Out today (March 27) Fcukers’ debut album Ö is an accomplishment not only because its stylish, interesting and fun, but because for awhile it wasn’t clear if and when it would be made at all.
The New York dance-rock duo — Shanny Wise and Jackson Walker Lewis — released their debut EP Baggy$$ in 2024, with the project making them instant critical darlings and one of the buzziest new acts of the post-Brat dance scene. Songs like “Bon Bon” and “Homie Don’t Shake” put forth a sound merging electronics beats, guitar, flecks of disco and singer Shanny Wise’s helium voice, with project putting Fcukers squarely in the holy lineage of indie sleaze and DFA Records.
Amid the EP’s September 2024 release, Fcukers played taste-making festival including Portola and Pitchfork London, collecting fans including Billie Eilish and James Murphy. In February 2025 they were announced as the support act for Tame Impala‘s global 2025/26 Deadbeat Tour. The time was very much right to make a debut album, but the pressure to do so also was stifling.
“We didn’t expect to be touring for a year off an EP,” says Lewis. “It was this unexpected success, so then it almost felt like the debut album had the pressure of a debut, but also [the expectations] of a sophomore album. Usually with a debut, nobody knows what your vibe is yet, but we had established a vibe. So it was like, ‘Where do we take this?’
“I was feeling a lot of pressure,” Lewis continues. “There were a lot of people in my ear saying like, ‘Whatever you do, it has to be good.’ I hit a wall where I was like, ‘I can’t do this.’ I went to the label and was like, ‘No deadlines. You might not get any music this year. I’m not in [a] great spot.’”
Kismet intervened when Wise and Lewis were in Los Angeles around the time of their Coachella debut last April. Their manager had set up a meeting with lauded L.A. producer Kenneth Blume, long known as Kenny Beats. Blume had recently finished work on Geese’s debut Getting Killed, although that project wasn’t yet out. “So he wasn’t top of dome [for] everyone,” says Lewis.
He was barely top of dome for Fcukers. “We were on the way to something else,” Wise says of their first meeting with Blume. “We were literally just going to stop by for a coffee.” But the other afternoon plans were scrapped when Blume and Fcukers came up with two new songs during that first meeting, a breakthrough that effectively dissolved the pressure paralysis they’d been feeling. They cleared their schedule for the rest of the week and posted up at Blume’s studio.
“We ended up working with him for two weeks straight, and in that time wrote and recorded most of the album,” says Wise. While they’d brought two previously existing song ideas to these sessions, everything else was made from scratch. A key difference maker was their faith in Blume’s dexterity as a producer, which “freed us up to really just focus on writing and allowed us to do it so much faster,” says Wise. “It wasn’t like, ‘Does the kick drum sound good?’ We knew it was going to sound f–king great.”
The three artists got into an 11-hour workday rhythm that “was literally on some crazy,” says Wise. “We’d wake up, get coffee at nine, drive to his studio, work until 8:00 p.m., go to sleep and do the same thing again the next day.” They made three songs a day during the first week, using the second week to refine and narrow down the ideas, by which point the 11-track album was essentially done. Inspired by Prince’s symbol era, and deciding that “every word under the sun has been used for album titles,” they called the project Ö.
With additional production by Dylan Brady of 100 gecs, the album is out today on Ninja Tune, an insitution Lewis calls “one of the few labels out there that could really straddle a project that’s both a band and electronic.”
Before forming as Fcukers, Wise and Lewis, both 28, were each in myriad New York bands, with Lewis also DJing around town while working in bars. Members of the same social scene, they were formally introduced by a mutual friend, and together found a shared interest in shifting their creative focus to electronic music.
“I was DJing in New York a lot, and remember one of the first times I played Le Bain,” says Lewis. “I was like, ‘Okay, this is what it feels like to play a packed club.’ I was spinning vinyl and really into ’90s house and other dance music — so when Shanny and I met it wasn’t like a grand aspiration, but more thinking that it would be fun to make music like the music I was DJing.”
“I didn’t listen to any house music before I met Jackson,” adds Wise, “so I feel like we’re always coming at it from different sides in a cool way. Because I didn’t have any preconceived notion of what house music is, or how I should sing and sound. I think that maybe adds something cool to it.”
While both of them were adept with multiple instruments and each knew how to use a DAW, “When we first met Shanny was like, ‘Do you know how to make electronic music?’ and I was like, ‘No, but we can figure it out,” says Lewis. Ultimately, they locked in on a sound that mashes up genres and eras, bringing together trap, drum & bass, garage, R&B, rock and elements of the Y2K era artists they grew up with, like Nelly, Lily Allen, Outkast and Dizzee Rascal.
Fcukers will be presenting this hybrid sound to audiences during a 42-date tour extending from April 2 to September 20, with the run including headlining shows in North America and England, festival dates at Bonnaroo and Barcelona’s Primavera Sound, opening slots for six Rüfüs Du Sol shows in the U.S., and even a gig opening for Harry Styles this July 17-18 in São Paulo. Presenting music from an album they weren’t sure they could even make adds a special sort of thrill to experiences they’re already finding to be life-defining.
“We recently did three sold out nights in London and the crowds were crazy, singing all the words,” says Wise. “I got chills. I’ve toured a lot in other bands and have never felt that type of connection before. It’s sometimes easy to not realize growth as it’s happening little by little, but then there are those moments where it’s like, ‘Whoa, what the hell.’”
“We’ve made it way farther than I ever thought we would in my wildest dreams,” echoes Lewis. “Anything that happens beyond this is a bonus.”
