fcukers’ explosive ascendance began downtown in New York City. In a fast-track three years spent amassing millions of streams, playing Glastonbury, Primavera, Lollapalooza, Coachella and in arenas supporting LCD Soundsystem and Tame Impala, they earned BBC Radio 1’s ‘Future Artist of the Month’, and spots on both Spotify and Amazon’s “Artists to Watch” lists. Audiences worldwide crave the party fugue state that the band’s riotous live shows design. Now, fcukers is releasing their debut album ‘Ö.’

The genre-bending album collages Dub, UK Garage, Trip Hop and 2000s Hip Hop with more modern sounds spontaneously merged in unique and measured ways. Minimal arrangements keep the tracks focused and to the point paired with the band’s staple mantra-like lyrics. ‘ö’ plays like a DJ set, taking the listener on a wild metaphorical night out.

While on the West Coast, in the week between Coachella sets, the band got coffee with Producer Kenneth Blume (FKA Kenny Beats). At his studio, they played a track they’d been contemplating for the album, Feel the Real. Unprompted, Blume suggested Wise and Lewis get in the room and just play. Within an hour, they had something, and ‘Ö’’s first single L.U.C.K.Y. came out of the session. Blume cleared his week. When fcukers returned to his studio Monday morning, Play Me was the first track laid down and cut within an hour. In two whirlwind weeks, with Blume bringing in heavy hitters like Dylan Brady (100 Gecs) and Tom Norris (Lady Gaga, Charli XCX, The Weeknd) to produce and mix, ‘Ö’ was essentially complete.

In late 2022, Shanny Wise met LA-born Jackson Walker Lewis in her native Lower East Side of Manhattan. A mutual friend introduced the two, both formerly in Indie Rock bands, foreseeing collaborative potential. Lewis was DJ’ing most nights downtown, playing the House music he listened to regularly, Armand Van Helden, DJ Sneak, Todd Terry and others of the era, while Wise was writing, experimenting with electronic music herself. They began meeting regularly, weekly at first, without urgency or expectation, making beats and playing around with different genres; a disco track, a techno loop, ideating and iterating, until it hit.

The band’s first released track Mothers, recorded in Lewis’s apartment, inspired them to play their first show at Baby’s All Right, delivering what Paper Magazine called, “an electric live performance, pumping up the whole room.” The band seemingly sprung out, fully formed, and have never wavered in identity. Lewis pounded the keyboard. A close friend danced topless at the back of the stage. The tightly packed crowd never stopped jumping as Wise’s hypnotic vocals transcended against the commanding beat and booming drums. The response was palpable, galvanic, and set fcukers’ fate in motion.

Sex Week, the rising New York duo of actor and musician Pearl Amanda Dickson and songwriter and producer Richard Orofino, released their debut, Sex Week EP, on August 30th via Grand Jury. Songs like, “Kid Muscle” showcase the band’s unique seductive sound and alchemy, pairing sprawling slowcore with black metal-inspired growls and sinister whispers. The result is an unsettling alien plod that Orofino says feels like “a song from another planet.”

The EP’s previous singles “Cockpit” and “Angel Blessings” have garnered considerable buzz for the band, receiving praise from Rolling Stone, PAPER, The FADER, Paste, Consequence, Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan, Nylon, and more.

Sex Week’s origin begins with a mixtape. A few years ago, Dickson made a playlist called Colorado 2 Omaha for a friend about to drive across the country to NYC. It stuck around after the journey and soundtracked countless nights in her friend’s apartment, so much so that her friend’s roommate, Orofino, would become obsessed with it. And with its creator. After a visit to New York, the pair immediately clicked and Sex Week was born. “Most of the artists on there – Liz Phair, Elusin, Walter Egan, Wolf Alice – we connected over,” says Dickson. “Then Richard returned the favor and showed me Judee Sill and Double Virgo.”

Soon after, the band released their debut single “Toad Mode,” a playful and entrancing song dotted with voice memos of their friend’s cat meowing. “With some of our songs, I want people to giggle and sing along, and with the others I want them to cry and scream,” says Dickson.

“I think we have very different approaches to writing which really works in our favor,” says Orofino. “I come from a more proper musical background so chords, production, and instrumentation come naturally to me while Pearl is a writer. Her lyrical concepts are so unique and I obsess over her melodies.”

But pressed to explain what they’re really chasing, ultimately Sex Week says it’s the intimacy invoked by the great duets & duos of the past: Stevie Nicks and Don Henley, Sonny and Cher, David Lynch and Laura Dern. That last non-musical pair might feel like a curveball, if not for the cinematic quality of the project. The “Angel Blessings” video feels like a fever dream pulled straight from Inland Empire. And Dickson & Orofino are proper polymaths who also direct videos for themselves and their Brooklyn friends in Babehoven, Bloomsday, and Palehound.