Fuck off! Off!” Bill Ryder-Jones barks gently but sternly, swatting at the hand looming over the synth in front of him. Beside him, James Balmont pulls back, the mischief running through his fingers extinguished as he’s scolded like a puppy whose energy is becoming a bit too distracting. As Swim Deep’s keyboardist slinks back to his seat, he protests through a mock pout: “I was going to play the X-Files theme!”
It’s late August 2025, and Swim Deep have decamped to Brussels’ ICP Studios to work on their fifth album, ‘Hum’. After helming 2024’s ‘There’s A Big Star Outside’, Ryder-Jones is back in the producer’s chair, and alongside engineer Giovanni Lando, the cohort are entering the final stages of recording when NME joins them in Belgium.
Over the two weeks that Balmont, frontman Austin “Ozzy” Williams, drummer Thomas Fiquet and new guitarist J.J. Buchanan have spent in the wood-panelled studio (bassist Cavan McCarthy has had to sit out the trip due to childcare commitments), progress has been good. The band are in good spirits, but a slight undercurrent of tension starts to build in the 24 hours NME spends in their company. In a few days’ time, they’ll return to the UK. Before then, fat needs to be trimmed, details nailed down, and ideas fleshed out until each song reaches its maximum potential. The clock is ticking, and each time they listen back to a track, a discussion follows about what needs fixing, adding or taking away.
Once the layers and details are worked out, though, the world is in for a treat. Even on first, unfinished listen, it’s clear that this album is shaping up to be something beautiful. As Williams leaves the room to work on something by himself, the rest of the band play through a handful of tracks for NME – the results of a “purple patch” of songwriting between the frontman and Buchanan. “Each song should go on a journey,” Balmont shares as one track fades out of the speakers, calling the notion one of this album’s “guiding lights”. You can sense that approach in the likes of the slow, grungy stomp of ‘Mud’ and the emotive beauty of the Buchanan-penned ‘Broken’ – songs that grow, change and weave stories.
While there’s often a marked difference between each Swim Deep album, here they dig deeper into the sound of ‘There’s A Big Star Outside’ – softer, grungier, more songwriterly. Lyrically, it’s introspective but accessible, filled with personal reflections that are moving, but also make you consider where you are in your own life. On the bright, bursting ‘You, Me & Mary’, a touching contemplation directed to his wife and one-year-old daughter, Williams wonders with infectious self-observation: “Is this the best that I can be?”
ICP Studios is a fitting place for these reflections to unfold. It’s a space Swim Deep have visited at several points in their journey, first setting foot inside in 2012 when, as a rising act backed by plenty of buzz, they came to record their debut album, ‘Where The Heaven Are We’. “That first year, [we were signed to a] major label, [had] three meals a day, private chef, all that stuff,” Williams recalls. When they came back to record follow-up ‘Mothers’ in 2014, there was “one less meal [a day], [the label were] a bit more cautious with us”. In the evening, as we walk to a bowling alley imaginatively named Brussels Bowling – a consistent fixture in the band’s visits to the city – Balmont regales us with youthful tales of drunken festive nights, dragging Christmas trees to the studio, and “tops off in the club” for one of Williams’ birthdays past.
In 2023, they returned to make ‘There’s A Big Star Outside’, no longer those responsibility-free kids but adults in their thirties. At that time, Williams was about to become a father; his experience of that then-impending reality becoming actualised colours ‘Hum’. When NME visits the band, his daughter Mary and partner Nell have also come over to be together for a few days between sessions, reinforcing that sense that the studio is somewhere the band have grown up.
Across ‘Hum’, Williams meditates on family and the ties that bind us together, the shift that comes both with a new life and the grief of departures. In the same month Mary was born, Nell’s father died – a combination of seismic life events the musician calls “mind-splitting”.
“Mary was the thing that brought anyone joy in that time,” he says, slouched in a booth at Brussels Bowling after a chaotic round on the lanes (Williams comes out on top; NME and Fiquet hold up the bottom end, despite frantically studying bowling tutorials on YouTube to aid our game). “You’re mourning, you’re trying to be sensitive, and you don’t want to put any of that on the child. A lot of growth came with that and the songs came out of that.” This album, he half-jokes, is one that can be summed up as “live, loss, love”: “The love makes the loss harder, but the love makes the live easier.”
Through that world-uprooting time, the experience of becoming a dad has reminded him of the purpose of the path he’s chosen. “With Mary, I just write my songs like nursery rhymes or whatever,” he explains fondly. “It brings you back to what songwriting is about – sharing stories and keeping stories memorable for people with melody.”
Around the time of Mary’s birth, Williams questioned whether continuing to make a living from music was “the right thing to do” or if he should find a more stable way to provide for his family. It’s the kind of conundrum that’s plagued many musicians, the financial insecurity of band life causing Swim Deep to lose some members over the years. Today, each of the five bandmates works a day job alongside the band – a necessity that also means they can’t be a “proper band” because their clashing schedules make it impossible to rehearse.
Why, then, do they keep going? “I think 10 years ago, a big part of making music was trying to get recognition,” Balmont reasons the next morning as the band gather around a table in a room lined with plaques celebrating albums made at ICP. “I think now, we’re pursuing creative satisfaction as a more personal thing.” He nods to an interview he did with Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne a few years back in his day job as a culture journalist. “I remember him telling me, ‘When you get to this age, it’s not about just being with the lads anymore and having a good time – you’ve really got to love the music.’ I feel like that’s a realisation we’ve come to and that’s maybe why we are still here.”
“Me and Cav have always said that our day will come – we just don’t know when” – Austin Williams
“But also, what would we do if we weren’t doing this?” Fiquet says in a tone that suggests there is no alternative for him. “I’ve never not been in a band since I was 15, except for one month when I lived in London. I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“I saw someone in a band that makes a lot of money say, ‘All of our peers have given up’,” Williams adds. “It’s like, ‘Well, yeah, obviously – they haven’t been making money.’ It does feel sometimes like we’ve been left on the shelf, but I think it’s really important that we carry on to show that it’s possible for bands to do that.”
For those who believe in the band – whether fans, peers or colleagues – Swim Deep still elicit a huge passion. As we wait for our lane to be ready at the bowling alley, Ryder-Jones waxes lyrical to NME about the band’s talents in a way that could convince the staunchest non-believer. Midway through, he makes eye contact with Williams at the bar behind us, a bemused look on the frontman’s face. “She didn’t ask, but she wanted to know – I could see it in her eyes,” Ryder-Jones grins.
The next day, the producer isn’t quite as buoyant, that ticking clock getting ever louder. “It feels like there’s still a lot of work to be done,” he sighs, taking a drag of a cigarette. “It still feels like we haven’t quite cracked some things.” Whether they have time left to tend to those areas remains to be seen, but he’s sure of one thing. “They’re definitely going in the right direction. Sometimes it takes two or three records to settle into a new era. It can be a challenge to your audience, so you [just have to] keep putting out good quality records, which I think we are doing.”
‘Hum’ might not mark a fresh chapter for the band in terms of sound, but it feels like their energy has been refreshed by the addition of Buchanan. The new guitarist officially came into the line-up in spring 2025 after Robbie Wood had to quit due to the financial constraints of the band. “It’s completely changed the band, in my opinion,” Williams enthuses. “We never really want to use session musicians because, as great as they can be, we always want there to be a brotherhood.”
As they look ahead to what might come next in this rejuvenated family unit, there’s a pause to reflect on how much they’ve grown. “It feels like we’re much more complete and assured of ourselves,” Balmont suggests. “We know who we are as people now, and I feel like the music is much more wholesome and, in a way, more sophisticated. It just feels like us, like we’ve arrived at the conclusion of who we are.”
Back in the booth at the bowling alley, as balls clatter into pins, Williams’ mind turns to a romantic, optimistic streak that’s run through the band for years. “Me and Cav have always said that our day will come – we just don’t know when,” he smiles. Until that day arrives, Swim Deep will be here making music and sharing the stories that mean the most to them for as long as the world will let them.
Swim Deep’s ‘Hum’ is out on June 19 via Submarine Cat Records.
ON THE RISE
Bats tucked inside jackets, cats secretly brought into gigs in tote bags, and unexpected run ins with bikers hoping to take them away for a night out. It is safe to say that Boy Harsher have experienced their fair share of bizarre moments while touring. For Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller, though, these unusual encounters have become part of the job. The darkwave duo have spent years crafting haunting music driven by heavy synths, building a loyal community of equally unconventional fans along the way. This autumn, they returned with GET MEAN, their latest album, which has excited longtime listeners and attracted a whole new wave of fans. The release also marks their first major album tour since ending their relationship in 2024. Interestingly, their separation appears to have brought their musical partnership closer together, although learning to share the stage again was not always easy. “That was really a learn by fire situation,” Matthews says, remembering their first performances following the breakup. “I cried every day. But now we really have a system figured out.” Speaking from Eugene, Oregon, the two musicians discussed the challenges of touring after a breakup, emotional moments behind the scenes, and their late night McDonalds runs.
EMILY SANDSTROM: How has the response to the new album been?
JAE MATTHEWS: I think good. Gus is doing the thing where he is not in view, so he is just making funny faces at me. How has the response been, Gus?
GUS MULLER: I’m really trying not to read the comments, but it’s been fun to play live.
SANDSTROM: Do you get a lot of hate comments?
MULLER: Not reading the comments, so I wouldn’t know if they’re happy or sad.
MATTHEWS: I mean, people really love to scrutinize women in particular. So I’ve received a lot of interesting noise, but no one says jack shit about what Gus looks like. Gus said he couldn’t take it if they did.
SANDSTROM: That’s funny. But yeah, that’s a real thing.
MATTHEWS: Yeah. But generally, Gus is correct. I don’t want to read much about the album, but we’ve been playing these shows that have been nuts and people are singing along to the new material. And then, because the vibe has been so pleasant, sometimes I’ll go out and say hi to a couple people. I’m like, “Yeah, fuck it. I want to go out and say hi and take a couple selfies or whatever.”
SANDSTROM: Has that come back to bite you at all? Has anything weird happened or has anyone been kind of crazy?
MATTHEWS: I think the craziness is the fact that we have developed systems that generate complete neurosocial relationships and a lot of fandom now is circled around knowing the star intimately. So I think people meet me and they think they know me. They think they understand who I am, and that feels strange. I’m like, “I love that you love my music and I love that you support me, but I also need this boundary because you don’t know who I am.” I don’t have a stalker, which I am thankful for. But I sometimes definitely go wacky bananas. I almost got on a motorcycle in Macedonia because a fan was like, “You ever been on a crotch rocket? Let’s go.”
SANDSTROM: Wait, you should have gone.
MATTHEWS: My tour manager was like, “Jae, if you get on that bike, we won’t be able to trace you. You won’t have data. You potentially will be kidnapped.” I should have gone on the bike though.
SANDSTROM: Another bike will appear. What’s been your favorite stop thus far and least favorite stop, and why?
MATTHEWS: I think that we’re going to probably be sweet about our least favorite, because a musician once was asked, “Who do you think is the most overrated band right now?” And they said us, and it really fucking hurt my feelings. So now, I’ll never answer a question like that. But honestly, Denver and Detroit rocked it so insanely hard in ways that I was on stage taken aback. Denver is nuts too because it sold out really quickly, and people were in their element. There’s a lot of discourse on cell phone usage at shows, and I will say that if you have your phone down and you’re just dancing, I know that you’re embodying my music and that is the coolest thing to witness.
SANDSTROM: Do you feel like the crowd has changed a lot on this record? What does the average Boy Harsher fan look like now?
MATTHEWS: I think that crowds in general have changed a lot, period, not just for Boy Harsher. We’ve been very, very thankful to have a strong gothic community because they’re always fun and they look good. I wonder sometimes if there are more people who are accessing our music and being like, “Who are they?” But I’m never going to be mean or rude about that. The dream is to have everyone who wants to hear it and enjoys hearing it have access to my songs. I actually don’t think I’ve noticed, in terms of the crowd, different types of people, but I’m going to think about that right now.
SANDSTROM: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen someone bring into a show?
MATTHEWS: This one’s kind of easy for me because it’s also one of my favorite shows ever. We played Kyiv several years ago at this amazing club. I was outside before or after our set and there was this strange Ukrainian gothic person sitting there. They’re like, “Oh, they won’t let me come into your show because I brought my pet.” And I was like, “What? You brought your pet?” And they opened their jacket and they had a little bat.
SANDSTROM: Oh, no. I hate that so much.
MATTHEWS: Honestly, it was so cute though. I mean, I was worried. I was like, “Your bat definitely doesn’t want to go into a loud music show. They use sonar.” That would be awful.
SANDSTROM: I didn’t even know you could carry bats around like that. I thought they had more agency.
MATTHEWS: Maybe this bat was really needy and attached to them and it was a parental thing. It has come to a Boy Harsher show. Do you have any?
MULLER: Yeah, we did a record signing the other day and someone took their cat out of their tote bag to say hi.
SANDSTROM: Oh, no. Was it on a leash?
MULLER: It was just chilling. It was very polite.
MATTHEWS: It was on a figurative and a physical leash, for sure.
SANDSTROM: Wow, interesting. Do you guys have rituals before you play shows?
MULLER: I don’t, but I’m trying to. I’m playing guitar on this tour. I’ve been trying to warm up on guitar. Jae is just belting in the green room.
MATTHEWS: Yeah. I shut down the green room one hour before stage time where I’m allowed to be alone. I’m very, very social and people want to come into the green room to be like, “What’s up?,” and I can’t say no. I want to see them too. So I have to lock the door, have my TM be like, “Shh.” That hour is my hour to have my anxiety. I do my vocal warmups. I do my makeup most of the time. I’ll finally put the clothes on that I have to wear on stage. I obsessively read my lyrics because my number one nightmare is forgetting lyrics. Sometimes it helps, but a lot of times it just makes me more nervous.
SANDSTROM: Has anything gone wrong on stage yet or has there been a big mix-up?
MATTHEWS: On this tour, it’s been very good, hyper-professional. It’s almost as if we’ve been doing it now for over 10 years and we’re finally starting to figure it out.
SANDSTROM: What’s the worst thing that’s happened at a show?
MATTHEWS: This is my classic story. I fucked up big time at this huge gothic festival in Leipzig called Wave-Gotik-Treffen. Every single goth in Germany has their journey to Leipzig to go to the show, and it’s the first time we ever played in Germany. It felt like the pressure was really high. We roll up late because we’re coming from Berlin. I don’t eat. I just start drinking gin or something crazy, so I’m drunk, mistake number one. I walk onto stage. I don’t do my monitor mix because the sound engineer was like, “People will think it’s starting.” So I’m walking into a foreign monitor mix, and our set begins, and I am almost immediately totally lost. I rely on being able to hear the track in order to know where I sing. We were trying out a new song, a song that eventually was called “L.A.,” and I just messed it up completely. Then I started crying in front of everyone and I ran off stage. And I remember opening the curtains being like, “I got to get out of here.” My manager runs back and he’s like, “Please, please just go on stage, do ‘Pain.’ That is why they came here. Do ‘Pain’ and then you’ll be done.” I did “Pain,” but I was definitely blubbering a little bit. I swear to fucking god, I still run into Germans who are like, “I was there. I saw you cry on stage.”
SANDSTROM: Wow. I think that’s cool. It’s a theatrical and true expression.
MATTHEWS: I learned a lesson that day. I will never ever let that happen again.
MULLER: What, drink on an empty stomach?
MATTHEWS: Messing up the song is really what I mean. But yeah, I also don’t drink gin anymore, and I try not to have an empty stomach because that is pretty disastrous.
SANDSTROM: I imagine being on tour for that long takes a crazy toll on your body and mind.
MATTHEWS: It does. I feel like this tour, even though it is super professional and we have some more creature comforts, I’m feeling the weight of being on the road constantly and not sleeping well. I feel my age in a way that I think the tour has exaggerated the experience.
SANDSTROM: How do you guys get downtime? I know you have your ritual before, but any other indulgences?
MATTHEWS: I’ve been walking. We are in a city, so when I have some time, I try to walk somewhere. This is so sad to say, but I’ve been eating alone. That helps. Privacy is really, really hard to come by. I have found that if I go to a restaurant with my little book and eat some really overpriced sushi, I can have my Jae time. I tried to maintain some pilates, but it’s tough because you go to classes in random fucking cities and it’s so different. I was in a pilates class full of 22-year-old Mormon ballerinas and I was about to die, so that one’s a little more difficult.
SANDSTROM: That is very funny. I went on a work trip to Arkansas one time, and I was doing pilates with a bunch of Arkansas housewives who wore bright orange. It is different city to city.
MATTHEWS: I feel like you get used to your teacher too, and then having to figure out this one night stand with a different teacher—I don’t love that. I have really tight hamstrings and I just need my girl because she gets that.
SANDSTROM: I always want to know what people eat on tour because some people eat crazy.
MULLER: I’ve been eating pretty bad. And Jae, you’re not helping. You went to McDonald’s at midnight and got everybody chicken nuggets.
MATTHEWS: I really like chicken nuggets. Chicken’s something new in my life. I was a vegetarian for most of my childhood, and so I’ve just introduced chicken and wow. McDonald’s chicken nuggets? Chef’s kiss.
SANDSTROM: I don’t know if I’m the first person to ask you this, but how’s touring post-breakup?
MATTHEWS: It was really, really hard at first. Our first tour after the breakup was technically Coachella in 2024. That was really a learn by fire situation. I was a mess. I cried every day. It was tough. I think now we have really figured out a system. Gus and I care about one another and we respect each other, so I think we prioritize trying to maintain a professional relationship that serves Boy Harsher. I always answer this and I feel like I never hear Gus’s response.
MULLER: Well, I mean, you’re having fun. Jae’s having fun. Everyone’s having fun.
MATTHEWS: Oh my god.
MULLER: I think Jae’s having a lot of fun this trip. No?
MATTHEWS: Why don’t you talk about the breakup? Don’t talk about me.
MULLER: I guess having something to do just kind of normalized it. Yeah, we went on this crazy Coachella tour, and I mean, your mom had just died.
MATTHEWS: It was the one year anniversary of her death, the first Coachella night. So that is also why I cried. My life changed drastically in a very small span of time, and I had to learn how to adjust.
SANDSTROM: Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you for answering that. I don’t know if it was rude, but—
MATTHEWS: No, I mean, so much of the album is about heartbreak.
MULLER: And we’re on the album cover.
MATTHEWS: Yeah, exactly. This is the first time that Gus and I allowed our physical form to be so forefront. We’ve never really been in music videos or album artwork because I think we want to demonstrate this level of resilience. We really want to present Boy Harsher as this thing that could have easily just evaporated because we were going through so much, but we didn’t want that to happen.
SANDSTROM: When you guys are on tour, do you find time to write together or think about future stuff?
MATTHEWS: I can’t write. Oh, wait, Gus doesn’t agree.
MULLER: Well, it depends. I think we’ve gotten better at it. I think we got better at laptop art. We went on a tour last summer. We went to Tasmania. We were working in the studio on our days off.
MATTHEWS: We were invited to Dark Mofo. The thing about Tasmania is, when you go over there, you have to be there for a couple days to acclimate. And we worked in the most beautiful studio on the best FKA twigs remix ever that never saw the light of day.
SANDSTROM: Oh, you got to put that out. That sounds good.
MATTHEWS: We’ve got to leak it. But if we have days off, then studio days are really fun because you’re already exercising those muscles while performing every night, and then you just get really inspired by literally watching people respond to the elements of your music.
SANDSTROM: Final question: what’s your favorite song to play live and your least favorite song to play live, and why?
MULLER: Favorite song has been “Break Me” off the new record. My least favorite song to play is “Motion.”
MATTHEWS: “Motion” is a fan favorite song, and we’ve never played it live. It’s on Country Girl, so that’s a 2017 or ’18 release. Gus is a total grump when we play it. I think my favorite song, which was surprising, is a song on the new album called “Coming Home.” The first night we did that in Hudson, New York, I cried while I was singing it, but not out of delirium or anything. I suddenly had this surge of like, “Wow, I did it. We did it.” It’s a really fun song to play live because I sing about how I am suicidal, I was about to kill myself, and then it has such a ramp up that I think you can feel the joy. It’s very anthemic. My least favorite—that is tough. New songs are hard for me because I’m like, “Am I going to fuck this up?” We tried to do “Falling” the other night and I’m like, “Oh my god, don’t forget.” I’m just crazy anxious. Sometimes “Pain” is really hard for me to play live.
SANDSTROM: Yeah.
MATTHEWS: But sometimes it’s the best song ever. It drops, people are screaming like we’re the fucking Beatles, and then “Pain” starts and I just have this weird sense, like I’m just so sad or flat while people are still in it. This is going to be a weird comparison, but it’s almost like having sex with someone you don’t know.
SANDSTROM: I think I understand what you mean.
MATTHEWS: There is something enjoyable about it, but you’re missing that intimacy. And not everyone does this, but I certainly have sex for intimacy.
SANDSTROM: Right. So it’s almost like discovery, that song?
MATTHEWS: Or it’s like a dissociation or something. When I don’t feel the vibe, it’s probably because it’s a little bit of a dissociative experience, and maybe that’s what I’m reacting to.
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