NPC Lyrics – Cavetown | from “Running With Scissors”

Cavetown’s dipping into that glitchy limbo where you’re the extra in your own story on “NPC,” the haunting lead single from Running With Scissors, dropping January 16, 2026, via Futures Music Group—and it’s got me staring at my ceiling, wondering if I’ve been scripted all along.

This track is Cavetown—aka Robin Skinner—at his most disarmingly raw: a swirl of lo-fi indie pop with twinkling acoustics and those signature breathy vocals that feel like a midnight journal entry whispered through a fan. It’s bedroom folk laced with electronic whispers, the kind of sound that hugs your isolation without smothering it, self-produced in his Cambridge hideout with co-writes from longtime pals like Ryan Raines.

Thematically, it’s a deep cut on invisibility and the uncanny valley of modern life—being “you-know-who,” a void-bodied wanderer stuck in the “space in between,” where home, away, and everywhere else blur into NPC autopilot. That chorus hook, looping “I live in the space in between,” captures the exhaustion of performing normalcy while your inner world glitches out, all inspired by Skinner’s own jet-lag-fueled tours and the quiet terror of feeling unseeable. Dropped as the album’s second teaser after September’s “Rainbow Gal,” it landed with a simple lyric video on YouTube, Skinner tweeting from his official account: “for when you feel like a side quest in someone else’s game.”

Running With Scissors is Skinner’s sixth full-length, a 13-track mosaic of growth and ghosts—think “Skip” kicking off with upbeat denial, “Cryptid” lurking in the shadows, “Baby Spoon” spooning nostalgia, then “NPC” bridging to heavier hitters like “Reaper” and “Tarmac” (out since October, co-penned with Orla Gartland). The concept? It’s about chasing sharpness in a softened world—running with those emotional scissors, risking the cuts to feel alive—pulling from Skinner’s therapy-tinted reflections post-2022’s worm food. Recorded piecemeal between UK lockdowns and US jaunts, it’s got guest strokes from David Pramik on “Rainbow Gal” and Couros on “Baby Spoon,” blending his solo vulnerability with collaborative sparks for a warmer, weirder evolution. No rigid narrative, just snapshots of queer-coded quietude and mental maze-running, clocking in at around 40 minutes of that cozy chaos fans crave.

Skinner’s hitting this drop at a tender peak, 28 now and fresh off a sold-out North American tour that had TikTok teens sobbing to “Lemon Boy” encores. The YouTuber-turned-indie darling who built a cult on sleep paralysis demos has leaned harder into pop polish without losing the porch-swing intimacy—think Lemon Boy’s whimsy matured into worm food’s ache, now sharpened for a world that’s finally catching up to his quiet revolutions. It’s him trusting the void, one glitchy bar at a time.

Dive into the NPC lyrics below and unpack its raw narrative. Don’t miss other Running With Scissors tracks for more of Cavetown’s introspective bedroom-pop vibes.