A CONVERSATION WITH... KEO
Missed Reading and Leeds 2025? We got your back with our 13 artists to watch. Next up is Keo, a fast-rising, alt-rock guitar band that’s focusing on making vulnerable music heard all across London.
Finn
This is Connor. He plays bass and he's my brother. He's a great brother and he's a great bass player.
Connor
This is Finn. He's the frontman. A very good one.
Finn
We're in Keo. And not here right now, we have Jimmy on guitar and Holly on drums. Jimmy's got an absurd amount of pedals and a problematic pedal addiction. Holly shamefully likes a bit of jazz music. Make of that what you will.
If someone was introduced to your non-jazz music this weekend, what would you want your music to say? What message are you trying to get across?
Finn
Hopefully, it digs deep. It feels like someone understands them. Like our songs were written just for them. I think the best music feels like it's your little secret, you know? So hopefully that's how it feels.
Square One
Another step for new listeners to understand your music, we do a thing at festivals called ‘Fuck/Smash, Marry, Kill’ for your own songs.
Finn
I’d probably fuck ‘I Lied, Amber’, I’d marry ‘Hands’, and I’d kill ‘Stolen Cars.’
The fans aren't going to like that. I’m sorry. I used to love ‘Stolen Cars’, but I would rather play it on an acoustic guitar. We kind of aren't at the point where we can have acoustic guitars in our live set. So until then, sorry.
Connor
I’m the same, honestly.
Some good consensus there. If there was another artist at Reading who would cover one of your songs in their style, who would you choose?
Finn
If AJ Tracey sampled ‘Kind, If You Will’, that would be like two complete opposite worlds combined. Maybe it would be funny, maybe it’d be cool.
What is a question that you wish you got asked in interviews?
Connor
We've never really been asked about our favourite albums. Mine’s Nirvana’s In Utero or Mac DeMarco’s Salad Days, especially ‘Blue Boy’. In Utero shaped a lot of my life and then I feel like that Mac DeMarco album really speaks to me.
Finn
Ben Howard’s second album, I Forgot Where We Were. It's probably the album that shaped me when I was younger. There are a lot of amazing albums I've listened to and fell in love with, but I seem to go back to that record a lot. Specifically, a song called ‘End Of The Affair’, because I feel like it really captures that vulnerable honesty that I think we want to capture in our songs.
What do you have planned for the rest of 2025 that you can share?
Finn
We're signing our first deal, which is cool, and therefore we'll probably be recording our first album.
Connor
And doing our first headline tour. Lot of first times and we're excited for all those things.
Finn
It did consume us a little bit at the beginning of the year. Deals in general are probably the most fucking soul-draining thing in the whole industry, aren’t they? Letting people down, watching people schmooze you and having to try and figure out if they're being honest. But when you do figure out who you want to sign with, and you let go of this stress, you just gotta let it not affect you. You have to count your blessings. I feel like we're pretty confident in where we're going with this.
What is a question that you'd like to leave for the next artist?
Finn
What's one song that came out in the last ten years that you wish you’d written? For us, it’d be ‘I Love You’ by Fontaines D.C.
What's been a moment of joy for you as a band so far?
Connor
Kendal Calling's definitely up there.
Finn
Kendal Calling and today had a very similar feeling about them. It’s a bit of a realisation for us that the band is growing and I don't think we expected the turnout that we got. We definitely didn't. It just gave us so much energy on stage. It was unbelievable.