The Crux

The Crux

Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025

Djo

The creation—and especially the success—of his 2024 viral hit “End of Beginning” prepared Djo, the musical alter ego of Stranger Things star Joe Keery, for the recording of his third album. “It was a boost of confidence and a good shot in the arm,” he tells Apple Music. “Doing a song from beginning to end in a studio and getting bit by that was like, ‘Oh man, this is how I want to do this. I don’t think I really want to try to do this in my bedroom.’” Famed New York City studio Electric Lady provided Keery and his frequent producer Adam Thein with the environment they needed. “We were using all the toys,” Keery notes. “This piece of gear was laying around, so let’s mess with it. And it ends up, it informs the whole track. There’s a lot of that going on on this record.” And so, The Crux was born.

Unlike his past endeavors, this time he chose to focus on collaboration. “I came up musically in a time where it was Kevin Parker and Mac DeMarco and these guys who did it all by themselves. So I think for a while that was what I thought I wanted to be,” he says. “But doing this project, it made me come back to working more collaboratively, still producing stuff, but with other people. It was a real joy to have friends and family and outside musicians coming in and bringing this thing to life.” One surprising guest? Charlie Heaton, Keery’s Stranger love-triangle competitor, appears on the jaunty “Charlie’s Garden.”

The Crux is filled with psychedelic beats, electronica tones, and groovy guitar licks and floats through Keery’s particular brand of twee indie pop with a blend of bright sounds and hazy nostalgia. There’s the uplifting (“Lonesome is a State of Mind”), carefree (“Basic Being Basic”), regretful (“Delete Ya”), somber (“Egg”), and bittersweet (“Crux”). And classic-rock influences abound, particularly on “Potion.” (“Love Fleetwood Mac. You can definitely hear that on that track,” he says.)

Keery takes special pride in his output. “It’s my outlet for talking about my own life and my little diary,” he says. “I’m sure a lot of musicians, that’s the way that they do it. So to use it as a way to cope with what’s going on, and then especially one of my favorite parts is just, like, album order and the structure of the record as a whole. That’s one part of that journey.”