Travis Holcombe
Mo Aquino
For five years in Los Angeles, Travis Holcombe soundtracked solo living room dance parties, time spent getting ready for a night out and drives across town. His curation was so exceptional that one often hoped the light would turn red so they could Shazam whatever he was playing.
As the host of Freaks Only, his 8-10 p.m. weeknight radio show on KCRW, Holcombe provided the city’s unofficial nighttime listening — until he was among those who left the station amid October 2025 layoffs. The Santa Monica-based, globally known public radio station cited federal budget cuts as the reason for letting go of 10% of its staff, including several longtime DJs. Holcombe was offered the opportunity to stay on to do Freaks Only for one night a week, a demotion he passed on. After an extended back and forth with KCRW about using the “Freaks Only” name, it was eventually determined that Holcombe could have it.
“I felt like the only way for me to be able to continue doing what I was doing was to kind of carve my own lane,” he says.
And so while his 14-year tenure KCRW ended — from 2014 to 2020 he hosted a 10 p.m. to midnight weeknight show under his own name, sharing the 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 slot during the pandemic and then taking it over this slot full time with Freaks Only in 2021— Freaks Only has not.
In May, Holcombe launched Freaks Only FM, an online radio station that’s expanded the show into a 24-hour format. Available to stream from the site and via an app, Holcombe runs the station from his home, keeping it going through donations and a growing subscriber base. He reports that subscribers, total listeners and listening hours have all grown every month since the launch.
“I know there are enough people who appreciated what I was doing that it would hopefully be enough to keep this afloat independently,” says Holcombe. He continues with a laugh that “if I don’t do this, I probably have to get some job I’m less excited about — I’m trying to avoid that.”
One can understand why he’s working to maintain the position, as digging through new music and playing the best stuff for listeners is, seemingly, a dream job. It’s also a lot of work. Holcombe spends at least two hours a day listening to new music on music sites and via radio promos that are sent to him. With 24 hours a day of time to program, he typically makes four new hours of programming daily (eight hours will happen occasionally when the show just needs a polish from work done the day before.) Shows are pre-recorded, but, he says, “I approach it the way I did my live show at KCRW, and it’s often finished minutes before it airs.”
From 8 a.m. to noon he plays a block called The Percolator, made of funk, indie rock, older favorites, more chill music to start the day, from noon to 8 p.m. the station plays its flagship show Freak Parade, which he says “goes anywhere genre-wise and is most similar to the old Freaks Only show on KCRW,” leaning into electronic, but also featuring lots of post-punk, disco, indie rock, hip hop and new releases. (This show repeats overnight from midnight to 8am.) From 8 p.m to midnight, he programs the dance music program Aux Out, focused on house, techno and disco, and on weekends the station airs shows from its pre-existing catalog of programming.
The economics of the project are tricky, given that the streaming service Holcombe uses for the station increases its fee when he gets more listeners. The streaming service fees include licensing for all the music played, with Holcombe structuring the station legitimately to be respectful to music makers and to get it set up for possible future opportunities.
“There’s ways that I could go much cheaper and not worry about that at all,” he says, “But if this were ever to get upstreamed, I didn’t want to have to owe anybody money or have anyone feeling bad that I’ve been ripping them off or stealing music.”
Holcombe has recently gotten a few large donations from Freaks Only FM supporters, but is more focused on growing his subscriber base, a mission he’s got significant experience in from his pledge drive days. “Obviously I love getting big donations,” he says, “but one of the many things I learned at KCRW is that we would always push for monthly subscriptions over one-time donations, because it was money we could count on from month to month.”
All this effort is driven by a foundational belief that music is better when a human (especially one with excellent taste) is selecting what you hear. Freaks Only FM is, in its way, a stand for personal, old-school radio programming, given Holcombe’s belief is that algorithm driven listening “just finds lesser versions of stuff that you like over and over, and you need a refresh every now and then.”
He’s right. During our conversation he recommends “The Whole of the Moon,” a shimmering production by Watergirls (based on the 1985 original of the same name by Scottish band The Waterboys) released by DFA in August, and the most recent Black Marble album Life in Small Spaces — two releases one could have easily missed that are both, as it turns out, bangers on rotation on Freaks Only FM. By sorting through the daily onslaught of new music and presenting it in a cohesive and consistent format, Freaks Only FM is arguably a high value proposition.
“If we don’t do a better job of fostering and supporting new music, it’s going to disappear, or it’s just going to be for nepo babies that can afford to go on tour or for kids straight out of college who have this dream and then they burn out in two or three years after they realize it’s not going to get better anytime soon.”
The difficulty of breaking new artists in 2026 is a recognized industry-wide issue, with streaming favoring catalog music, touring more expensive than ever and the general oversaturation of new music and fractured paths to finding it. “You see it with the festivals, where there’s a lot more legacy acts being booked,” says Holcombe. “The model now is booking three legacy acts at the top and having a smattering of new bands playing at three in the afternoon.”
His mission to support new artists is one Holcombe is also extending into IRL events and more. Last November, he launched a Freaks Only residency at L.A.’s Club Tee Gee where he DJs every Friday. (The next event is Nov. 13.) He curated the August release Freaks Only: Eskimo Selects 2014 to 2026, a compilation of his favorite tracks from the second half of the Belgian label’s 25th anniversary and has also dipped his toes into the world of live promotion, doing a June Freaks Only Presents show at Teragram Ballroom with rising bands Famous Friend, Floats, and Camp Blu. The night sold 450 tickets and led to a new podcast that Holcombe and Famous Friend will launch later this month called Spin or Skip, a music hot takes program. Upcoming guests will include Asa Taccone of Electric Guest and Jack Quaid, from the Amazon superhero show The Boys.
For Holcombe, Freaks Only FM and all of these other new projects contribute to the same goal: that thrill of sharing great new music with people you care about.
“There’s nothing I love more than hearing a great song for the first time and being able to share it,” Holcombe says. “Chasing that feeling is the driving force that keeps me going.”
