Inside Piccolo’s Universe: Stellar Boy and the Courage to Give Voice to Silence
We spoke with Piccolo of bnkr44 about his solo debut, Stellar Boy: a project that blends music and visual art, turning silence into narrative.
When an artist decides to expose themselves without filters, they often do so by building a new world. Stellar Boy, the first solo album by Piccolo – founding member of bnkr44 – is born exactly this way: as a parallel universe where music, drawing and visual storytelling coexist to express what usually remains unspoken. Released on December 5 via Bomba Dischi / EMI Music Records, the album accompanies an eponymous graphic novel, created by Piccolo himself, transforming into an emotional soundtrack that gives voice to a deliberate, necessary, yet difficult silence.
The timing is no coincidence. After years of working within a collective and three and a half years of life lived between Tuscany and Veneto, Stellar Boy represents a pause, a moment of clarification, an emotional release that takes shape.
Background and Artistic Path
As a singer-songwriter and visual artist, Piccolo grew artistically within bnkr44, a collective that has redefined the Italian indie-urban landscape by blending sounds, languages, and imagery. Alongside music, however, drawing has always been a constant presence – in fact, it came first.
“I definitely discovered drawing before anything else”, Piccolo explains, “and as I grew up, all the other arts followed: sculpture, music, fashion.” This multidisciplinary approach was never strategic, but necessary: combining languages became a way to experiment, to express himself more fully, to avoid being confined to a single expressive form.
Stellar Boy follows the same trajectory. It is not just an album but a complete artistic project, conceived as a whole – from aesthetics to sound, from visual storytelling to symbolic imagery.
Creative Process and Philosophy
The Stellar Boy graphic novel is silent by choice, a decision tied to Piccolo’s complex relationship with silence. “I don’t have a great relationship with silence”, he admits. When he draws, he needs voices around him, ambient music, a constant background. Yet there is another kind of silence he knows well: long hours alone in a car, moments that become solitude but also rest.
The graphic novel was meant to represent precisely that “deafening silence” we all need but often fear. Music arrives afterward, as a necessity – something that fills a void without erasing it.
The creative process behind Stellar Boy was long and layered. Written by Piccolo and produced together with Fed Nance, Caph, Erin, and JxN, the album moves through lo-fi, indie rock, bedroom rock, post-grunge, and electronic influences. A record rooted in Piccolo’s love for indie rock “as it used to be made”, driven by his need to draw and by the desire to build a parallel universe to retreat into when reality feels too narrow.
A Record as a Release and Clarification
Across its thirteen tracks, Stellar Boy touches on emotional dependency, family bonds, friendships that save, love stories that fade, and identities in transition. Not as a direct confession, but through images, metaphors, and fragments.
“It was primarily a release”, Piccolo says. A release that also became a form of self-clarification – a way to draw a line under things left unresolved for too long, to express messages he had been unable to communicate directly.
Despite the album’s vulnerability, writing itself wasn’t the hardest part. Ordering emotions was. “When I opened the taps of my heart, everything came out naturally. The difficulty was deciding how to make heavy thoughts sound light.” His preference for metaphor is not stylistic decoration, but a form of protection – and, at the same time, an opening toward the listener.
Masks, Childhood and Identity
A recurring figure moves throughout the project: a boy wearing a star-shaped mask. A powerful and ambiguous symbol. “A mask is both a shield and a sword”, Piccolo explains. It can be used to hide or to attract attention, but above all, it allows communication without speaking.
The character blends the elegance of Venetian masks with the grotesque spirit of Viareggio’s Carnival, which Piccolo describes as Italy’s version of Halloween, with its creepy atmosphere and human clumsiness. This imagery is rooted in childhood and family.
Piccolo’s parents nurtured a love for costumes, handmade creations, and invention without limits. “A great life lesson I always carry with me”, he says. “It’s no coincidence that my name is Piccolo.”
Between Collective and Solitary Creation
Being a solo artist, for Piccolo, does not mean isolation. It means space. “I felt I had many fields in which to express myself and stretch the tentacles of creativity,” he says, deliberately avoiding the word responsibility, which he dislikes when associated with passion.
In fact, Stellar Boy is not his first solo experience. In 2021, he released Amaranto. But here the universe feels more defined, more conscious. A creative home built both for himself and for those who feel the need to escape reality.
“When you manage to create a parallel universe that is precise enough to be recognizable”, Piccolo reflects, “then you’ve created a home for someone who needs to escape, and unfortunately, many people do. Myself included.”
Visual and Listening Details
Stellar Boy is available on all digital platforms and on vinyl. Masks designed and crafted by Piccolo appear throughout the project’s visuals, reinforcing a coherent world where music, imagery, and narrative converge. Among the most emblematic tracks is meMory card, written across different moments and emotional states, as well as Spaventapasseri [intro] and cuscino, which are more directly tied to the graphic novel.
Stellar Boy is not simply a solo debut, but an act of controlled exposure, an artistic gesture that transforms silence into language and fragility into shared space. A project that does not ask to be judged, but experienced.
“People don’t come to concerts to judge”, Piccolo says. “They come to share an experience of love.”
And in that collective act, perhaps silence finally stops being something to fear.
Malena Victoria
22-year-old Communication, Media and Advertising student at IULM University.
Interested in contemporary culture and music, I explore the narratives and creative processes behind emerging projects.
Editor at Casawi Magazine.