Interview with Nowhere Boys, the Pop-Rock Storytellers Redefining Cantopop
The Nowhere Boys are preparing to party! Hong Kong’s favorite pop-rock band has been in the business for over a decade and is gearing up to play a special celebratory show at AIA Carnival’s The Big Top on Jan. 30, 2026. The show will feature old hits as well as material from the band’s newly released full-length album Letters of Nowhere.
The Nowhere Boys have become one of Hong Kong’s most distinctive forces within Hong Kong's Cantopop scene.
Their sound is often described as “cinematic rock” – a high-octane collision of classic rock, baroque, rap, and film-score drama, which is grounded in narrative and inspired by daily life.
Emerging from the city’s indie scene in 2015, the Nowhere Boys quickly rose to stardom, headlining major venues like the MacPherson Stadium and Freespace in the West Kowloon Cultural District, as well as touring across Asia, earning critical acclaim along the way.
The five-piece band comprises singer-songwriter Van Chan (vocals, guitar), jazz-trained Nate Wong (drums), Kenneth Angus (guitar), Fisher Kan (piano, violin), and multi-instrumentalist Hansun Chan.
The Beat Asia caught up with Nowhere Boys' drummer Nate ahead of their AIA Big Top gig, to talk about inspirations, studio synergy, and the band’s unique place in the Cantopop landscape.
Your music weaves together a wide range of genres and instruments. What is your main source of inspiration when writing?
Each song is different. We draw a lot from personal experiences.
Lately, our last four songs have been letters to people who need help or need to hear something. Earlier in our era, when it was more cinematic rock, we would draw inspiration from movie plots and characters, so over the last 10 years it’s been a bit of everything. There’s not a single workflow.
How did your breakthrough single “Rhapsody" come about? Was there a particular moment or idea that sparked it?
The idea of this song was to represent all of our different musical backgrounds, put it all in one song and have that be our overture. Even though it's called Rhapsody, it's a bit of everything – there's rock, jazz, rap. At the time, we were running our first song, so we really wanted a song that would represent us fully.
Your sound is often described as “cinematic rock.” Which films, directors, or visual worlds have influenced the way your music sounds or feels?
Definitely a few. Personally, I really like the Joker from Batman, so I was definitely inspired by that character and also the Christopher Nolan versions of Batman. Our logo is the totem from "Inception," also a Christopher Nolan movie, because we like to think about the passage of time, which is something we think about as humans a lot. We also have a song called 《生死時速》that was based on the movie Speed.
A lot of the time we'll draw influence from movies or themes that aren't directly related to a movie, for example, the song《最後的搖滾》"The Final Movement" is very cinematic in that it sounds like a movie soundtrack, there’s marching sounds, it's not just a rock song. There are very cinematic aspects, but it doesn't necessarily draw from a particular movie. And then we also have a song called《小丑》"Joker" that's very much inspired by the other Joker, the Joaquin Phoenix Joker. That's just a few examples.
When you’re writing as a five-piece, how does the creative process usually unfold? How do ideas turn into a finished Nowhere Boys track?
The melody and maybe 80% of the form is brought in by either Fisher or Van, then we'll sit down together as a band, and start learning the song. We help each other out, but also come up with our own parts, and let each of the band members be expressive.
After that, we'll have the song in a band arrangement that we jammed together, we record that on the phone, then we start building the project file on the computer and record all the instruments one at a time, like the drums first and then bass, guitar, keys, vocals, usually in that order.
As we record, we also expand on the arrangement, or do some arrangement aspects that's computer oriented, like different sound effects on the keyboard that we wouldn't have necessarily thought of when we first jammed it together with our instruments.
Is there a song in your catalogue that feels especially close to your hearts?
For me, it would be Rhapsody, because it's really fun to play. I think it sounds really different. So, when we play it live, people feel that it stands out because it sounds so different from everything else. But there's many others too, if you ask the other people in the band, they might have different answers. I know 《天外飛仙》 is a big one for us, we end a lot of our shows on it.
Out of our new songs: the Four Letters《給受困者的一封信》 "Dear Depressed" delivers a message to people who are suffering from depression, and it's a really meaningful song for that reason.
As a local band, how does the city shape your sound and identity, even when you’re not consciously trying to reflect it?
I think that you don't have to consciously try to reflect it, especially in Cantonese music – canto rock music – it's unescapable that we're going to be influenced by the city and the sounds and the history of Hong Kong music.
For example, we really embrace that Beyond laid the path that we're walking on. Ken is a really big fan of theirs. We have some connection to Beyond through our management, and we record at 二樓後座, which is the old Beyond studio. And I think just very naturally as five Hong Kongers, with four of us born and raised here making music in Cantonese, embracing the culture and knowing the history, we're already very shaped by our environment.
Lately, the four letters are directed towards people in Hong Kong and what they might be going through in Hong Kong right now. We're definitely trying to have our finger on the pulse of the community that we live in. It's unescapable, it's very natural for us.
Cantopop has traditionally had a very defined sound. Do you see genre-blending bands like yours changing perceptions of what Cantopop can be?
Yes, I think that as we play music, we are changing the way Cantopop is. It's a very small community – just Hong Kong and maybe a few other cities in the world are making Cantopop – but that's it. So what you do really defines the genre.
I think genre blending is really common in Cantopop these days, especially in the pop part of it, they just pull from R&B, trap, rock, and sometimes even Latin influences. I think they've been doing that a lot. We do that too.
I'm from a jazz background, I like to put in different grooves and stuff in the music. But at the same time, I think that looking within ourselves and trying to say something meaningful with our style, something creative and fresh within Cantopop, and within Hong Kong is also important, and can also be very deep.
I don't think just having influences in genre necessarily creates depth – it can – but I think the message of the song is the most important thing. Using genre blending to get that message across can be cool, but personally, I'm not looking to create fresh sound by putting genres in a blender. It's more about creating fresh thought within Cantonese music and then seeing if I need to mix genres to get that point across.
Do you feel a shift in how younger audiences in Hong Kong are engaging with Cantopop today?
I've only lived in Hong Kong for 12 years, so I can't speak on the long history of how people have been engaging with Canto Pop, but in my time here, I've seen a big shift in celebrity culture and Cantonese music awareness during COVID, and especially when those big boy bands and girl bands became famous, it drew a lot of attention to the rest of the scene in general.
I think the commercial pop scene in Hong Kong is growing and really active in the last few years. In my perspective, before COVID I felt like there were a lot of festivals and opportunities for indie artists and bands, and there were also a lot of people attending those events, so maybe it has shifted a little bit.
Live shows are such a big part of building your band’s identity. What can fans expect from your upcoming concert at The Big Top?
At The Big Top, it's the roundup of our Four Letters that was our theme for 2025 and I've written a show with a little bit of a storyline and some chapters that will allow the band members to express themselves a little bit. We'll talk about the themes of the Four Letters and then play music to do with that theme.
Like a lot of our shows, it'll be a bit theatrical, just to tie in all the music and why we're there, but it's definitely going to be our usual brand of really high energy, super fun, and it will be a very positive evening!
How do you want audiences to feel when they leave a Nowhere Boys show?
We want people to feel like they went to another universe, like how a movie can bring you to another place. That's why we're called cinematic rock. We're always trying to create an environment that takes you out of your usual environment and brings you into a place that's more magical and surreal.
We want people to have a lot of fun. We use a lot of energy on stage, so we hope that people have a lot of energy off stage, and we like to ingrain a positive message in the show, so we hope that you take that away too.
Looking ahead, what’s next for Nowhere Boys? Is there any new music in the works, collaborations, or directions you’re excited to explore?
We're definitely always working on new music and are open to new collaborations. For 2026 we're just trying to book more shows, and hopefully go abroad again. Last year we went to Singapore and it was really good, so we hope to travel and perform new music, release the new songs that we're writing and just keep building the band.
We're looking forward and building something, but at the same time, we're already here. We’ve got to enjoy the shows that we're doing now and focus on the show on the 30th. We can’t always think too far ahead, because you have to be present and enjoy the moment. We're already in our 10th year, so what we're doing now is the dream, in a way. We always have goals, but we're also just living in the moment and enjoying what we've built.
For more information about Nowhere Boys, visit them on their Instagram, Facebook and Youtube.
Location: The Big Top, AIA Carnival, Central Harbourfront Event Space, 9 Lung Wo Road Central
Date: Friday, Jan. 30, 2026
Time: 8 PM
Buy your tickets here!
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