Ecca Vandal spent her early years as a jazz musician, but she quickly found a link between lawless improvisation and punk. Before joining Limp Bizkit on tour in Europe, the Sri Lankan musician has shared the video for “CRUISING TO SELF SOOTHE” — an homage to skate culture and self-belief.
Featuring bruising screams and PMA, the song leans into Vandal’s unabashed love for Nirvana, Fugazi, and Turnstile, penned in 2018 while living in London. “My partner and I were listening to so much Fugazi and Ritual-era Jane’s Addiction. We definitely owe a serious debt to those great bands whose music, perhaps not incidentally, is so perfect to skate to,” Vandal tells AP. “Guy Picciotto’s vocals in particular had a huge impact on me at the time.”
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The idea for the music video — premiering below with AP — came later, when Vandal took up skateboarding during the pandemic. “I’d always loved skate culture, but it wasn’t until I started learning to skate in a heart-shaped bowl in a little suburb called Knox that I really felt its impact,” she adds. “Skating there, so offline and present in the moment, became a form of self-soothing for me. The song is about shedding negativity and finding self-belief, and the many days I spent at that skate bowl perfectly represented that journey — feeling small and unsteady at first, then gradually owning every curve. And I’ve got to shout out the adorable ‘Ecca Train,’ a prop that symbolizes the back-and-forth ride of building confidence — doing it with style and as if nobody’s watching.”
See the video for “CRUISING TO SELF SOOTHE” below.