And so it begins. With a fuck off rave siren no less. That gets only gets louder and louder before being joined by a twisted & tortured vocal and an obnoxious Hard House/Techno beat. Sextile‘s new album, yes, please. is a fucking riot and it’s out now via Sacred Bones.

The LA duo comprising Melissa Scaduto & Brady Keehn invites Electro-clash, Techno, New Wave and a whole tonne of bass to the rave that is their fourth album. But behind the beats, the pair tell stories of being high at the cash & carry, waking up in NY state-run nursing home and empowering both themselves and others to resist the oppressive power of a conservative government. It is in fact, this track, ‘Resist’ that speaks to Loverboy the most and when performing it live, Scaduto finds herself ragged of voice, holding back the tears.

This summer Sextile bring the party to the UK this summer playing Wide Awake Festival & Dot to Dot as well as headlining dates across the country before hitting the continent. To celebrate the release of Yes, Please, Loverboy caught up with Sextile to talk the strategic use of a cowbell, driving into the void and forever hoping to bump into Bez when playing Manchester.

Okay, Brady, Melissa, thank you so much for this amazing album. It’s fucking loud and slaps. It’s nostalgic and futuristic at the same time. You said the album is a testament to living and never looking back. Patrick Wolf recently said if there’s one thing that makes him shudder, it’s nostalgia. How much sentimentality do you allow yourself with nostalgia?
Mel: I think we all experience nostalgia. I’m not sure who Patrick Wolf is, but I’m not really sure why that would make him shudder. But I hear nostalgia in everything. You can’t help but live in this world, get older and experience nostalgia. It just happens when you don’t even expect it to. But especially within music. I don’t know if nostalgia is necessarily in our record though.
Brady: Yeah. For me, nostalgia didn’t influence the record. There was a nostalgia for a New York house party vibe that we experienced, you know, early aughts and stuff. Maybe that was the only nostalgic influence in it.

When you were approaching making Yes Please, how did you want to differentiate it from your previous work? Was there a phase, idea, reference that would come back to?
Mel: We’re always trying to move forward. It’s never about specific phrases — it’s more about ideas and references, whether that’s other bands, life experiences, movies, whatever. Sometimes it was more like, ‘Let’s start with a gabber kick drum, because we’ve never done that before.’ There’s rarely just one direct reference point.
That said, sometimes a track will have a clear inspiration. Like with ‘Freak Eyes’ we were referencing ‘House of Jealous Lovers’, because that track is just undeniably a banger. It’s that fucking cowbell. We also made ‘S Is For’ during that same period, and both have that dance-y, high-energy vibe. But I wouldn’t say the rest of the songs had specific references.
Brady: Right. I think what sets this record apart is that we really tried to pull in different genres we love and explore new territory. We also spent a lot more time writing lyrics. This is actually our longest record, and it has more lyrics than any of our previous ones.

I truly feel the cowbell is one of the most underrated instruments. Can you tell us about the power of unconventional instruments, what you use on Yes Please and your favorite sound on it?
Brady: Yeah, actually all the cowbells and percussion sounds on the record were created using modular synths. Over the past year or two I’ve been diving deep into sound design and synthesis using these newer, contemporary tools, like Make Noise, made by modern instrument builders.
As an artist today, I think it’s really important to celebrate the people creating instruments right now, not just rely on vintage synths that have been used for decades. If you want to make new sounds, you have to explore new instruments and new ways of making music. That was a big focus for me on this record. So yeah, there’s a lot of weird, different textures — alien bongos and all kinds of unexpected sounds.
As for my favorite… hmm. I think the bassline on ‘Rearrange’ stands out. There are these cool, broken-up, disintegrating sounds that come in during the transitions. I’ve always felt really connected to those, they feel new and different, but still carry rhythm and emotion.

This is definitely a running through the city album for me. Is there a location where you envision people listening to it?
Mel: I imagine it being heard in most major cities. It feels good driving through LA. I can imagine it sounding great on a subway, in headphones. When we were mixing it, I was periodically going to the gym and listening to it on headphones to make sure it worked. I remember texting Brady like, ‘Yo, I just listened to it at the gym, this is going to be a banger.’ That’s when I knew it just worked, kind of vibing with that bustling, city-life energy.
Brady: We have no manager right now and we’re just go, go, go, all the time. I mean, we’re doing this interview on a Sunday morning. It’s just nonstop for us. I think that carries into the record, and it kind of reflects city life, that constant hustle.

When I played ‘Freak Eyes’ to a friend he said, ‘Recession Music is back!’ I confess I had not heard of this genre before! I wondered if you identified with this tag at all?
Mel: All right, we just looked up what recession music is. Yeah, I mean, if it’s focused on escapism, okay. Talking about how shitty these times are, especially politically, worldwide. So many wars and oppression of everybody seems like it’s back. World leaders, in general, just obviously don’t give a shit about the people. So yeah, I could see that, because we are  literally waving a flag that says People Above Politics. We’re trying to incite freedom.
Brady: Yeah, I mean, if it’s about escapism…what was the other part?
Mel: It said ‘Fast tempos, catchy lyrics, and focusing on partying and escapism.’
Brady: Yeah, absolutely, I identify with that. I think one thing we’ve been talking about recently is that, like Melissa was saying, times are extremely hard right now. But the environment we’re trying to create for our fans is exactly that—escapism.
Mel: But we’re obviously creating it for ourselves, by trying to create it for other people. Dancing is one of the greatest highs you can get in this world—besides cuddling with an animal you love. So I try to do both of those all the time.

There have been so many different genre tags used to describe your sound that I think they are all kind of meaningless and we need a new one. If you were creating a singular word genre to describe your current sound what would it be?
Mel: I don’t know. I feel like the energy of Sextile is punk, ultimately. We literally do everything ourselves, so we’re punk as fuck. But we’re also some weird bastard version of techno too, so I don’t know. I don’t have a name for what we do.
Brady: I mean, I was going to say punk too. Punk isn’t drums, bass, guitar, and some dude screaming over it anymore. That’s not what punk is now.

Can you tell us about the importance of being DIY and how it affects your sound? Do you always see yourselves keeping it DIY?
Mel: I mean, look, even sometimes paying money to get things done doesn’t mean it’s going to be good. I’ve realized over time that if you really want to make the art you envision, you have to do it yourself, as we’ve learned.
Financially, we don’t always want to be a DIY band to the point that it burns us out, because we’ve definitely been there—overworked and underpaid, like a lot of musicians. But we’ve slowly been able to hire a sound guy, and those are the things I don’t want to keep DIY. I’d love to get help there.
But when it comes to music videos, merch, artwork—it doesn’t always work out unless we do it ourselves. So I’m kind of glad we were forced to learn how to mix. Our music wouldn’t sound the way it does if Brady didn’t mix it. He just has this ability that others don’t. And it’s because he honed it himself—because he had to.
Same goes for me, with figuring out our aesthetics. When I don’t control it, things go off course. We want to do stuff ourselves, but with our homies. We want the whole team to win.

‘Resist’ just goes in so hard with that beat and the vocal too which comes from the song’s message about abortion rights. Melissa, you were saying how you feel sad playing the song now considering the change in laws in so many states. How is your relationship with the song now?
Mel: The song now represents, to me, just oppression, of everybody. It’s hard because a lot of our audience are girls, gays, and theys. And I’m singing this song to them, and while I’m singing it, it makes me want to cry. I can’t even deliver the vocal with anger when the sadness comes in, because I feel like it’s not fair for us to lose our rights as people. I don’t want anyone in this world to be oppressed.
Everything going on within the trans community, and women worldwide, it’s really tough. Everything happening in Gaza. It’s a struggle to sing that song, because at this point it represents oppression of all people to me. And just the sentiment too, of resist.
So I don’t know. Honestly, the album hasn’t even come out and already my voice cracks when we sing it live, because I’m always on the verge of tears. And because we end with that song, I’ve walked off stage and cried.
I’m grateful that I can run around and wave a flag for freedom for all, and say that on that stage—and that so many women and gays and theys are looking at me with these massive smiles, raging with us. It’s a combination of all of it. I’m a very sensitive person.

‘99 Bongos’ is such a left turn. I love it. Tell us about how this track came to be, the sequencing of it and what does it feel like driving into the void?
Mel: Well, that song is crazy because we worked on it forever. Brady started it on tour, in the van, with a modular synth—making these insane bongo sounds with the synthesizer—and then played it to me. He had a different title for it, and I joked around and said, ‘Let’s call it 99 Bongos.’ We thought it was kind of funny. Not 100, but 99. It reminded me of 99 Records from New York too, which is a no wave label I love.
But ‘99 Bongos’, we almost dumped it. We worked on it so much, trying to make it work, because we really loved the bongo sounds. Then it sort of went in a direction that had Primal Scream, Screamadelica, Andrew Weatherall energy, Happy Mondays energy.
While we were in the studio, I was telling the story of taking acid as a teenager with my friends, getting arrested at the Cash and Carry supermarket in Florida—all this bullshit. Our friend Cesar was working in the studio with us, and we had him get on the mic, trying to come up with vocals for 99 Bongos. He basically just told the story I was talking about. That’s why he says, “We were just driving into the void,” which is a reference to being on acid, driving down a dark country road in Florida, with the white things from the road flying up at us, where we couldn’t tell what we were driving into.
Brady: Yeah, I can’t remember what came first—your story or the lyrics—but either way, they’re very in line with it. The lyrics are about taking chances and living in different ways—not being stuck on a linear path. It’s about jumping a fence, smoking a cig, never paying rent—that type of vibe. Being a teenager. Being free.

I love that in so many interviews, you name check UK musicians; Damon, Prodigy, Andrew Weatherall, Yes., Primal Scream, Brian Eno. It takes a lot for me to feel patriotic, but music definitely does. Can you tell us why you love UK music and what you think makes it special?
Mel: Honestly, I’m so obsessed with so much music from the UK. I do find the UK a very hard place to live and I wonder, why did so much good music come out of this difficult-ass place? When we’re on tour there, half the venues don’t even have a toilet seat for me to take a leak. I don’t feel like you get paid well in the UK to make music either. I honestly think — maybe living hard contributes to so many people making groundbreaking things there. I’ve thought about this with American music too, because so much great stuff has come out of the U.S., and we also have a government that doesn’t support creativity.
In the UK and US, there just aren’t many opportunities for working-class people to make art. Weirdly, I read Bobby Gillespie’s Tenement Kid. He came from nothing and he still became part of something huge. Brian Eno went to art school and had some privilege, but a lot of people didn’t. It seems like a lot of musicians in the UK were on the dole.
Brady: When the government supports your living and basic needs, and you’re 18, 19, 20 — you’re able to live off barely anything and use that time to make music and art. So even if life was rough, they had the opportunity to really focus creatively.
Mel: I have to say, when we’re on tour in the UK, part of what I romanticize is that whatever town we’re in, I’ll put on music from that place. So if we’re in Sheffield, I’ll listen to Cabaret Voltaire. I romanticize the areas like crazy. In Manchester, I’m always hoping to run into someone — like Bez from Happy Mondays or whoever — I still hope for that. We’re about to tour the UK in May with ten dates, and I’m really hoping Joe Gilgun, the actor, pops up in Manchester somehow.

Lastly we are named after the biggest-selling single of 2001 and always ask what is your favourite Mariah Carey song?
Mel: Wow.
Brady: I never had a Mariah Carey phase.
Mel: She’s a little sass queen. It’s gotta be ‘Someday’. So old, it came out in 1990. I guess because I was a kid, I used to love that song. I remember the video very clearly; she’s on these stairs singing. But I was never a huge Mariah Carey fan, so I’m not sure it’s a great one. Actually, some of her mid-90s stuff might appeal to me more now. I’ll have to revisit Mariah Carey. She’s a great vocalist. Honestly, her Christmas song is one of the best there is. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite, though. My favorite is ‘Christmas Catalog’ by Captain Sensible, which is very different.

yes, please. is out now.
Sextile tour UK/EU this summer.