{"id":360756,"date":"2026-06-14T22:16:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T22:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/360756\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T22:16:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T22:16:18","slug":"santa-cruz-born-singer-likely-dead-in-helicopter-crash-at-32","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/360756\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa Cruz-born singer likely dead in helicopter crash at 32"},"content":{"rendered":"

Santa Cruz-born singer and producer Oliver Tree reportedly died among six others on Sunday morning when two helicopters crashed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, authorities\u00a0told<\/a> the Associated Press. Tree, who is known for viral dance tracks like \u201cLife Goes On\u201d and \u201cMiss You\u201d with DJ Robin Schulz, had played a show in S\u00e3o Paulo on June 6 while touring in support of his latest album, \u201cLove You Madly, Hate You Badly.\u201d He was 32 years old.<\/p>\n

According to the Associated Press<\/a> and the Hollywood Reporter<\/a>, police said Tree\u2019s name was on a list of passengers given to aviation authorities but have not been able to identify the bodies of those killed in the crash. CNN Brazil reported other individuals on board were Argentine YouTuber Gaspar Prim, also known as Gaspi, fellow passengers Lucas Vignal and Lucas Brito Chaves, and pilots Alexandre Souza and Charles Marsillac. The cause of the collision is not yet known.<\/p>\n

Described<\/a> by Pitchfork as a \u201cpolarizing, meme-powered pop singer\u201d who rose to fame on Vine before delving into \u201ccowboy emo,\u201d Tree had more than 11 million monthly listeners on Spotify and was known for his signature bowl cut and unusual antics. Born in 1993, he began taking piano lessons as a preschooler and later attended Harbor High School, becoming a popular dubstep DJ, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the age of 18, Tree made his first recording when a London label heard his self-produced songs on\u00a0SoundCloud, and he released his three-song breakout EP, \u201cDemons,\u201d in 2013. He went on hiatus to go to school, studying business at San Francisco State University for two years before transferring to the California Institute of the Arts, where he graduated<\/a> with a degree in fine arts in 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He played several major festivals such as Coachella, Lollapalooza and Outside Lands, where he appeared in 2017 and 2022.<\/p>\n

Outside of music, he was involved in sketch comedy and set<\/a> the Guinness World Record for the world\u2019s largest kick scooter in 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cLove You Madly, Hate You Badly\u201d was the first album independently released through Tree\u2019s label Alien Boy Records after a departure from Atlantic Records earlier this year. Tree was scheduled to play 70 more shows this summer as part of the global tour, which included stops at the Quarry Ampitheater in Santa Cruz and the Fox Theater in Oakland on August 21 and 22.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SFGATE reached out to Tree’s management and did not hear back by time of publication.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Santa Cruz-born singer and producer Oliver Tree reportedly died among six others on Sunday morning when two helicopters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105,1894,923,1693,1692],"class_list":["post-360756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sfgcentralca","tag-sfgculture","tag-sfglocal","tag-sfgnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}