Cavetown

Robin Daniel Skinner (born 15 December 1998), known professionally as Cavetown, is an English singer-songwriter and YouTuber based in Cambridge. His style blends elements of indie rock, indie pop and bedroom pop with mellow, gentle ukulele ballads. As of February 2020, he has amassed over 3.3 million monthly streamers on Spotify. His YouTube channel, which he began in November 2012, sits at 1.2 million subscribers and 128.1 million video views. Skinner released his third studio album, Lemon Boy, in July 2018.

Skinner was born in Oxford on 15 December 1998 and relocated to Cambridge at the age of eight. His interest in music was inspired by his father, David Skinner, a professional flautist and director of music at Cambridge University, who taught him how to play the acoustic guitar at the age of eight. His mother is a professional Baroque flautist and music teacher. He attended Parkside Community College and Hills Road Sixth Form College and received an NCS in 2015.

2012–2015: YouTube, Bandcamp

Skinner began his YouTube channel in November 2012 and uploaded his first video, an original song named Haunted Lullaby in October 2013. Skinner began recording, producing and releasing music to Bandcamp in 2013, and had released his first album, Everything Is Made of Clouds, to the platform at the age of 14. Skinner released Gd Vibes, Nervous Friends // Pt. 1, Balance (as brother) and Everything is Made of Stars on Bandcamp over the following two years. Critics expressed that they felt "the acceptance of ignorance" on Gd Vibes. Skinner released his debut single "This Is Home" in August 2015, which has reached over 43 million streams on Spotify, before releasing his debut self-titled album in November 2015. Critics described the album cavetown as "an eclectic mix of acoustic and electronic". Skinner continued to publish covers of songs onto his YouTube channel from artists such as Pinegrove, Twenty One Pilots and Joji.

2016–2018: Lemon Boy

In 2016, Skinner released his second studio album, 16/04/16. The album includes a mix of "warm, melodic bedroom pop" and "lo-fi indie rock". In April 2017, whilst still at Sixth Form College, Skinner made it through to the final of the Cambridge Band Competition winning both Best Acoustic Act and the Kimberley Rew Award for Songwriting and going on to play at Strawberry Fair in June 2017. In 2018, he released his third album, Lemon Boy. The album's title track has amassed 24 million streams on Spotify and nearly 10 million views on YouTube as of September 2019.

2019–present: Animal Kingdom and Sleepyhead

In 2019, Skinner released five split singles which were later compiled into Animal Kingdom, a mixtape of ten tracks including covers and original singles with guest appearances from Sidney Gish, Simi, Chloe Moriondo and Spookyghostboy. He produced the single "prom dress" by mxmtoon, which has gained over 8 million streams on Spotify and has been used in over 100,000 videos on the video-sharing platform, TikTok. The single featured on mxmtoon's debut album the masquerade which was also fully produced by Skinner. Skinner performed on the Acoustic Stage at Victorious Festival in August 2019. He signed under Sire Records in 2019 where he released the single "Telescope" ahead of his upcoming album, later announced as Sleepyhead. Skinner embarked on a series of sold-out worldwide headlining tours in October 2019. He is yet to play at 31 venues in the US and 15 venues in the UK over the space of four months. He will be joined by Hunny and mxmtoon for a few shows in the UK tour, as well as Field Medic and Chloe Moriondo for a few shows in the US tour. In October 2019, Skinner announced his headlining tour along Australia's east coast which will take place in January 2020.

In 2020, Skinner announced his upcoming major label debut album Sleepyhead for release in late March.

Musical style and songwriting

Skinner is known for his "gentle ukulele ballads" and "melodic bedroom pop".

As of November 2018, Skinner lives in Cambridge, England. He has identified himself as "somewhere on the Ace and Aro spectrums" in an autobiographical Tumblr post, and recently started dating Avery Vernon. In an interview with Urban Outfitters, Skinner stated, "I got a boyfriend recently, I'm very excited about it and I like him and I'm going to write a song about him sometime".

Studio albums

Extended plays

Mixtapes

Singles

As lead artist

As featured artist

Bandcamp releases

• Everything Is Made of Clouds (2013)
• Gd Vibes (2014)
• Nervous Friends // Pt. 1 (2015)
• Balance (2015)
• Everything Is Made of Stars (2015)