Earlier this year, I interviewed senior Joey Lau of the Deltamen. This was my first interview ever. At the time, I barely knew anything about music writing, but Lau trusted me to tell the band’s story, and it catapulted me into so many opportunities to cover music at Vanderbilt and around Nashville. Throughout this year, Lau and I have become cheerleaders for each other’s work, with him congratulating me on articles while I watched him continue to grow as an artist navigating transitions within the Deltamen.
A lot has changed for the Deltamen since that interview, so Lau and I sat down to discuss their new member, new singles, current artistic direction and more. Since our last chat, two members, Dodge Wang (B.A. ‘25) and Finn Lee (B.S. ‘25), graduated, which left seniors Lau, Trevor He and Steven Yi to find a new path for the Deltamen. Senior Bowen Wang joined as the new lead singer. Lau met Wang through their International Student Orientation and spoke about how they split up songs, also touching on their musical similarities and the dynamics of working together.
“Our Chinese songs have been given to the new lead singer, Bowen, and I am in charge of English songs,” Lau said. “I feel like within the handful of sessions that we had with Bowen, it’s been much more tight. And the humor is sort of clicking a bit better, as well. I think having Bowen in has made the three old members really happy.”
Along with a new member, the Deltamen have continued to produce new music with two new singles, “Madelena” and “Passer By,” released on Nov. 19. To cater to both of their audiences, “Madelena” is an English song and “Passer By” is a Chinese song. Surprisingly, “Madelena” was inspired by The Hustler’s classroom crush article, which Lau said he really related to. Lau spoke a bit about his musical motivations with these two singles beyond that article.
“‘Madelena’ is an answer to ‘Deadman’ by Chinese artist KUN. This song went absolutely viral, and I decided we needed this 50s sort of soul song, as well.” Lau said. “The other one, ‘Passer By,’ was tracked last October, and that was my attempt to write a Dodge song. These are my attempts to sort of recreate other people’s genres.”
On a similar note, Lau has taken to using Suno, an AI platform for music creators to create AI covers of their songs in many different genres. With recent concerns around AI within the music industry and as someone who covers music frequently, I was particularly interested to hear Lau’s perspective as he explained how these covers came about and how AI has opened new possibilities within their music. “My friend sent me an AI gospel cover of Madalena. It sounded dope, and I was struck by my own songwriting from that AI band and choir performance, which was actually wild. So, I thought ‘Let me try this,’” Lau said. “The pros massively outnumber the cons because in my experience alone, I feel like our songs have been lifted a lot and opened new paths.”
This was a fresh perspective from current discourse, as AI is being used to enhance rather than replace, though still in an uncharted and contentious territory. With this new path of exploration, the Deltamen will release “Aii in the Prompts,” a compilation album of nine AI covers of their original songs on Dec. 12.
In addition to this release of AI covers, the Deltamen are planning a concert for early 2026 and are looking into other opportunities to perform. Lau also shared that the two recent singles are meant to be teasers for the Deltamen’s upcoming album to be released sometime in 2026.
“If there was a storyline for this album, it would be like four seasons connected to be sort of like a school year or a journey in college, maybe. It just ties with whatever’s happening in life really tightly,” Lau said. “This one is truly simple music and having fun. Just fun, dancey, poppy songs with a bit of rock and very rhythmic.”
This was a perfect way to wrap up a year of music for Lau and a year of writing for myself. After this conversation, I am even more excited to see everything the Deltamen accomplish in 2026.
