About Hippie Sabotage
Hippie Sabotage are an electronic and hip-hop duo from Sacramento, California, consisting of brothers Kevin and Jeff Saurer. Often classified as chillwave, their music features elements from a variety of genres including trap, psych rock, and indie rock. They are well known for their remix of "Habits " by Tove Lo, which has accumulated over 1 billion views on YouTube and 1.6 billion streams on Spotify since release, as well as "Devil Eyes" with over 700 million Spotify streams. Hippie Sabotage have toured frequently since 2015, including a number of headline tours with two shows at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, festival performances at Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, Firefly, and Hangout among others, and sets supporting Zedd, Gramatik, and Big Gigantic.
Kevin and Jeff Saurer grew up in Sacramento, California. As avid skateboarders, the brothers began working on music at age 12, when they first began creating beats to accompany their skate videos. Jeff attended music school at UCSD, where he submitted the duo's first EP for his final project, marking the first time Hippie Sabotage incorporated Jeff's vocals into their music. The brothers lived out of a car for six months and slept on their former music professor Mike Gao's couch, who would eventually become their career mentor. In their early career Hippie Sabotage collaborated with local artists like Yukmouth, as well as Chicago artists like Alex Wiley, and Kembe X. The name Hippie Sabotage was inspired by their fathers' initials H.S. Hippie Sabotage released their own material in 2013 with their debut EP Vacants followed by The Sunny Album in 2014.
Originally released as a soundtrack for a YouTube video in April 2013, Hippie Sabotage self-released "Stay High", their remix of Tove Lo's "Habits ", as a free download in September 2013. Tove Lo later heard the song and reached out to the duo on Twitter, eventually releasing it as a single and on her Truth Serum EP in March 2014. Ellie Goulding shared the remix, which vaulted it onto the iTunes charts overnight. The remix hit the top 10 in a number of countries in Europe and Oceania, as well as number one on Billboard's Next Big Sound chart, and has been credited for the success of the original song, as well as bringing Tove Lo into the mainstream.
Hippie Sabotage began touring in 2015, playing their first festival at Splash House in June and opening for Cherub that fall. In February 2016, they released their third EP Providence, including the single "Devil Eyes", which has since gained virality on TikTok and amassed 700 million streams on Spotify, followed by their first headline tour. The duo continued releasing projects and singles, including “Options”, "Drifter", "Running Miles", and "Wrong Time", and performed frequently on headline tours and at festivals.
In 2016, the duo was seen in a physical fight with a security guard in Portland, Oregon, at What The Festival, strangling the guard in a chokehold until event production crew members intervened. Videos of the altercation went viral. At the time Hippie Sabotage addressed the incident in a statement, commenting that “it was an unfortunate event that placed us in an unsafe situation in the middle of our performance". EDM concertgoers were reported still angry about the incident three years later, protesting the inclusion of Hippie Sabotage on a festival lineup in 2019. Later the duo reflected on the incident in an interview, acknowledging fan disappointment: "...that bums me out. That’s not what we’re about. We try as hard as we possibly can to show that to people. We’re about positivity and joy and respect."
In September 2020, Hippie Sabotage released Red Moon Rising, their first album after several years of touring which allowed them time to "process a full project that represented creative thoughts." That month the duo also partnered with Flower Records to release their "Devil Eyes OG" cannabis strain. Hippie Sabotage released their albums Floating Palace in December 2021 and Trailblazer in April 2023.
Originally beginning as a hip-hop project, Hippie Sabotage's music has evolved to electronic, described as "soulful" and "melodic" "trap-meets-chillwave", with "strong elements of hip-hop and psych rock". Over time their sound has adapted to their live performance, incorporating "extended jams, guitar, and live solos", resulting in "trance-inducing jam music that has set them apart from mainstream EDM DJs".
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