DeathbyRomy (stylized DeathbyRomy, born Romy Maxine Flores on December 19, 1999) is a Los Angeles singer-songwriter who has spent nearly a decade building one of underground alt-pop's most recognizable brands: corpse-paint makeup, Harajuku-street-goth styling, and a sound she calls "the love-child of pop, trap, industrial, and cinematic." She broke through in 2019 with the viral TikTok single "Problems," spent roughly two years signed to Capitol Records, and then rebuilt herself as a fully independent artist, culminating in her 2025 album HOLLYWOOD FOREVER, which she has described as a love letter and a requiem to the city that raised her.
Romy Maxine Flores was born on December 19, 1999, in Los Angeles, and grew up in Mid-City, which she has described as "right off Washington and Crenshaw." She has described her heritage as half Mexican and half European, with her father's family tracing back to Chihuahua, Mexico, by way of New Mexico and Texas, and her mother's side carrying Northern Irish, Scots-Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, Dutch, German, and French ancestry. She has said her parents were "huge music fans" who exposed her to a wide range of styles early on, and she began writing songs at age five, composing lyrics on the school bus and imagining herself as an already-accomplished musician.
Flores was bullied over her appearance and unconventional style growing up, and she dropped out of high school around age fifteen to pursue music full time. Around that same period, in 2018, she has said modeling work was "the only way I'm making money right now," with music positioned as the hoped-for future. Her stage name, DeathbyRomy, grew out of a period of past suicidal struggle and has been described as an attempt at reclaiming and "claiming personal love" over that history. She has also connected the name to her Mexican cultural relationship with death, invoking Día de los Muertos, in which death is treated as a continuation of the human cycle rather than something to fear.
Flores' recorded career under the DeathbyRomy name began in the mid-2010s. Her first documented release, the project level one loneliness complete, arrived on July 11, 2017, and her first proper Spotify single, "Tiempo," followed that August, both self-released. She spent roughly a year building an independent following, including collaborations with LA hip-hop artists Glitter Princess and LePlay, before issuing her self-produced debut album, Monsters, in September 2018. That record featured Lil B, Yung Bans, and Cuban Doll, and reflected her early roots in hip-hop-adjacent production alongside her developing pop and industrial instincts.
In 2019, roughly two months after independently building buzz, she signed to Capitol Records, part of Universal Music Group. She told PAPER Magazine that October, "I only signed a record deal about two months ago now. Before that, I was mixing and releasing music independently." On October 4, 2019, she released "Problems" as the lead single from her upcoming EP. The song went viral on TikTok and became her breakthrough hit and, to date, her most-streamed track on both Spotify and YouTube. The Love U – to Death EP followed later that month via Capitol. A remix of "Problems" featuring 24kGoldn arrived the following year. Manager Alec Hendo is credited with discovering Flores, reportedly after hearing her cover of Björk's "Venus."
Flores' major-label period produced two EPs, Love U – to Death (2019) and Songs For My Funeral (August 20, 2021), along with a run of standalone singles. "Fiending for a Lover" (July 2020) and "Release Yourself" (October 2020) both arrived via Capitol, while "Kiss Me Goodbye" (2020) was filmed partly in a graveyard during COVID-era lockdown. That same year she contributed to the soundtrack of the Oscar-nominated film Promising Young Woman, delivering both a cover of "It's Raining Men" and an original song used in the film's climax. Also in September 2020, she was featured alongside PVRIS on Kiiara's Atlantic Records single "Numb."
Flores has been candid in later interviews about the harder side of that era. In a 2025 interview tied to HOLLYWOOD FOREVER, she described a manager figure from her Capitol years as someone who "preyed on me as a young girl in this industry," saying she "was manipulated, tricked, used, and led astray by the one person posing as my best friend and caretaker." That experience directly informed an antagonist character woven through the HOLLYWOOD FOREVER album narrative and its music videos. In an October 2023 interview, she confirmed she had been "tied in with Capitol for the first half of covid" and had been "off of Capitol for almost two years now," adding that she had "no withdrawals" from wanting to stay independent long term, placing the effective end of her major-label deal around late 2021 or early 2022.
Since 2022, Flores has released music independently in partnership with the distribution company ONErpm. Her first fully independent project, the EP Entropy (October 28, 2022), passed 3.2 million streams shortly after release. That year also brought "Lovesick" (April), the dance single "Hollow" with Party Favor via Ultra Records (June), and "No Mercy" (August), which Document Journal called her "sexiest and most abrasive track to date."
2023 saw a steady run of independent singles, including "Crazy" (July), "Saint" (September), and "Hellhound" featuring Jazmin Bean (October), alongside the EP UNSOUND 2. In April 2024, she released "Waves" with Zeds Dead and Flux Pavilion, marking her first major bass-music and EDM crossover. Later that year, "XXXhibitionist" arrived as the first single tied to her forthcoming album, reportedly drawing half a million streams in its first month and landing her on the cover of Spotify's "Misfits 2.0" playlist. "Bitchfamous" followed as another 2024 single.
2025 became Flores' breakout year as a fully independent album artist. She released "LA LA LAND" in February, exploring what press described as "the darker side of LA culture"; "PRAY TO ME" featuring Palaye Royale in March; and "YUNG & RICH" featuring Wargasm and bodyimage in April, all ahead of her debut full-length, HOLLYWOOD FOREVER, released April 25, 2025, via ONErpm. Her booking agency, Wasserman Music, has described the record as "a love letter and a requiem to Los Angeles." XS Noize called the album "a volatile blend of goth, dark pop, industrial rock, electronica, and punk," praising it as "hauntingly cinematic, fiercely modern, and unapologetically raw," and wrote that "DeathbyRomy doesn't just challenge the conventions of pop, she dismembers them and rebuilds something far more visceral and compelling."
Following the album, she released "Guerra" in June 2025 and "Feed," a collaboration with TX2, in August 2025 via Hopeless Records, a targeted one-off partnership rather than a full label deal. Depending on the source, HOLLYWOOD FOREVER is described either as her second studio album, counting Monsters as the first, or, more commonly among press outlets like Wasserman and XS Noize, as her debut album in the modern, fully realized sense.
Flores' live career escalated steadily from opening slots to headline runs. In 2022, she opened dates for Bring Me the Horizon and Mod Sun. Her first-ever tour came in 2023: a 14-U.S.-state support run for The Used and Pierce the Veil, followed by European headline club dates, support shows for Grandson in Germany that October, and U.S. festival dates including Comic-Con, Life Is Beautiful, and Aftershock.
2024 brought a two-month North American run with Set It Off and Crown the Empire, billed in some listings as "The Deathless Tour," European dates opening for BabyMetal, and major festival slots at Download Festival, Austin City Limits, Graspop, and Rock for People. In spring 2025 she mounted her first-ever U.S. headline tour in support of HOLLYWOOD FOREVER, selling out 16 of 23 shows nationwide. Later that year she made her European headline debut, selling out shows in London, Utrecht, and Berlin and playing festival slots at 2000 Trees and Deichbrand. She also supported Enter Shikari across an extensive fall 2025 European run spanning Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Serbia, Austria, Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, played Warped Tour dates in Orlando, and appeared on the ShipRocked Cruise in January 2026.
In October 2025, she announced "The Manic Dream Tour," a 2026 headline European run initially set for four German dates before expanding into a fuller circuit covering Copenhagen, Haarlem, Groningen, Antwerp, Milan, Zurich, London, Manchester, Glasgow, and Dublin. Per Wasserman, the tour was billed as ushering in a bolder, more cinematic "popstar" era, with elevated production and unreleased material worked into the setlist. Her live show is built around a full band, including guitarist Jayden Hammer and bassist Chesca Zaide, both of whom have toured with her for years; she has spoken about deliberately building "a project based on female musicians."
Flores' catalog reflects a wide range of collaborators across hip-hop, pop, rock, and dance music. Her 2018 album Monsters featured Lil B, Yung Bans, and Cuban Doll. In 2020, 24kGoldn appeared on a remix of "Problems," and she was featured alongside PVRIS on Kiiara's "Numb" via Atlantic Records. In 2021, she joined Ellise and Mothica on "Soul Sucker, Pt. 2," a collaborative dark-pop track built around fairy-tale and mythological horror imagery; she said at the time, "I've admired Ellise and her project for a couple years now. I'm all for females supporting each other and bringing each other up."
Party Favor recruited her for the 2022 dance single "Hollow" via Ultra Records, saying in a joint interview that he "immediately thought of Romy" for the track, while Flores said she was "obsessed with the production" and pushed to refine the vocals herself. Jazmin Bean appeared on "Hellhound" in 2023, and Zeds Dead and Flux Pavilion brought her into a bass-music crossover on "Waves" in 2024. Her HOLLYWOOD FOREVER era widened her collaborator circle further into rock and glam territory, with Palaye Royale featured on "PRAY TO ME" and Wargasm and bodyimage both featured on "YUNG & RICH." In 2025, she paired with TX2 on "Feed" via Hopeless Records. On the visual side, she has worked with makeup artist Isamaya French, whose products she personally uses, and, for the "BODY HORROR" single and video, photographer Gabriel Perez Silva and stylist Elena Lark, with Flores herself credited as creative director.
Flores describes her own sound as "the love-child of pop, trap, industrial, and cinematic," a phrase that recurs across nearly every interview and press bio from 2020 through 2025. AllMusic characterizes her work as "plaintive electronic pop" that "often incorporates elements of hip-hop," while her Wasserman booking bio describes music that fuses "atmospheric alt-pop with industrial grit, cinematic emotion, and unflinching honesty" in a style that is "darkly glamorous and genre-bending." Her goth clothing and dramatic makeup have drawn comparisons to artists like Zola Jesus, and her persistent lyrical themes, anxiety, depression, suicide, mortality, are handled with what she calls "embrac[ing] the beauty in all things dark and ugly."
Speaking to LADYGUNN in 2026 about her evolving sound, she said, "Certain aspects of a lot of my favorite genres have stuck and become what I believe to be the sound of DeathbyRomy, from the 808s or trap drums, which have always been in my music from its inception, to strings, violins, and more eerie orchestral elements." She has also described her more recent, dance-leaning material as "if Lady Gaga and Nine Inch Nails had a love child." Her stated influences span The Beatles, Björk, Kanye West, Bring Me the Horizon, Nine Inch Nails, Lady Gaga, Marilyn Manson, Kesha, Britney Spears, Lana Del Rey, Marina and the Diamonds, and Three 6 Mafia. She has named Kanye West as her single biggest musical role model, citing My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and "All of the Lights" as a "masterpiece," and pointing to his cross-disciplinary command of production, writing, and vocals as a direct model for her own work as an executive producer of her own material. Visually, she cites Alexander McQueen as her all-time favorite fashion influence and Dilara Findikoglu as the most exciting living designer to her.
Flores' commercial story has been built almost entirely on streaming and touring rather than traditional chart placements; no Billboard chart entry for any DeathbyRomy release has been publicly reported. "Problems" remains her most-streamed and most-cited song, with reported Spotify totals climbing from roughly 60 million to more than 70 million over successive snapshots between 2023 and 2025. As of an October 2023 profile, she had passed 200 million cumulative global Spotify streams, over 600,000 monthly listeners, and nearly 30 million YouTube views. By April 2025, monthly Spotify listeners were cited at more than 820,000. Her Wasserman booking bio, current as of early 2026, cites more than 60 million cumulative global streams, more than 30 million streams for HOLLYWOOD FOREVER specifically, 675,000 monthly Spotify listeners, more than 1.3 million combined social media followers, and more than 72 million video views. "XXXhibitionist" alone reportedly drew half a million streams in its first month of release.
She has appeared as cover artist on notable Spotify editorial playlists, including "Sludge" (for "I Kill Everybody") and "Misfits 2.0" (for both "No Mercy" and "XXXhibitionist"), and has been featured on BBC Radio 1's "Future Alternative" rock show. Her music has been placed in television, including Ginny & Georgia and The L Word, and, notably, in the Oscar-nominated 2020 film Promising Young Woman. Press placements include Billboard, Nylon, Flaunt, Notion, and Alternative Press, alongside a reported past association with Balenciaga.
Flores' label history moves from full independence (pre-2019, including Monsters) to a Capitol Records deal (2019 through roughly late 2021 or early 2022) and back to independence since 2022, released through a distribution partnership with ONErpm covering Entropy, HOLLYWOOD FOREVER, and subsequent singles. Hopeless Records is credited specifically as the label behind the 2025 single "Feed" with TX2, functioning as a targeted, one-off partnership rather than a full deal.
Her current team, per her official website, lists Ally Duesbury of Done Deal Management as her manager and Ryan Soroka of Wasserman Music handling U.S. and Canadian booking. Press representation runs through Sean Goulding of ONE FIINIX and Stephanie Gotch and Chrissy Borsellino of Partners and Associates Agency. Manager Alec Hendo is credited with discovering Flores early in her career, reportedly after hearing her cover of Björk's "Venus," though the timeline of any transition from that relationship to her current management is not documented in available materials.
Flores opened 2026 with the ShipRocked Cruise in January and released the single "BDSM" on February 13. That was followed by the expanded "Manic Dream Tour" across Europe and the April 17 release of "BODY HORROR," the first single from a new, still-untitled album centered on the theme of "girlhood," described in a June 2026 LADYGUNN feature as her most personal work yet. The "BODY HORROR" music video draws visual inspiration from Lady Gaga's "Marry the Night," the anime psychological-horror film Perfect Blue, and the ballet thriller Black Swan, and marks one of her first uses of choreography. She has also discussed a companion or forthcoming single called "Manic Dream" in that same interview, alongside a packed summer of 2026 live shows, including additional European headline dates and opening slots for Limp Bizkit and further Warped Tour stops. Listed mid-to-late 2026 tour stops include Virginia, Germany, the UK, Madrid's Movistar Arena, Chippewa Valley Music Festival in Wisconsin, Long Beach, and Mexico City. She has framed this stretch of her career as her "popstar" era, bolder and more cinematic than her earlier work while remaining rooted in the confessional, industrial-tinged sound that built her fanbase.
Flores wrote her first song at age five, reportedly on the school bus, portraying herself as an already-accomplished musician. Both Kanye West and Marilyn Manson have reportedly been fans of her music, and a 2024 Czech feature carried the headline quote "they call me the daughter of Marilyn Manson." She dropped out of high school at fifteen after relentless bullying tied to her appearance and style. She is sober, describing it as "an act of love for myself," practices yoga almost daily, and calls herself "an incredible chef" who treats elaborate cooking as part of her self-care routine. Despite her horror-adjacent aesthetic, she has said she is "not as into horror as I think most would expect," though she loves Japanese horror manga and names Pan's Labyrinth as a favorite film. She has spoken about dreaming of building an immersive festival experience akin to Tyler, the Creator's Camp Flog Gnaw, envisioning something with "a carnival element," more "Tim Burton meets Banksy's Dismal Land."
Her fanbase carries the organized nickname "Team Death," and her general-inquiries email address is literally welcometoteamdeath@gmail.com. She began her career partly through modeling, telling an interviewer in 2018 that it was "the only way I'm making money right now." IMDb credits her with acting, writing, and directing work, including a producer credit on Space Ghetto, an acting role ("Aria") in The Nexus (2024), and directing several of her own music videos, including "I Kill Everything" and "I Don't Believe in Anything" (2022). Her backing band has historically been built around female musicians, guitarist Jayden Hammer and bassist Chesca Zaide, a deliberate choice she has described as central to her identity as an artist.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1999 | Born December 19 in Los Angeles, California. |
| 2017 | Releases level one loneliness complete and first single "Tiempo" independently. |
| 2018 | Self-produced debut album Monsters, featuring Lil B, Yung Bans, and Cuban Doll. |
| 2019 | Signs to Capitol Records; "Problems" goes viral on TikTok; releases Love U – to Death EP. |
| 2020 | Releases "Fiending for a Lover," "Release Yourself," the "Problems" 24kGoldn remix, and "Numb" with PVRIS on Kiiara's Atlantic single; contributes to the Promising Young Woman soundtrack. |
| 2021 | Releases Songs For My Funeral EP via Capitol; features on Ellise and Mothica's "Soul Sucker, Pt. 2." |
| 2022 | Exits Capitol Records; releases independent EP Entropy; "Hollow" with Party Favor; "No Mercy"; opens for Bring Me the Horizon and Mod Sun. |
| 2023 | First headline-adjacent tour supporting The Used and Pierce the Veil; releases "Crazy," "Saint," and "Hellhound" featuring Jazmin Bean. |
| 2024 | Releases "Waves" with Zeds Dead and Flux Pavilion and "XXXhibitionist"; tours with Set It Off, Crown the Empire, and BabyMetal. |
| 2025 | Releases debut album HOLLYWOOD FOREVER (April 25) via ONErpm; sells out 16 of 23 dates on first U.S. headline tour; makes European headline debut; releases "Feed" with TX2 via Hopeless Records. |
| 2026 | Releases "BDSM" and "BODY HORROR"; launches "The Manic Dream Tour" across Europe; teases untitled album centered on "girlhood." |
No. She was born Romy Maxine Flores. The stage name grew out of a period of past suicidal struggle, described as an attempt at reclaiming personal love, and she has also connected it to her Mexican cultural relationship with death via Día de los Muertos.
She calls it "the love-child of pop, trap, industrial, and cinematic," a description she has repeated consistently across interviews since 2020. Critics have used labels including dark pop, industrial pop, alt-pop, and goth pop to describe the same body of work.
Yes. She signed to Capitol Records in 2019, releasing the Love U – to Death and Songs For My Funeral EPs before the deal effectively ended around late 2021 or early 2022. Since 2022 she has released music independently through a distribution partnership with ONErpm.
Released April 25, 2025, HOLLYWOOD FOREVER has been described by her booking agency as "a love letter and a requiem to Los Angeles." The album also weaves in a narrative antagonist inspired by a manager from her Capitol Records era whom she has said "preyed on me as a young girl in this industry."
No Billboard chart entry for any DeathbyRomy release has been publicly reported. Her commercial profile rests almost entirely on streaming numbers, Spotify editorial playlist placements, and touring rather than chart performance.
Her touring band has long included guitarist Jayden Hammer and bassist Chesca Zaide. She has spoken about deliberately building "a project based on female musicians."
| Year | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | level one loneliness complete | Project |
| 2018 | Monsters | Album (self-produced/independent) |
| 2019 | Love U – to Death | EP (Capitol Records) |
| 2021 | Songs For My Funeral | EP (Capitol Records) |
| 2022 | Entropy | EP (independent, ONErpm) |
| 2023 | UNSOUND 2 | EP |
| 2025 | HOLLYWOOD FOREVER | Album (independent, ONErpm) |
Further reading: her 2025 collaboration "Feed" with TX2 connects her catalog to that band's own rock-opera leaning body of work, released via Hopeless Records as a targeted single partnership rather than a shared label deal. Her arc from Capitol Records signee to sold-out independent headliner sits alongside a broader story of Los Angeles-based dark-pop and alt-pop artists building careers directly with fans through streaming, touring, and DIY visual identity rather than chart infrastructure.