How Urban Heat’s Jonathan Horstmann Is Using His Voice for Mental Health Awareness

In 2022, Austin’s post-punk band Urban Heat struck a chord with America’s goth underground with a resounding and viral TikTok video that would shape the band’s trajectory for years to come. This sudden thrust into the spotlight might have seemed out of nowhere to those who hadn’t been following along, but Urban Heat had been quietly and diligently working towards this moment for years. 

It started in 2019 when multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Jonathan Horstmann began writing songs for a new record. 

In 2019, Horstmann was living in Austin, writing music, newly married and a new father. The record was coming along, and he’d even enlisted Kevin Naquin and Paxel Foley to help him perform a live show based on Horstmann’s analog designs. At the time, they called themselves “Urban Heat Island Effect,” referring to the man-made effect where urban areas experience higher temperatures than rural ones. 

But then the pandemic hit. 

Origins of Urban Heat

Horstmann and his small family went to North Carolina to ride out the most isolating part of that year at his mother-in-law’s place. He brought everything he needed and set up a little studio in the garage, determined to make this record happen, no matter what was going on in the world. It’s largely because of what was going on in the world that Urban Heat is what it is today. 

“I was just writing from my own experience; what was important to me,” says Horstmann, looking back on that time. “And I think mental health specifically, during the pandemic, was very front of mind.”

The result was a distinctly dark and ’80s sound — synthy, romantic, and melodic — with a voice ringing with real emotion and lyrics that spoke to an isolated nation:

A sound that resonated

Though the band couldn’t perform during 2020, between 2019 and 2022, they released six singles, performing at festivals like Seattle’s Freakout Fest, SXSW, and when their song “Have You Ever” went viral on TikTok in 2022, it all sort of snowballed from there. 

“Once ‘Have You Ever’ went viral on TikTok and had its little moment, we were really thrown into a certain category,” Horstmann says. 

The band began performing more and more; “Urban Heat Island Effect” had to be shortened to “Urban Heat” because people just couldn’t get the name right; the three bandmates adopted a new, cohesive all-black look, and suddenly, Urban Heat found themselves the new darlings of the goth scene. 

In the three years since this viral moment, a lot has happened for the band. They won “Song of the Year” in the 2022 / 2023 Austin Music Award (for “Have You Ever”); they’ve played to thousands at Austin City Limits Festival; they’ve toured the U.S. together multiple times over, playing to sold out crowds; they’ve headlined shows in Austin too many times to count. They even toured across Europe in 2024. 

Creative collaboration

Horstmann has continued to play the role of vocalist and frontman, pouring his heart and soul into each song he belts out. However, even the dynamics among the three old friends have shifted over time. 

“In the beginning, it was very much like ‘Jonathan is gonna do this thing, and we’re going to believe in him, and we’re going to support him.’ But as things have gone on, we’re doing this more collaboratively,” Horstmann says. 

He adds, “There is a healthy, respectful tension. And I think that’s important because we’re not a band where it’s like — ‘Here’s an idea.’ And everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, great! Let’s do it!’ It’s more like, ‘Here’s an idea,’ and one person is like, ‘Well just for the sake of argument… What if we do the opposite of that?” He laughs. “It’s like a checks and balances system.”

But through it all, these three men with “totally different tastes in music,” all continue to come together. They show up, they perform, and uniquely, they all seem to genuinely care about giving the audience a transformative experience. 

A shared mission on stage

“There has to be some realness that goes into it,” Horstmann says. “If you want that to be transformative to anyone else, it has to be the most sincere you’ve got.”

When asked why this is so important to him — why he genuinely cares so much about leaving the audience better, more alive, more in touch with their feelings, and why he doesn’t just take the paycheck like so many other artists seem to do — he pauses.

He talks about feeling most alive when he’s being used in service of others — how there’s work that matters to the world, and work that only matters to yourself, and how he wants to do something that leaves an impact long after he’s gone.

“But maybe it’s just wanting to feel needed.”

Path to purpose

Horstmann is a father of two girls (“who are going to change the world”). He sings of beauty and pain in a culture that is far from perfect; he uses his social platform to speak out about mental health and addiction. He truly seems to care about helping people, which shouldn’t feel rare, but it does.

Perhaps it’s because he grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household that banned any music that wasn’t hymns and any movies that weren’t in black and white.

Maybe it stems from what he went through in his early 20s — a decade largely spent as a punk kid, destroying his body with drugs and alcohol in a kind of rebellion. Or his late 20s, when he said he “rawdogged” sobriety from heroin by living in a tent in Haiti, planting trees.

Perhaps he cares so much because when he moved back to the United States — a nomad for a while, then a kundalini yoga teacher in Austin — he saw the depths of his own spirituality and the spiritual bypassing around him.

Or because, after the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, he switched gears and joined an all-Black electro-punk band, screaming about Black pain in Black bodies to crowds of white Austinites having a party.

Fatherhood changed everything

All of these things are dots, forming a larger picture. But the ultimate reason this frontman seems so empathetic — the reason he uses his platform to talk about mental health, the reason he takes time to engage with fans, the reason he seems to do anything he does these days — is simple:

It’s his girls. 

“My first daughter was born seven years ago. At that time I really took a step back and thought, ‘I don’t want to be involved with anyone who I wouldn’t trust to hold my newborn.’” So he cut ties with people. 

“When she was eight months old was when I had my last drinking binge. I thought, ‘I never want my kids to see me f—ed up. Period.’” And so he got sober. 

He wants his daughters to see a man who won’t give up on his dreams — so he keeps going. He wants them to have a dad who is present and stable — so he stays sober. He wants them to be self-aware and live fully — so he models that himself.

And he wants them to have memories of being together. And so, he is touring less. 

Bigger things ahead

Recently, Urban Heat announced the cancellation of their upcoming European tour. Instead, Horstmann seems thrilled to focus on some solo shows around Texas, where he can bring his daughters along. At the end of July, there will be an Urban Heat and Grandmaster show at The Paramount, benefiting the SIMS foundation. 

They’re also working on a new record, and perhaps most excitingly, they’ve recently “signed some stuff.”

“I don’t want to piss anyone off by saying more than I’m allowed to,” he laughs.

But rest assured, Urban Heat and their focus on mental health and living truthfully are not going anywhere. 

In fact, from his rather cagey comment, it seems they’re about to be bigger than ever.

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