phem (born Olivia "Liv" Marsico), stylized lowercase in nearly all official contexts, is a Los Angeles singer, songwriter and producer whose confessional, genre-blurring take on pop-punk and alt-pop built a cult fanbase known as the Phemily years before she signed to Hopeless Records in 2022. Beyond her own catalog, including the how u stop hating urself EP series and 2024's pheelings pt. 1, she is a working outside songwriter with more than sixty tracked credits, having written for Machine Gun Kelly, jxdn and others out of producer John Feldmann's pop-punk-revival camp. She has toured with Waterparks, Machine Gun Kelly and grandson, played Reading & Leeds, supported Avril Lavigne's full European Love Sux Tour in 2023, and in October 2023 married actor Tyler Posey.
phem grew up in Los Angeles and started out as a drummer, keeping time at the back of the stage rather than standing in front of it, before a producer friend invited her into the studio to try songwriting instead. She began writing and performing her own material as a teenager, and before her first real break she spent roughly a year living between her car and a studio space in LA's Crenshaw District, a period of isolation she has described as formative to her creativity and sense of her own sexuality.
Her first credited appearance under the name phem came almost by accident: she sang temporary, scratch vocals on the hook of G-Eazy's 2017 single "Just Friends," and the guide take was good enough that it stayed in the final mix. The placement opened doors to further session and feature work, most notably Machine Gun Kelly's "5:3666" in 2019, billed at the time as the first collaboration between the two artists. phem's 2019 debut EP VACUMHEAD, which included "Grim Reaper" featuring Lil Tracy and the track "Sweater," built a small but devoted streaming following that would become the seed of the Phemily.
She has said she chose the name "phem" because it was "cool and cute," reflected that she had "always been the 'fem' in relationships with women," and because it sounds "weird and gross like 'phlegm,'" as she told Kerrang! in December 2021. In a separate interview she has also linked the name to the word "ephemeral." She uses she/her and they/them pronouns interchangeably and has described herself as bisexual, having dated both men and women before her marriage to Posey.
Critics consistently place phem at the intersection of pop-punk, emo and alt-pop, with hyperpop-adjacent production textures layered on top. AllMusic calls her a "dark and vulnerable singer/producer" who "incorporates a fluid exploration of genres and moods." Atwood Magazine described her 2023 single "slippery slope" as "a lush blend of fresh and nostalgic pop punk" from an "LA alternative phenomenon," and Ones to Watch has simply called her an "alt pop-star." The Forty-Five has written that her confrontational, emotionally raw songwriting is designed to make listeners "at least a little bit uncomfortable."
Lyrically, her catalog circles mental health, self-loathing and self-empowerment, relationships and identity, most explicitly across the how u stop hating urself EP series and singles like "Self Control" and "stfu." By 2025 her single rollout for "im blue" included a companion "im blue (phemcore version)," a title that suggests she and her team have started branding her sound as its own micro-genre, phemcore, distinct from the broader pop-punk revival she is otherwise grouped with.
phem's recorded output splits between her own EPs and singles and a long list of outside features and co-writes. Her three EPs to date are VACUMHEAD (2019), How U Stop Hating Urself (Pt 1) (2020), expanded as (Pt 1.5) in 2021 with the added tracks "Congratulations" and "American Beauty," and pheelings pt. 1, a five-song EP released December 30, 2024 through Hopeless Records. Selected singles include "Flowers" and "Silly Putty" (2021); "watery," "never goes down like that" featuring Ezekiel, and "brkdwn," her first release as a newly signed Hopeless artist (2022); "Crybaby," "slippery slope," "IKEA," "Meet Me After Dark" featuring Baby E, "Love Me" and "Summer 23" (2023); "Absolutely Nothing," "donuts," "Caeser," "kites," "playing house" and "cheerleader" featuring Waterparks (2024); and "im blue," its phemcore version, and a remix featuring Trevor Daniel (2025). Her most recent tagged release is "Healing Factor" with Rich Delinquent, out November 21, 2025.
In 2023 interviews she confirmed a debut album was in the works, calling it "my first album ever" and describing plans to roll it out the following year. As of this writing, no full-length album distinct from the pheelings pt. 1 EP has been formally released or announced; the project remains an open thread in her discography.
| Release | Year | Type |
|---|---|---|
| VACUMHEAD | 2019 | EP |
| How U Stop Hating Urself (Pt 1) | 2020 | EP |
| How U Stop Hating Urself (Pt 1.5) | 2021 | EP (expanded) |
| pheelings pt. 1 | 2024 | EP |
| Debut full-length album | Announced 2023, unreleased as of 2026 | — |
phem's outside songwriting résumé is broader than her own catalog. Spotify for Artists lists her as a credited songwriter on roughly sixty-two tracks as of an August 2025 snapshot, including Machine Gun Kelly's "Sorry Mama" (2019) and, most recently at that point, MGK's 2025 track "indigo." Her feature and co-write list includes Iann Dior's "Searching," Gabriel Black's "dead yet," American Teeth's "SICK" featuring DE'WAYNE, poutyface's "BORED!," The Hunna's "If This Is Love," grandson's "How Bout Now," Ezekiel's "under," The Amity Affliction's "Not Without My Ghosts," and a song on The Used's Heartwork. She also wrote jxdn's single "So What," a Billboard and alt-radio hit for the artist who records under the name jxdn but is credited elsewhere on this wiki as Jaden Hossler.
Her most visible feature is on Royal & the Serpent's 2021 single "girls," a collaboration that came with a joint "Video Release Hang with phem" livestream event and reflects a genuine working relationship between the two acts that same year. She and Travis Barker share a direct writing and recording credit on Tyler Posey's debut solo single "Shut Up" (feat. phem & Travis Barker), released in March 2021 and co-written with John Feldmann; Barker played and co-produced the track, and Posey has said that once he brought the song's bones "to John Feldmann and phem" and got Barker on drums, it felt like "literally a dream come true." A direct song collaboration between phem and Landon Barker is not on record; their connection runs through the same Feldmann and Travis Barker orbit rather than a joint release. phem's live circuit in this period also overlapped, through shared bills rather than shared credits, with acts including Slush Puppy and Beauty School Dropout, both part of the same Los Angeles pop-punk-adjacent scene that produced Royal & the Serpent and poutyface.
phem's live résumé runs from support slots to festival stages to a full European headline-adjacent run. In fall 2021 she toured the U.S. supporting Waterparks, a relationship that led years later to their 2024 duet "cheerleader." Her official bio also credits tours supporting Machine Gun Kelly and grandson. In August 2022 she played the Festival Republic stage at Reading & Leeds in the UK, timed to her signing with Hopeless Records. Her biggest single run of dates came in 2023, when she was the support act across the entire European leg of Avril Lavigne's Love Sux Tour, playing roughly eighteen dates across Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Zurich, Milan, Prague, Vienna, Brussels, Manchester and two London shows among others. In 2024 she played a run of UK and European festival and headline-adjacent dates including Cardiff Castle, Castlefield Bowl in Manchester, and Bedford Summer Sessions, and in April 2025 she played Toronto's Velvet Underground venue.
Two additional shows in her live history took place at The Roxy in West Hollywood, both tied to Christian Gates. During a COVID-era livestream at the venue, when it was operating ticketed, empty-room broadcast shows, phem headlined a bill on which Christian Gates and Royal & the Serpent opened, with Gates performing his remix of Royal & the Serpent's "Overwhelmed," the same remix Atlantic Records had put out in February 2021. Later, on February 26, 2022, the arrangement reversed: Christian Gates headlined The Roxy and phem was the second opener on the bill, going on before Landon Barker's first-ever live set. That night is separately documented through setlist.fm, which lists Gates's setlist including "Mr. Brightside," "Sweater Weather," "NUMB" and the "overwhelmed" remix, and through Loudwire's coverage of Landon Barker's live debut, on which he was brought out mid-set by Gates before Travis Barker sat behind the drums for his son's first-ever performance and posted "Proud of you son." Jaden Hossler was in the audience that night with then-girlfriend Nessa Barrett, and Kourtney Kardashian and Alabama Barker also attended.
phem built her early fanbase entirely independently, self-releasing VACUMHEAD and the how u stop hating urself EP series between 2019 and 2021 without a label attached. She signed to Hopeless Records in 2022, with "brkdwn" billed as her first release under the new deal; every subsequent single and EP, through pheelings pt. 1 in 2024, carries the Hopeless Records credit. She is represented for booking and promotion by Pulse Music Group, whose official client bio describes her time living out of her car in Crenshaw and her subsequent world tours. Her most consistent production relationship is with John Feldmann, the Goldfinger frontman and prolific pop-punk-revival producer, whose camp also connects her to Machine Gun Kelly, Travis Barker and the broader pop-punk-adjacent writing network that produced Tyler Posey's "Shut Up."
phem's fanbase calls itself "the Phemily," a group known for tattooing her name and logo and organizing around a dedicated Discord. She met actor Tyler Posey, best known for Teen Wolf, through a 2020 to 2021 songwriting collaboration facilitated by John Feldmann; the pair dated for roughly two years, got engaged on Valentine's Day 2023, and married on October 14, 2023, at a private meditation garden in Pacific Palisades, California, with a reception at Duke's Malibu. Guests included Avril Lavigne and Bella Thorne. Posey has publicly credited the relationship with helping him embrace his own fluid sexual identity, and in September 2025, ahead of their second wedding anniversary, he described the marriage as "going really great."
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2017 | Scratch vocals recorded for G-Eazy's "Just Friends" are kept in the final release, her first credit as phem. |
| 2019 | Debut EP VACUMHEAD; features on Machine Gun Kelly's "5:3666" and "Sorry Mama." |
| 2020 | How U Stop Hating Urself (Pt 1) EP released independently; singles "Self Control" and "stfu." |
| 2020-2021 | Headlines a COVID-era livestream show at The Roxy, West Hollywood, with Christian Gates and Royal & the Serpent opening. |
| 2021 | Tours the U.S. with Waterparks; releases expanded (Pt 1.5) EP; features on Royal & the Serpent's "girls" and poutyface's "BORED!"; co-writes and sings on Tyler Posey's "Shut Up" with Travis Barker. |
| Feb 26, 2022 | Second opener, before Landon Barker's live debut, at Christian Gates's headline show at The Roxy. |
| 2022 | Signs to Hopeless Records; releases "brkdwn"; plays Reading & Leeds Festival. |
| 2023 | Full European support run on Avril Lavigne's Love Sux Tour; singles including "Crybaby" and "Summer 23"; marries Tyler Posey on October 14. |
| 2024 | Singles including "cheerleader" feat. Waterparks; EP pheelings pt. 1 released December 30 via Hopeless Records; UK and European festival dates. |
| 2025 | Toronto show at Velvet Underground (April); "im blue" and "im blue (phemcore version)" released (August); "Healing Factor" with Rich Delinquent released (November 21). |
Her legal name is Olivia Marsico, commonly shortened to "Liv" Marsico. Songwriting and publishing credits, including on Machine Gun Kelly's "5:3666," list her under this name.
She has said she picked it because it was "cool and cute," reflected her identity as "always been the 'fem' in relationships with women," and sounds "weird and gross like 'phlegm,'" a description she gave to Kerrang! in 2021. She has separately connected it to the word "ephemeral."
She has been signed to Hopeless Records since 2022, following an independent run that included her debut EP VACUMHEAD and the how u stop hating urself series.
Yes. She headlined a COVID-era livestream at The Roxy on which Christian Gates and Royal & the Serpent opened, and she was the second opener, ahead of Landon Barker's live debut, when Gates headlined The Roxy on February 26, 2022.
She married actor Tyler Posey on October 14, 2023, after meeting through a songwriting session arranged by producer John Feldmann.
Not as of this writing. She discussed a debut full-length in 2023 interviews and said she planned to release the rest of it the following year, but her most recent project, pheelings pt. 1, was billed as an EP rather than a full album.
Further reading on this wiki: Royal & the Serpent, whose "girls" and "Overwhelmed" both connect to phem's catalog and live history; Travis Barker and Landon Barker, for the shared Feldmann-era pop-punk network; Jaden Hossler, for phem's songwriting work under his jxdn recording name; Christian Gates and Nessa Barrett, for the two Roxy shows and the wider night documented around Landon Barker's live debut; and Beauty School Dropout, part of the same Los Angeles live circuit. In the COVID-recovery stretch of 2021, after Christian Gates’s official remix of “Overwhelmed” came out, phem ran with a tight LA alt-and-rock circle, Poutyface, Royal & the Serpent, Slush Puppy, Beauty School Dropout, Christian Gates, the crew hanging together often and throwing parties at On The Rocks on the Sunset Strip.