“I’m more obsessed with guitar now than I’ve ever been in my life,” professes Finn Keogh. Although Keo’s frontman and rhythm guitarist has been toying around with his dad’s Yamaha acoustics, banjos and mandolins since primary school, his first true love was songwriting, not his six-string. “I know it sounds mad, but I’m going through a Hendrix phase right now. It took me all this time…”
The ying to Keogh’s yang is lead guitarist Jimmy Lanwern, dubbed the “final fit” for the London alt-rock quartet after many had attempted the role. Gripped by Hendrix, Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis and all sorts of 90s alt-rock, Lanwern’s “conventional guitar heroes” route explains why you’ll generally catch him with a Jazzmaster or Jaguar. “I don’t know if it’s quite obvious,” he jokes through his dark mop of hair, “but Jonny Greenwood was a huge influence on me.”
Although Keo had been slaving away on the London gig circuit for a couple of years, Lanwern’s introduction sparked a significant shift in their fortunes. By his third gig, they’d secured an agent, manager and played at Scala, as mutterings of the capital’s next great guitar act intensified while they consciously held back music. Closer in age than their bandmates, Keogh and Lanwern’s friendship is key to their synchronicity with the guitar.
“I actually saw his pedalboard before anything, because I was fed up with playing with guitarists [who] would turn up without a pedalboard,” Keogh explains. “If you invite someone to rehearsal and they plug their Les Paul into the fucking black Boss Katana, they might be able to shred….” He politely declines to finish that sentence, but in Lanwern, he found a player who had substance to his style. “I was more serious about tones than I was about my playing, and I think that’s the reason it works,” Lanwern tells Guitar.com.
The Sound Of Sirens
After breaking the deadlock last March with debut single I Lied, Amber, Keo’s debut EP Siren followed in June. Every strum of the guitar feels intentional and raw, finding a moody middle ground on songs like Hands and Thorn. Rarely driven by catchy riffs and hooks, there is a sense that Keo are steadily curating their own wall of sound, albeit with much more of an indie twang than the haze of The Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine.
“We definitely think more about soundscaping,” explains Keogh. “Not just throwing on an overdrive and going, ‘This is the scale and this is a lick.’ [Creating] an atmosphere more than anything, that’s what I love about Jimmy’s playing.” In conversation with Keogh today, his charismatic but pensive nature resembles a bandleader who cares deeply about each moving part within that atmosphere.
Perhaps destined to become a frontman, Keogh admittedly resonates with lead singers more than guitarists, picking up playing habits from friends and peers. “My old friend used to really aggressively swing his neck after every chord, and it’d have this nice vibrato,” he explains – a trait that he’s transferred onto Lanwern. “Not only did it look cool, but you’re changing the pitch – ever so slightly – of that chord. It’s almost like shaking the slide on a fret.”
Admitting he fell in love with Ben Howard’s “percussive” pick-and-go technique and early Keo songs attempted to recreate Pearl Jam’s Daughter, the framework for Keo clicked into place when he stopped looking to other artists for inspiration. While he also writes solo material – and has recently penned a global publishing deal with Universal – he’s realised any rules for what defines a Keo song are made-up.
“Every band starts by looking for [their sound], and it takes them a long time to not,” he elaborates. “You’ll get two years down the line and always drop those songs. The best songs, for me, you’ve got everyone in the room after going, ‘Where does that come from?’ Almost like trying to figure out your ancestors or giving it a DNA test. ‘Why did that sound like that?’ The best influence naturally comes out, rather than thinking about it.”
The Kids Are Alright
TikTok has aided Keo’s early buzz, despite their alt-rock serving as the antithesis to the commercial sounds you’d expect to go viral. At their shows, you’ll find rooms dominated by teenagers, a characteristic shared by bands like Fontaines D.C. and Wunderhorse in recent years. Keo’s sound has drawn unavoidable comparisons to the latter, and there’s a sense they are next in line to follow them through to academies and arenas. On this month’s upcoming UK tour, they’ve shifted 3,000 tickets in London alone.
“I think we get an unfair amount of criticism for jumping on some bandwagon with Wunderhorse and Fontaines,” muses Keogh. “But I can wholeheartedly say that since the dawn of time, I wanted to make a band that was Pearl Jam-esque, Nirvana-esque, Radiohead-esque. I will give kudos to Wunderhorse and Fontaines, because when I saw them very early on, it was quite reassuring to see how people were doing guitar music in a new fashion. We definitely took a lot of influence from those bands, but we were already on our way to figuring out how to make something new.”
“I remember a period of time where I was really frustrated, that I was into all this old music, and no one else I was mates with seemed to really be into it,” recalls Lanwern. “Meeting Finn and the boys and seeing bands like Wunderhorse and Fontaines, it does reassure you.” At their gigs, both Keogh and Lanwern see snippets of their younger selves in the audience: the fan undergoing that eureka moment, finding others who love good old-fashioned rock music.
“You can see them coming to your shows, it’s like they’ve had this secret on their chest for their whole lives,” says Keogh. “They discover our band, and they’re like, ‘Fuck, I get this, and maybe only I get this,’ and I think that makes it more valuable to them. Everyone else that comes to the shows feels the same, and then suddenly you’ve got all of those people in a room, a bit of a scene going, and a community.”
At the time of writing, just four guitar bands are on the Reading & Leeds 2026 line-up, a festival that has always existed as a pillar of youth. They are Fontaines D.C., Florence and the Machine, Geese and Keo. Having already performed on its BBC Introducing Stage, do Keo feel the pressure of the festival’s guitar-rich heritage, as if they’re flying the flag for the next generation of guitar bands?
“To say we’re carrying the torch is quite a big thing to claim, but it is quite a surreal thing for it to be growing so quickly, and I feel like we’re almost trying to catch up with it,” responds Lanwern. “It’s hard to accept, mentally, where we are,” adds Keogh. “When you’re coming up, there’s this imposter syndrome here and there, but within Keo now, we’ve honed our craft so much and truly put in the hours. There is also now this confidence of, ‘We are the real deal,’ because we’ve fucking gone through everything we needed to go through.
“When we go to Reading, the mindset is that we are competing for that ‘spearheading band.’ We do feel like we’re on the tail of those bigger bands, and we’re putting everything we fucking have into this band. If you put enough effort into something, you feel like you’ve gained enough knowledge and earned your stripes, essentially. The shows give you adrenaline. You want those shows where all eyes are on you – where it freaks you out.”
With just one EP to their name, everything about Keo’s attitude, sound and decision-making points towards a band destined for greatness. Such is the confidence in their live show that only last month, they released their Live At Village Underground film in independent cinemas around the UK. Now, speaking to Guitar.com in between studio sessions, they are readying their next move.
“A band gets to a certain point where you almost start referencing yourself, and you’re not thinking about other bands,” concludes Keogh. “It takes years to get to, but in the last six months, there’s no need for [explanation]. Keo has got its own blueprint now, it’s going down its own lane, and that really fucking excites me.”
Keo will tour the UK from 5-15 March 2026.