Luke Armstrong Releases Debut EP BOYS DON'T CRY, Produced by Daniel James
The five-song set includes closing track Little Wins, co-written with Julian Cruz and paired with a new music video.
Beirut-raised, Los Angeles-based artist Luke Armstrong has released his debut EP, BOYS DON'T CRY, via Paid Vacation Records / Virgin Music Group. Produced by Daniel James (Hayley Williams, David Byrne), the 5-song set explores Armstrong's experience growing up queer in a Christian household in Lebanon and the guilt and loneliness he felt leaving home for Los Angeles while violence continues to escalate throughout the Middle East.
With four singles already revealed ('2000,' 'BackBack,' 'Boys Don't Cry,' and 'Heavenbound'), the EP's closing track 'Little Wins' arrives alongside a music video directed by Elise and Daniel James. Co-written with Julian Cruz (Dominic Fike, Briston Maroney), the new song was born from Israel's intensifying bombings of Beirut in 2024. 'I was stuck in LA traffic, talking on the phone with a friend in Lebanon,' Armstrong says. 'Every time a bomb hit, his door would shake. How do you make sense of it? Me here. Him there.'
The son of American academics and missionaries, Armstrong was born and raised in Beirut and grew up speaking English and Arabic, navigating questions about his own identity—sexual, religious, and political—from a very young age. Music was always the throughline, a way to process those internal conflicts. By age six, he was learning classical piano and teaching himself guitar, banging away on both after hard days at school. His early influences ran the gamut: from the steady Christian rock you might expect to hear in a pastor's household, to the darker moods of metal and alternative you might not, to the revelatory thrill of electronica and house music. He left Lebanon to play college basketball in Southern California, and through the commitments of school and sports, continued producing and writing.
A post-grad move to Los Angeles and the deepening of his collaboration with Daniel James brought everything into focus. 'Every time music comes back up in my life, it feels even more powerful,' says Armstrong. 'Why not just chase it all the way?'
There's a colorful spontaneity to Armstrong's craft, likely owed to his instinctual, stream-of-consciousness approach. His songs radiate with kinetic urgency. Infectious rhythms and buoyant melodies lift whipsmart, emotionally turbulent lyrics in a vibrant span of sonic inspirations: from Frank Ocean to David Bowie to The 1975. The music serves as an outlet for the inevitable pain that comes from existing in today's world, without hiding from it. 'There's an opportunity to face fear with art, to surrender to what scares you, process it, and come through,' he explains. 'I want to be honest about human suffering, and to make a statement about what a better world can look like.'
BOYS DON'T CRY is available now via Paid Vacation Records / Virgin Music Group.
Tracklist
1. 2000
2. Heavenbound
3. Boys Don't Cry
4. Back Back
5. Little Wins
Photo Credit: Zachary Gray
Photo Credit: Zachary Gray
