Los Bitchos

With members drawn from Britain, Uruguay, Australia, and Sweden, Los Bitchos weave trippy, surf-tinged rock instrumentals from an array of global sources that mirror the group’s own makeup. Their sound fuses Argentinian cumbia, Peruvian chicha, and Turkish Anatolian rock into a buoyant, psychedelic style, a mix first captured on the 2022 debut album Let the Festivities Begin!. That release was followed in 2024 by Talkie Talkie, an album on which the band already projected greater cohesion.

Guitarist Serra Petale from Australia, keytarist Agustina Ruiz from Uruguay, bassist Josefine Jonsson from Sweden, and drummer Nic Crawshaw from South London first connected at London house parties or through shared acquaintances. Having previously performed in local punk groups, Crawshaw helped steer the quartet toward a genre-defying approach rooted in their combined backgrounds. The four began performing across Europe in the late 2010s and completed work on their debut album just before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. With live dates and the record’s release postponed, they started the online radio program Planet Bitchos to survey international styles. A 2019 performance captured at the Trans Musicales festival in Rennes, France, later amassed hundreds of thousands of views online. In mid-2021 the band contributed to the B-side of Altın Gün’s single “Kisasa Kisas” b/w “Erkilet Güzeli,” and by year’s end they had signed to City Slang. Their Alex Kapranos-produced debut, Let the Festivities Begin!, appeared in February 2022.

For the follow-up, the same four musicians, now displaying tighter interplay, enlisted Oli Barton-Wood (Wet Leg, Nilüfer Yanya) as co-producer. Issued by City Slang in August 2024, Talkie Talkie proved every bit as celebratory as its predecessor.