Fran Vasilić

About

" Global TikTok sensation about to get discovered locally. "

The success story of the talented 23-year old Croatian DIY artist Fran Vasilić is a bit of a paradox, one that defies Caesar’s famous “first in village, second in Rome” quote. While having a 4.4 million fanbase on TikTok and being one of the most streamed Croatian artists on Spotify, he is still relatively unknown to his local audience. Coming from the Croatian island of Krk, Fran used most of the pandemic’s 2020 lockdown to write and record his debut album ‘Retrovizor’ (Rearview mirror) and define himself primarily as a singer-songwriter and then as a producer who “plays” several instruments on his laptop keyboard.

Fran’s breakthrough moment occurred in 2021 with his cover of Rex Orange County’s ‘Television/So Far So Good’, which introduced his songs to a global audience. Luckily, the global scene is where he feels at home: his songs are sung in English, his audience is primarily American, and his album was most heavily streamed in Malaysia.

This is not surprising at all, as it comes naturally to fall in love with Fran’s lo-fi sound. Inspired by the 2000s indie rock he listened to in high school, bedroom dream pop from his college days and older Yugoslavian synth-pop from his childhood, his songs express a universal feel of melancholy and insecurity, but with a comforting ray of sunshine in his raspy voice.

That ray passes through his latest EP ‘The Very Last Thoughts on Earth’ to his most recent single, entitled ‘Hypotheticals’ and also stretches to his charming and authentic TikTok videos, the ones which opened the door of his musical universe to the world.