into his childhood home. It became one of his best-known songs. ELLIOKI writes from a similar spot now: just past the teenage years, and looking back at them clearly.
A Weekend in Paris Gave ELLIOKI’s Your Man Its Video, and Instagram Already Had the Audience
A week after release, ELLIOKI added a music video. They spent a weekend in Paris and filmed it there. The clip went up on their YouTube channel on 2 October, and it runs about two minutes, like the song. On Instagram, a clip from the shoot sums the story up in a single line about falling in love with a best friend. Better still, the video description holds the full lyrics, so new listeners can follow every line.
Spotify shows how the first month went. By late October, Your Man had passed 2,300 plays there. The most played song on ELLIOKI’s profile is still More Noise, the July 2026 single, with more than 10,000 plays. Both songs belong to a run of new music that has arrived almost every month since 2025, starting with outcast (demo) in February that year.
The Community Around Music for the Outcasts
The biggest crowd, however, is on Instagram. More than 29,000 people follow ELLIOKI there, and the bio pairs the words music for the outcasts with a transgender pride flag. From the profile, fans can join a group chat or pick up merch.
The songs themselves explain the bio. On their website, ELLIOKI describes outcast (demo) as a song about being left out a lot as a kid. Similarly, On my mind (demo) is a pretend coming out that imagines the worst reactions. More Noise, in turn, is about being trans in a loud world.
On YouTube, the conversation runs both ways too. ELLIOKI has posted a get-to-know-me Q&A built from fans’ questions. There are also covers of songs by Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Marten and sombr. Looking ahead, ELLIOKI hopes to take the songs on tour.
For a first listen, start with the video and then play Your Man on Spotify. After that, go back to More Noise. If the opening lines hit home, the four songs on YOUTHS DEPARTURE fill in the rest of the story.
QueerPeople.News’s curator team:
“Pop music has given the promise to be someone’s man to countless straight love songs. Your Man hands it to a queer teenager who keeps being offered friendship instead, and that change of narrator makes an old line feel new again.”
Follow ELLIOKI on Instagram and their YouTube channel. Stream the music on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and YouTube Music. Every link is also on Push.fm and the official site.
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