Iowa-bred viral visionary Naethan Apollo shares Tales From Cazilor: Wyldflowers, part concept record, part DIY musical, and part animated series in-the-making. It’s like nothing you’ll hear this year, or maybe ever––think Hobo Johnson meets Dungeons & Dragons, or EPIC: The Musical meets Gorillaz. At its core lies a story about underdogs, outsiders, and a found family of “cranks” who find strength in failure and chaos.
With over 1.4 million followers on TikTok, 250K+ on Instagram, and over half a million monthly listeners on Spotify, Naethan Apollo is already building his realm one fan at a time. Now, with an upcoming headline tour and the release of his most ambitious release yet, he’s inviting listeners to dive even deeper into his fantasy-rich universe.
Throughout, we follow a squad of rejects, including our protagonist Apollo, as they train for an impossible fight. Across eight fully-scripted scenes and their accompanying tracks, Naethan Apollo tells an epic story about resilience and finding the power in being who you are.
Raised in a rural town called Solon, Iowa, and later shaped by basement shows while attending Iowa State for graphic design, Naethan Apollo creates a sort of DIY mytho-music where everything is canon and the songs serve a bigger-picture narrative arc, not just algorithmic playlists. Each scene on Wyldflowers is voiced by Apollo’s real-life friends and fiancée, and ties into lore that fans can later dig into across social media, music videos, and live shows, too.
But Wyldflowers isn’t just a nerdy side quest. It’s a bold and wildly entertaining album that delivers tracks that go as hard as anything in the alternative scene today. Naethan Apollo spends most of the record weaving between rap, folk, indie rock, and spoken-word to create something entirely his own.
Naethan first started making music about a decade ago, but things really took a turn when he lost a close friend and musical mentor, Praeditus. The “ae” in Naethan is there to honor him, as they always promised one another they’d make it together. A fan of Greek mythology, he chose the last name “Apollo” because it’s the god of music, but it also serves as a continued commitment to his vow to Praeditus––that now, he’s determined to succeed for them both.