Noah Sties, an up-and-coming musician, first stepped foot on Ball State's campus to perform at the annual Equinox music festival in April 2025, playing select singles from his debut project "Sungold," an indie-pop effort that has found a niche online following internationally. Since then, Sties has released three singles, performed across the midwest and worked as a concert photographer for artists such as Del Water Gap and Matt Maltese, gaining traction in the industry.
Earlier this month, Sties met with the Daily News to discuss his upcoming extended play (EP) "giant!", as well as his musical origins, inspirations and aspirations.
Q: The last time I saw you was at the Fort Wayne Guitar Exchange. That, I believe, is where you first played "Have You Moved On Yet (Sandcastles)?
A: I think I wrote it that week and I was like 'I'll just ding it out at the show.' But yeah, it was the night before I was shooting a show in West Lafayette "Del Water Gap, and then I put "Sandcastles" on a flash drive and gave it to him after the show.
Q: What was the evolution of the pop sound of 'Sungold' to the more rock-focused sound of "giant!" like?
A: It was me hating 'Sungold,'" Sties said with a laugh. The album... I can appreciate my vision for it; I had really big ideas there and I was still such an infant at making music. When I get asked, "Do you have advice for new musicians?" -- which [is], not often because I am a new musician -- but sometimes people ask me and I'm like 'Don't make an album. Invest your resources into really polishing your craft.' Instead, as an act of self-therapy, I decided to write [Sungold] in my car in random parking lots for three months... at like two in the morning.
...This EP was kind of an effort to collaborate more with people and really take my time with four songs instead of...seven or nine, and really [be like] 'Oh, I don't have to put every song that I write on this thing.' ...[Sonically], it's a really crazy story. This song, Giant, by the band Funeral party, that's what the EP is named after, this very obscure band ... I decided to listen to that album obsessively, along with a bunch of other stuff from that scene at the time. And then I dedicated the EP to that. So, all the songs on 'giant!" kind of started as these rock songs, structured like pop songs, but very rock, heavier guitars, really fast like punk beats."
Q: Was making music, even throughout your early childhood, always the goal? Or was that something that developed five, six years ago?
A: No, I'm one of those people that jumps from different obsessions and, thankfully, music stuck... It wasn't until middle school. I started going to church by myself and playing in the worship band and that's where I kind of established learning how to play on a stage... It's probably in eighth grade at this point, and I started learning what bedroom pop was... I was like "Wow, I feel like I can do this."...Very specifically, I remember the song "Falling for the wrong one" by Dreamer Boy... I heard that song, [and] I was like "I could make this." I went home, I ripped the drums from part of that song, and then made this song called 'Narrow' that I put out a long time ago."
Q: Was there a moment when something happened that made you think maybe [your] future [was] in music?
A: I think when I made "Narrow," and when I put out [a] six song EP called "Our Conscious Hours."... I listen back to it, and I was making these songs by myself at 15. Just putting that out, I didn't feel like I'd gotten to the level I wanted to be yet, but I think I was like "Wow, this is the first step towards... the new me.It was a drive that kept going to make something commercially viable, which I've now hit. Now, I'm shifting my goal toward making something that's like "Okay, how can I push this genre in a new direction? How can I actually make something innovative? I've met the standard. How can I push the standard now?'"
Q: How does your media feed into your music? How does your music feed into your media? What came first, and what influenced the other?
A: I think I have a really interesting relationship with the music industry... I hope I can stand out that way. My degree is in the music industry, I've toured as a photographer a little bit, I shoot a lot of shows just personally and contracted as well... I come from a very artistic family and that was kind of my main source of income growing up, instead of doing normal high school jobs. I stuck with it and, being a kid from an Amish town, as much as I knew music was the only job for me, being an artist seemed like this impossible goal... So I was like, 'Well, I'm going to learn how to work for other artists if my own artist thing doesn't work out. Why can't I do them at the same time?' That's been extremely taxing on my schedule and my mental health a little bit, just because of how busy I am, but [it] has been very beneficial to the networking side of things... I've met so many incredible photographers, artists, managers and producers, all people that I don't know if I would have met otherwise.
Q: What is music to you?
A: It's gonna sound really clichè, but it's everything... I understand the world through music. That's not just like "Wow, this song is really sad and really speaks to me." No. I listen to these rock bands and I'm like 'Wow, that guitar is exactly how I feel,' or 'that little arpeggio in the background is exactly how I feel.
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