From a young age, Australian singer-songwriter Ruel Vincent van Dijk, known as Ruel, seemed destined for pop stardom. At 14 years old, he released his first single in 2017. Just a few months later, Elton John featured him on an Apple Music radio segment, and Ruel joined Khalid on his Australia and New Zealand tour. Releasing his first two EPs in 2018 and 2019 as well as his debut album, 4TH WALL, in 2023, his sophomore album, Kicking My Feet, came out in October 2025.
Ruel kicked off the Kicking My Feet Tour at Emo’s Austin on Monday. Red lights flashed and smoke billowed as Ruel’s blazered silhouette burst through a door on stage, jumping into the album’s opener, “Only Ever.”
Ruel danced through “Not What’s Going On” off Kicking My Feet and “Dazed & Confused,” one of the songs that started it all in 2018. Ruel exuded confidence in performing the 8-year-old hit, reminiscing with his longtime fans.
“Who was here two and a half years ago?” Ruel asked the crowd about his 2023 show at Emo’s. “We’ve all grown up a little bit. Some familiar faces, some new faces.”
Before introducing the first single, “I Can Die Now,” Ruel said he couldn’t wait to try out the new album on stage.
“I really wanted this tour to be me playing the majority of the album,” Ruel said. “I’ve tried to make the set as long as possible before I start to capitulate.”
When choosing the setlist, he said he couldn’t let one song slip — his favorite off the album, “Destroyer.” Bringing out an electric blue guitar for the pop ballad, Ruel exercised his ethereal vocal technique.
He then played an extended version of the album’s outro, “dst (outro),” for the crowd of devoted fans. Before a solo acoustic performance of “No News Is Good News,” he jokingly asked the crowd to sing Bad Bunny, stalling while tuning his guitar. Later, after a performance of the third single off the album, “Wild Guess,” he played around 30 seconds of a Spanish translation of the song.
Ruel went on to perform the second single, “The Suburbs,” an upbeat tune daydreaming about a simpler life.
“For the most part, the album is love songs, which I’m not used to writing,” Ruel said. “I always felt like it wasn’t worth writing about if it wasn’t sad or deeply depressing, and that kind of fucked me up for years.”
Ruel got up close with the crowd in a high-energy performance of “GROWING UP IS _____,” jumping off the stage and climbing up against the barricade. He took a fan’s hat backstage after “Painkiller” and brought it back signed during the encore. The show closed with “Japanese Whiskey,” off 4TH WALL and finally, with the album’s title track, “Kicking My Feet.”
“I personally feel like I should be grateful for where I’m at, the life you guys have given me, the relationship I’m in and everything around us,” Ruel said. “I started writing a bunch of love songs (on this album), and I started to finally enjoy them. I felt like I just needed to lean into being a little bit cringy.”
