Running With Scissors, Cavetown’s sixth album, arrived in January with “Cryptid” as its opening argument — Robin Skinner’s account of the trans experience during a period of threatened rights, written, he said, to “hold up a mirror” to the way communities have been marginalized across history. It’s an unusual front door for an artist who built his following on YouTube covers and broke through with viral tracks like “Lemon Boy” and “Boys Will Be Bugs.” Six albums in, Skinner has other things on his mind, and the Running With Scissors Tour brings the evidence to Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater on Tuesday, October 13.
About the Show
Performing as Cavetown, Skinner, born in Oxford and raised in Cambridge, built Running With Scissors through what he described as “an intensive two-year healing process,” shaped by entering his first long-term relationship and the arrival of a sibling 25 years younger. The album uses those experiences as a frame for questions about inheritance: which family patterns to carry forward, which to cut away, what it means to “reparent yourself.”
Sonically it’s Cavetown’s widest canvas — indie-pop roots alongside hyper-pop production, emo guitar, and dream-pop, moving from “Skip,” which Skinner called “the first I’ve written with genuinely positive overtones,” through the layered production of “Rainbow Gal” and the harder “Tarmac” (featuring Orla Gartland on guitar), to the pop-punk-inflected “NPC,” which fuses gentle vocals with electronic elements and reaches back to a childhood imaginary friend. The album released January 16 via Futures Music Group.
Support comes from Chloe Moriondo, a co-writer on the album, not just a touring companion. Skinner has built his monthly Spotify audience to 4.9 million listeners as of early 2026 — a figure that tracks how far Cavetown has traveled from its YouTube-bedroom origins. The Running With Scissors Tour opened with dates in Oceania and Europe before landing in North America this fall.
Cavetown’s This Is Home Project has raised over $700,000 for LGBTQ+ youth through housing assistance, mental health services, and crisis support.
Venue & Logistics
Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater is at 801 Red River St in Austin, the outdoor main stage of a Red River complex now operating under the Live Nation umbrella. Doors at 7 p.m.
Tickets
Tickets start at $78. Cavetown has partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 from every ticket goes to local organizations supporting LGBTQ+ health and wellbeing. Buy tickets