South Arcade

The band formed as university friends, initially through lead singer Harmony Cavelle and guitarist Harry Winks getting demos down before recruiting the rest of the band.

“Me and Harry go way back” explains Harmony, “from being in bands when we were younger. But then we got to uni and we were like ‘let’s just make the band we always wanted to be in.’ We hadn’t found any other members, so we just sat and wrote loads of tracks, loads and loads of demos. Then, we had the tunes...now we need to get some members that make this a full thing.”

Joined by Cody Jones on drums and Ollie Green on bass, the ads searching for members to join the “Royal Blood meets Charlie XCX” band were enticing enough to pull in the rhythm section to bring the whole thing together.

They draw influences from further back to create that sound though. Harmony continues: “Our favourite sort of music, not with regards to genre, was just the music from 1995 to 2005, like across pop and rock really.” “When rock was sort of pop” adds Ollie.

You can hear that clearly in the music. There are elements of Paramore, a bit of early 2000s Avril Lavigne but also, the band tell me, they’re influenced by the likes of No Doubt, Linkin’ Park and Limp Bizkit. These are the sounds that drive their breakout song DANGER –which took on a new life a year after release, blowing up on TikTok –and more recent releases Nepo Baby and Riptide and the latest single How To Get Away With Murder.

The delayed success of DANGER brought the band back to their roots. “When it starts to blow up, retrospectively, you go ‘OK, so there is some sort of demand for this, people DO like it’” Ollie says. “So, we went back to that genre”

Harry adds: “Seeing what other people like, it actually gives us a perspective on what we like. We love that genre, so let’s do more of that. That’s so much fun, you know?”

Their sound taps into the vibrant energy of the 2000s era, but coupling it with modern production to keep moving seamlessly around the genre. Harry explains “We’re jumping around like different sub-genres of the 2000s. Each song is a different world, or has different production. That’s what we love, being inspired by different bands.” The goal here is to create a feeling, driven by the nostalgia of the resurgence of the late 90s/early 00s sounds rather than be bound by a specific genre.

“Somehow our music makes people feel old but young at the same time, and that’s really cool” says Harmony. “I love that it does that because then it appeals to everyone.