Sassyhiya are real-life as well as musical partners Kathy Wright and Helen Skinner. Shortly after meeting at a Rollerderby game (where Kathy was skating for the amazingly named Ultraviolent Femmes), the couple had their first date at an Austra show in 2011 and have been bonded in music ever since. A mixture of Television and The Sundays, Sassyhiya are the sweet spot between post-punk and indie pop. They know their way around a melody but still keep it wonky. Their influences range from the Breeders and Broadcast to The Go Betweens and Dolly Parton. After Helen finished playing bass in Boys Forever and Basic Plumbing (much missed Veronica Falls musician Patrick Doyle’s final projects), the couple joined with friends Bart McDonagh and Mark Amura to create the cult South London LGBTQ+ band Barry. As Sassyhiya, they released an EP in January 2022, Gum demos, which was written, played, recorded, and mixed themselves at home in Peckham over lockdown. A second EP. Live at Paper Dress Vintage, followed in November 2022, showcasing the band’s new live line up featuring Pablo Paganotto (of Punching Swans) on drums and Neiloy Mookherjee on guitar. They have recorded a live session for Resonance FM and were featured on an episode of cult YouTube music programme Cutscene TV. They have also been included on compilations for Loud Women and Related Records. They have shared bills with the likes of Fat White Family’s Brian Destiny, Big Joanie, Mr Ben and the Bens, Cable Ties, Fightmilk, Breakup Haircut, Lande Hekt and Snoozers. Their debut album, Take You Somewhere is out now via Skep Wax.

Charlie Kaplan is an independent songwriter from New York, a muisc writer and the bassist in New York art pop/soft rock trio Office Culture which just released its fourth album, Enough, in October. As a solo artist, Charlie had three LPs and two EPs out, all via the Glamour Gowns imprint: Sunday came out in 2020, followed by Country Life In America in 2023. Eternal Repeater, Kaplan’s latest solo album, which came out on November 1st, is a great folk rock work, and was produced by Nico Hedley.
About the album Charlie said: “My third album, Eternal Repeater, centers around mankind’s entropic inclination to cruelty and fear. To my ears, each successive song radiates out from the most private paranoias to, by the end of the album, the terrible form these atoms take in aggregate: mass panic, prejudice, demagoguery. I found this theme in the eerie mode of music I was writing, which recalled the spooky, northern English folk that seems to ooze out inevitably from heavy music from Pink Floyd to Ty Segall. I decided to put together a playlist of sounds like these to illustrate why my ear led me to paint this picture, one that combines both tempting sweetness and an abiding darkness“.