The musical career of the Melbourne singer songwriter really took off after a Triple J Unearthed upload and she cemented her place in the industry with her EP B-Grade University in 2016.

Since then she’s taken to the stage in numerous festivals and scored praise from a range music critics.

No stranger to Ballarat, she’s bringing her I love you like a brother tour to the city, celebrating her debut full length album which is set to be released on October 6.

She played here on her debut EP tour and said she loves the Karova Lounge. 

“I have been playing music all my life. I played the saxophone through high school and sang in school bands and I fell in love with music,” she said. 

The love led her to begin studying jazz at university, but she soon realised that wasn’t what she was into.  

“I was writing songs on the side. I was more interested in that than the jazz. I uploaded the song onto triple j unearthed. Everything went from there. I’m very grateful,” she said. 

Like many following their dreams, Ms Lahey has had to make some sacrifices along the way. “I sold my car. First of all it wasn’t very good and I needed the money to help pay for the EP,” she said.

Touring also made her day job unviable, so she said that went by the wayside too. 

While she said everyone is influenced by other people, her music is more influenced by sonic things, like guitar tones and drum sounds, rather than other artist’s song writing styles.

“Some of the biggest influences are conversations with friends and experiences, not so much other artists,” she said.

She described the first of her two singles, Every day’s the weekend, as being about entering a new relationship where you lose sight of your responsibilities, take sick days at work and neglect friends. 

Her second single, I haven’t been taking care of myself, is directed at the relationship all individuals have with themselves. 

“It’s about going out too much and not taking enough care of myself or showing myself some love.” 

The music video had a unique accompanying video with stop motion animation and 14 hours of filming illustrations, and was created by Jam Nawaz and Callum Preston.

“The music video has 1800 single frame photos put into sequence of a friend incrementally painting behind me. They change rapidly and look like their in motion. It works really well.” 

As for the future, while touring means having a bit of a break from writing new material, she said that music happens when it happens. 

Alex Lahey will be in concert at the Karova Lounge on October 11. 

For more information, go to karovalounge.com.