Cavetown’s Robin Skinner, of Cambridge, England, has become an anchor for a
generation of listeners who’ve found not just solace in his music, but a kind of spiritual
room to grow up in. His catalog, spanning lo‑fi ditties and indie rock charmers, has
amassed billions of streams, earned a 6× Platinum certification, and inspired high-profile
features in the New York Times, Rolling Stone and Billboard. His global touring career
has taken him from sold‑out clubs to massive tours with AJR and Pierce The Veil, as
well as festival main stages at Glastonbury, Lollapalooza, Corona Capital, Primavera
Sound, and many more. Along the way, his songs have become comfort objects to his
dedicated fans, who have clasped them, cried to them, and grown up alongside them.
They’ve been soft hands offering understanding when the world felt too sharp.
His new album, Running With Scissors, asks: What happens when you leave that room
you grew up in and finally look yourself squarely in the eye? What are the gifts and
curses you’ve inherited from the family who raised you? Which parts of them do you
bring forward, and which do you cut away? With all these lessons and questions in tow,
Running With Scissors captures life at the moment you’re forced out of the classroom
into the open world, scissors in hand, trying not to fall.
Written on the other side of an intensive two‑year healing process, Running With
Scissors finds Skinner aged up and galvanized. That bravery extends to the songwriting
itself: the album is threaded with intergenerational tension, familial excavation, and an
unflinching exploration of who Skinner wants to become as an adult. These questions
were prompted by two major life events: falling in love with the person he wants to start
a family with, and the birth of his first sibling, who is 26 years his junior.
The relationship that inspired love-dazed opener ‘Skip’ is the album’s brightest
throughline, a song Skinner calls “one of the first love songs I’ve written with positive
overtones…because I’ve fallen in love for real this time.” In its bounce and candor, the
track channels the joy of “wanting to skip around, like you’re a little kid.” But Running
With Scissors doesn’t linger in any one emotional register for long. As “Skip” ends, its
final chord dovetails directly into the darker, more jagged opening of “Cryptid,” where
love transforms into righteous fury. “Something new I’m bringing into this album is
spite,” Skinner says. “I think I owe it to love to realize how much I care about
things…This song is where those two feelings meet.”
The songs embrace this tension between love and anger: whispers break into screams,
warm arpeggios bounce off sinister basslines, acoustic melodies and nature‑based field
recordings collide with hyperpop glitches and math rock. Most noticeably, Skinner’s
newfound sense of righteous anger has unlocked new parts of his voice. Where it was
once a soft stream, Skinner’s vocal now stretches and snaps with wild abandon and
enormous range, the result of recent vocal coaching and deeper emotional excavation.
“I wanted to make myself sound more brave,” he says, “and I wanted to impress people
with my voice, like, ‘wow, he’s actually got some pipes.’”
That same sense of upheaval runs through Skinner’s career. After years with Warner
Records, he has joined Futures Music Group, further underlining this period of renewal.
The album also marks a major creative milestone: for the first time in his career, Skinner
invited collaborators into the core creative process. Running With Scissors features
contributions from Chloe Moriondo, Ryan Raines, David Pramik, Couros, and
Underscores, artists who’ve helped expand Skinner’s sonic palette in unexpected and
vitalizing ways, pulling the carpet from underneath his long-entrenched universe, and
making it fly.
At every turn, Running With Scissors marks a clear evolution in artistry and maturity for
Skinner. Love songs like “Baby Spoon” explore care, intimacy and softness in the wild
dance with masculinity. Elsewhere, “No Bark, No Bite” turns extra angsty and inward,
examining family history with the curiosity of someone considering their potential future
as a parent and raising a family of his own, for the first time. “I’ve been reflecting on the
traits I’ve picked up from my parents,” he says, “and thinking about which of those parts
I want to take into adulthood and which parts I want to discard for the future of myself,
my partner, and our future family.”
Aged up and showing up as the best version of himself, Skinner hasn’t lost sight of the
millions of listeners who have grown up alongside him. “I want them to enter this new
era with me and not feel like it’s for kids. Because I’m not a kid anymore,” he says. “I
want it to feel like we’re moving forward together.”