It would be easy—too easy, perhaps—to define Fcukers as a very New York band. First of all, I guess, because they’re based there: formed in 2022 by Shanny Wise and Jackson Walker Lewis, the duo built their reputation through years in different indie bands and gigging on the city’s late-night party circuit. Then, there’s their sound, which blends ’90s and ’00s dance beats with Wise’s disaffected vocals, channeling the lo-fi spirit of NYC bands like Le Tigre and the acts associated with DFA Records throughout the 2000s—most notably label co-founder James Murphy’s perennially influential LCD Soundsystem. (Fcukers even supported Murphy a few years back during one of his New York City residencies.)
Yet speaking to the pair after they land in London for a series of album signings and promo events—their debut full-length, Ö, was released last week—it’s clear that their heart also lies, at least partly, in the UK. “My dad was really into British music when I was growing up—he was playing me Happy Mondays and Stone Roses and Primal Scream,” says Lewis, who even spent a semester studying at Goldsmiths University in London and immersing himself in the city’s club scene. (That British club influence is all over the record, from the jerky UK garage beat of “Butterflies” to the infectious, cut-up vocal loop on “Play Me” that recalls Fatboy Slim.)
“I think New York and the UK have such a great back and forth musically, whether it was the Chemical Brothers taking their initial name from the Dust Brothers, who worked on Paul’s Boutique with the Beastie Boys, or people coming to New York and going clubbing and saying, ‘We should go back and set up [the iconic Manchester nightclub] the Haçienda,’” Lewis adds.
You can hear the frisson of influences on Ö, which takes the lo-fi grit of their earlier music—including their breakout club track, the common-cold catchy “Bon Bon”—and dials it up to something more maximalist. There’s their deft ability to cycle through a head-spinning array of genres—drum ‘n’ bass one minute, dub the next, and even finishing on a run of hazy, downtempo, trip-hop-inflected tracks—while keeping things cohesive, helped in part by their increasingly confident ear for narrative, as the album has been calibrated to mimic the emotional arc of a riotous night out on the town. Hence the soft, skittering “Getaway” towards the end of the album with its air of a comedown, and the lush, Balearic-tinged strings—like an audible sunrise—on final track “Feel the Real,” as Wise sings of being “in the penthouse, slipping away.”
While you can hear the influence of those varying genres and musical traditions, it also feels distinctly and uniquely Fcukers. (As for that name? It’s pronounced like the swear word, and was derived from a vintage FCUK hoodie Lewis gave to Wise soon after they started making music together: “I still wear it, but only at home,” she laughs.)
For all its accomplishments, Ö came together surprisingly quickly—and not in the way the pair expected. After signing with the legendary London indie label Ninja Tune in early 2024 and the buzzy release of their first EP, Baggy$$, in September of that year, a sense of expectation began to weigh on them. “We were in this precarious position because our EP in a way was like, ‘This is our sound,’” Lewis explains. “So we had the pressure of making a debut album, but also with the question of, ‘Where should we go for our sophomore release?’” As deadlines for their first album approached last summer, they weren’t entirely happy with the music they’d been writing. “It just wasn’t feeling right,” says Wise, noting that they even told their label there might be no new music at all for the rest of the year. “Pressure is something that can really hinder creativity, and so I think we needed to take the pressure off.”
While in Los Angeles for Coachella last summer, they connected with Kenny Beats, the influential (and supremely versatile) producer known for his work with Vince Staples and, most recently, on Geese’s wildly acclaimed 2025 record Getting Killed. Having exchanged DMs for the best part of a year, they got in the studio together for a morning, which quickly became an afternoon, and then a week. “We ended up canceling all our plans and cranked it out in the following two weeks—it was so super fast-paced,” Wise recalls. “Then we were just like, ‘Damn, we got ourselves an album!’”
You can hear that frenzied process in the album’s bouncy, stuttering beats, as well as the impossibly catchy choruses that often revolve around Wise’s repeating sentences of softly-spoken, mantra-like lyrics: “I like it like that,” “I just wanna rock right now,” “If you wanna party, come over to my house.” Where does that instinct for a killer hook come from? “Sometimes you get lucky, and it will come right away, other times you have to work for it,” Wise shrugs. “I think that’s part of the fun of it, though. It’s the best feeling when you crack that puzzle and find the word that fits and sounds cool—it‘a so satisfying.” Often, it’s the simplest things that can be the hardest to get right.
When it comes to the live show, however, they decided to make things a little more complicated for themselves. Despite their keenly focused club sound, they perform everything with a live band, with no computers on stage, and Wise singing while playing bass. “We’ve always done it that way,” Lewis notes, pointing to their shared background in indie bands. “There’s just something visceral about a band.” It’s a formula they’ll continue to replicate as they kick off their US headline tour, which will lead them all the way up to a string of dates supporting Harry Styles in Brazil this July, playing in front of 70,000 people. It’s a long way from Baby’s All Right. On that, Wise says excitedly, “We just try and carry the vibe wherever we go.”
Indeed, for all the glacially cool insouciance the pair might project through Wise’s deadpan singing style or the modish fashion in their promo photos (Lewis loves a Madchester zip-up, while Wise will happily wear baggy jeans and a pair of Quiksilver flip-flops for a DJ set), there’s a nerdish enthusiasm to them. They seem happiest when reeling off their influences and waxing lyrical about music from other artists they love—as well as a sense of disbelief for how they even got here. “I’ve been making music forever, and we’ve both done tours where you’re driving 10 hours a day across the US to play to 20 people in a random bar in Ohio,” Wise says. “I don’t take it for granted for a second. Honestly, I can’t believe it. I’m like, ‘Damn, I’m so lucky.’”
“Every day I pinch myself that we make enough that we can live on it,” Lewis says, before adding, with a grin: “We’re definitely not rich, though. I would gladly take more money!”
