Wolf Alice

London rock band Wolf Alice was originally formed as an acoustic duo. Frontwoman Ellie Roswell grew up attending the Camden School For Girls, learning to play guitar and write lyrics, and idolizing Kurt Cobain. After an unsuccessful debut at an open-mike night, she found guitarist Joff Oddie on an internet forum in 2010, and the two began playing in e folkish format.  This too proved unsatisfying and two years later they began a full band with the addition of drummer Joel Amey and bassist Theo Ellis. The band's spiritual kinship to '90s rock icons-Hole, the Pixies, Lush , Elastica-was evident from the start, and the following grew with a series of singles and EP's released over the next two years. The second single "Bros" in particular became a viral hit, with a video that underlined its theme of friendship between women. Their first full-length, 2015's My Love is Cool included remakes of the singles "Bros" and "Fluffy," plus four additional tracks ("Giant Peach," "You're a Germ," Freazy" and "Lisbon") that were released as singles. By now Wolf Alice was a full-fledged buzz band in the UK; the album peaked at No. 2 there and made end-of-year lists in The Guardian, New Musical Express and Q; they were also shortlisted for that year's Mercury Prize but lost to Benjamin Clementine (Roswell was one of the Mercury Prize judges the following year). They toured continuously for the first half of 2016, and were a hit at Lollapalooza and at Glastonbury. June 2017 brought a new single, "Yuk Foo." By far the most abrasive of their singles, with a lyric not destined for radio play, the song was partly inspired by Roswell's reading the alternative-rock history Our Band Could Be Your Life. They shifted gears on the followup single, "Don't Delete the Kisses," a sweeter love song that replaced their trademark guitars with synthesizers. Both appeared on the second album Visions of a Life, another UK hit which NME named the second-best album of 2017.