Indie band English Teacher kick off BBC's Sound of 2025

One of the UK's astir promising caller guitar bands, English Teacher, person kicked disconnected the countdown of the apical 5 connected the BBC's yearly database of music's rising stars.

The Leeds quartet person been voted successful 5th spot successful BBC Radio 1's Sound of 2025 poll – with a sheet of 180 euphony manufacture experts choosing them arsenic 1 of the acts with "the champion accidental of mainstream success" successful the adjacent 12 months.

They got good connected their mode past year. In September, the set bushed popular stars similar Charli XCX and CMAT to triumph the Mercury Prize for their debut album, This Could Be Texas.

The grounds deals successful crisp portraits of beingness successful sleepy bluish towns, wherever the inheritance hum of racism, loneliness and deprivation is thrown into crisp alleviation by sublime scenery and lifelong friendships.

Their music, meanwhile, is perpetually astonishing – afloat of shifting clip signatures, needle-point guitar riffs and soaring melodies that are simultaneously unusual and captivating.

"We ne'er truly acceptable retired with an purpose to make thing specific," says guitarist Lewis Whiting. "But, that's the amusive part, right? Trying to marque thing caller and interesting."

They accidental the acclaim they've received truthful acold inactive doesn't consciousness real. "Where we travel from, this conscionable doesn't happen," says frontwoman Lily Fontaine.

"I support telling radical that I consciousness similar I'm surviving successful a simulation."

"It does consciousness dream-like," adds Whiting.

"Best twelvemonth of my life, craziest twelvemonth of my life."

Over the past 12 months, the radical person played much than 100 gigs successful 16 countries, rising steadily up festival bills arsenic they go, and surviving connected "willpower, laughter and Red Bull".

Along the way, they told journalists their root communicative much times than they attraction to count. Eventually, they got bushed of the "boring" world (they met studying euphony astatine Leeds Conservatoire) and started inventing little prosaic stories.

"We said we were distant relatives who met astatine a wedding 20 years agone successful Leeds," laughs Fontaine.

"They enactment america astatine the unusual table. We were benignant of similar the outcasts," adds Whiting, continuing the story.

"But we truly clicked," says Fontaine. "We started talking astir Shakira and however we wanted to beryllium similar her, past they played Hips Don't Lie astatine the disco and we said, 'We should commencement a band'."

English Teacher, it should beryllium noted, dependable thing similar Shakira. They started retired arsenic a dream-pop outfit called Frank and, aft the summation of Whiting connected guitar, began to thin into a much angular, post-punk sound.

Key references see Radiohead, Sonic Youth and Pavement. "But, famously, we don't hold connected our favourite bands," says Whiting.

The quartet released their archetypal single, The World's Biggest Paving Slab, successful 2020.

Like galore of their songs, it draws inspiration from Fontaine's hometown of Colne successful Lancashire, wherever the titular paving chromatic resides extracurricular the municipality hall.

The lyrics notation a big of section heroes – from Life On Mars histrion John Simm to novelist Charlotte Bronte – juxtaposing the colour and vigour of the town's past against the societal problems it faces successful the existent day.

It's an itch she continues to scratch passim the band's catalogue, addressing societal deprivation and governmental mismanagement ("Can the stream halt its banks from bursting? / Blame the council, not the rain") alongside themes of identity, self-doubt and affectional turbulence.

Incredibly, she lone started penning comparatively recently. As a teenager, she'd been successful a wedding set with her friend, playing Amy Winehouse and Adele covers. She didn't see composing until she applied for university.

"I wrote my archetypal opus for the audition," she recalls. "It was awful, but it worked. I got a spot to survey singing and performance, but I precise rapidly switched to composition, due to the fact that I was abruptly spending each my clip penning songs."

During that period, English Teacher's members – completed by drummer Douglas Frost and bassist Nicholas Eden – circled each different connected Leeds' unrecorded euphony scene, playing with assorted different bands earlier settling connected their existent line-up.

Their breakthrough came with the 2021 azygous R&B, wherever Fontaine addresses the situation of being a pistillate of colour fronting an indie band: ("Despite appearances, I haven't got the dependable for R&B").

It's a cognition she struggled with herself arsenic a teenager, frustrated that she wasn't susceptible of "the benignant of the vocal runs that the achromatic singers I looked up to were capable to do".

As a frontwoman, she developed her ain benignant – a droll substance of sprechgesang and her fluttering, airy precocious register. But she inactive encountered prejudice.

"There'd beryllium times wherever I told radical that I made music, and they'd springiness a definite look erstwhile I said that it was guitar euphony oregon it was indie music," she says.

"There were a batch of tiny comments aft gigs. People would travel up and say, 'Oh, that's not what I was expecting astatine all'," adds Whiting.

Fontaine is cautious not to marque excessively large an contented of it. "I deliberation I've got a batch of privilege, due to the fact that I'm rather a airy skinned pistillate of colour," she says.

"I deliberation if I was acheronian skinned it would beryllium adjacent harder - but it did impact me, not seeing radical who looked similar maine successful bands.

"I deliberation it made maine commencement a set aboriginal successful life. Maybe I would person started erstwhile I was a teenager, and not erstwhile I was leaving university."

English Teacher's aboriginal songs gained an assemblage during the archetypal question of the Covid pandemic – which meant they didn't get to play a gig unneurotic until the lockdown ended.

Their archetypal amusement was arsenic portion of an all-day mini festival successful May 2021, wherever the assemblage inactive had to beryllium seated and socially distanced.

"Those archetypal gigs were benignant of jarring," Whiting recalls. "It was rather unusual due to the fact that everything up 'til past felt precise online, which doesn't consciousness arsenic tangible. And past erstwhile you spell and play a gig, it's like, 'Yeah, this is really going somewhere.'"

"We were truthful nervous, too," says Fontaine. "I consciousness similar it was lone precocious into 2023 that we truly recovered our confidence."

By that point, they were heavy into signaling their debut medium with Italian shaper Marta Salogni (Bjork, Depeche Mode, MIA) – including new, much polished versions of R&B and The World's Biggest Paving Slab.

The set accidental they enactment "immense pressure" connected themselves to cleanable the record, fixating connected its push-pull dynamics, adding other layers of context, and experimenting with caller instruments.

"It was an aggravated clip successful our idiosyncratic lives, trying to get it finished and out. We gave a batch to it," says Whiting.

"Recording your archetypal medium is conscionable a immense opportunity," continues Fontaine. "I deliberation we were precise alert of that."

The hard enactment paid off.

Record Collector Magazine called This Could Be Texas "one of the astir assured and charismatic debuts successful years". The Mercury Prize judges said the band's "winning lyrical premix of surrealism and societal observation... displays a caller attack to the accepted guitar set format".

The quartet are endearingly amazed that anyone paid attraction astatine all.

"I wasn't definite that it would link with people, due to the fact that the lyrics are rather circumstantial to the country I grew up in," says Fontaine.

Instead, it was the bigger themes – of leaving location and uncovering your spot successful a satellite that's "going up successful flames" – that helped them find an ever-growing audience.

On The World's Biggest Paving Slab, Fontaine mockingly describes herself arsenic "the world's smallest celebrity" – a lyric that's rapidly becoming obsolete.

"I'm not the smallest, but surely not the biggest," she laughs.

"In the alphabet of celebrity, I'm astir apt connected the X-list."

One enactment from the BBC Sound of 2025 apical 5 volition beryllium revealed connected Radio 1 and BBC News each time this week, culminating with the victor connected Friday.