2010–2016: Early career and hiatus Tree launched his solo recording career as "Tree" in 2010. By then, he had made presentations for performances such as
Skrillex and
Zeds Dead. He initially self-released his music, releasing an album called "Splitting Branches" in early 2013. He sang and played guitar in a
ska band called Irony, which was his first experience performing. He would produce dubstep for a brief period of time, as well as performing at music festivals such as Wobbleland 2011 in San Francisco. He mainly released music under the pseudonym "Tree". Tree eventually found himself on hiatus as he went back to school, studying music technology at the
California Institute of the Arts.
2016–2018: Return to music and Alien Boy In March 2016, Tree returned to music, being featured on the song "Forget It" by
Getter, a part of his EP, "Radical Dude!" In November of that year, he made his first television debut, performing with
Getter on
Last Call with Carson Daly. Shortly after the release of "When I'm Down" by
Whethan featuring Tree in October 2016, Tree signed to
Atlantic Records and a month later, graduated from the
California Institute of the Arts. Tree often writes, acts, and directs sketches in comedy videos, and has worked with companies such as Fuck Jerry. He released his debut single as Oliver Tree "Welcome to LA" on May 26, 2017, accompanied by another single, "All I Got". In February 2018, Tree released his major-label debut EP,
Alien Boy, along with the double music video for "All That x Alien Boy". Tree wrote and directed the debut, which took over nine months to create. He spent five months practicing freestyle monster truck jumping at the
Perris Auto Speedway and performed all his stunts in the music video. Tree has played at major festivals such as
Lollapalooza and
Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, and performed as a special guest at
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival where he was subsequently named on
LA Weeklys "The Best (and Weirdest) Fashion at Coachella" list in 2017. He was the supporting act on
Louis the Child's Last to Leave Tour (2017) and
Skizzy Mars' Are You OK? Tour (2018), and was scheduled to join
Lil Dicky and
DJ Mustard on the Life Lessons Tour Fall 2018 before it was canceled. On April 11, 2019, Tree released a standalone single, "Fuck", with the music video being released on the same day. His fourth music video and single, "Miracle Man", was released on June 7, 2019, with the video reaching 1.3 million views on the first day of release. Tree released his second EP,
Do You Feel Me? on August 2, 2019, in which the song "Introspective" would make an appearance on the album. The EP gained generally positive reviews. On December 6, 2019, Tree released "Cash Machine", a single accompanied by a music video. Together with the single, Tree announced his debut album,
Ugly Is Beautiful, and announced that the album would be released on March 27, 2020
. On March 25, 2020, Tree posted a message to his Twitter page, stating that due to the
COVID-19 pandemic,
Ugly Is Beautiful would not be released on time. However, on May 19, the album's official release date was revealed to be June 12. On April 7, 2020, he released a sixth song from the album, "Let Me Down" along with a music video. On May 16, 2020, Tree set the
Guinness World Record for the world's largest
kick scooter, which he later uploaded a video of himself riding on in July 2020. 10 days later, he released his last single before the album, titled "Bury Me Alive" having a music video as well. On June 8, 2020, Tree announced his decision to delay
Ugly Is Beautiful yet again, this time to July 17. He stated that, because of the issues of racism and police violence against black people going on during that time after the
murder of George Floyd, he "did not believe it was an appropriate time" to release the album when "much bigger things" deserved attention. On July 17, 2020,
Ugly Is Beautiful was released.
2021–2022: Deluxe versions of Ugly Is Beautiful & Cowboy Tears, collaborations, and critical recognition Despite claiming that he was retired, he released the single "Out of Ordinary" on February 4, 2021, announcing the deluxe edition of
Ugly Is Beautiful. On May 28, 2021, Tree released a deluxe version of his debut album named
Ugly Is Beautiful: Shorter, Thicker & Uglier, from which the song "Life Goes On" gained notable popularity. He would later collaborate with Russian
rave band
Little Big and release the single "Turn It Up", featuring Estonian rapper
Tommy Cash, from their collaborative EP
Welcome to the Internet, which was later released on September 30, 2021. On January 12, 2022, Tree released the single "Cowboys Don't Cry" and the single "Freaks & Geeks" on February 4, both from his second album,
Cowboy Tears.
Cowboy Tears was released on February 18, 2022. On May 20, 2022, Tree released a single, "I Hate You" followed up by another single "Placeholder" on July 15. He would also announce a tour to accompany the album
Cowboy Tears. On August 5, 2022, he followed up the release of Cowboy Tears with a non-album single titled "Miss You" - a collaboration with German music producer
Robin Schulz and a remix of the song "Jerk" from Ugly is Beautiful. A month later, Tree collaborated with Polish-Irish DJ and producer "TWISTED" for "WORTH NOTHING", a Phonx-infused remix of the song Jerk. On October 28, 2022, the music video of Miss You was uploaded, and the song started to gain as much popularity as Life Goes On did in 2021. He then released a deluxe version of Cowboy Tears titled
Cowboy Tears: Drown the World in a Swimming Pool of Sorrow on December 23, 2022.
2023–present: Alone in a Crowd and Love You Madly, Hate You Badly On March 3, 2023, Tree released his first single of 2023, "Here We Go Again" with DJ and music producer
David Guetta. He followed up this release with a single titled "Bounce" released on June 20. The same day, he played a show at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado and announced that this song was the first single released that would be featured on his third studio album,
Alone in a Crowd. On July 17, Tree announced that his Alone in a Crowd World Tour would occur from October 2023 to February 2024. He would be scheduled to perform in
Australia with American rapper Sueco,
Europe and the
United Kingdom with
Tommy Cash, and the
United States with rock band
Fidlar. On July 21, he released his second single from the album, "One & Only". He collaborated with upcoming underground dance music group Super Computer for his third single, "Essence" released on September 1, 2023. On September 15, a fourth single was released, "Fairweather Friends".
Alone in a Crowd was then released two weeks later on September 29, 2023. On April 9, 2026 it was announced that
Love You Madly, Hate You Badly will be released on April 24, 2026. Tree also announced that he had left Atlantic Records to release this album, and it will be released independently under Tree's label, Alien Boy Records. ==Discography==