Perhaps you’ve seen them in their tiny sunglasses on Fallon. Frontwoman Shanny Wise swaying in a skintight black top, Jackson Walker Lewis plugging away at the keys as a crew of desultory downtown types limply smolder in the background: The New York electronic duo is performing its dub-house single “I Like It Like That.” It’s quintessential Fcukers: a laid-back, minimalistic thumper that’s a little inane and very infectious. The gibberish lyrics (“I tell ’em hit the beach, hit the bongo/I tell ’em beep-beep ’cause I wanna go”) hit like Cocomelon for club kids. The first few times Wise sings “I like it like that,” you’re simply bobbing to the beat. By the 12th, the phrase begins to feel slippery and postverbal, like a conversation with the mirror while rolling on molly. By the 33rd time, you’re transfixed. Tiny sunglasses have now appeared on your face.
Sexy, blasé dancefloor hypnosis has clearly worked for Fcukers. In the past two years, they’ve opened for Justice, Tame Impala, and LCD Soundsystem; DJed for Hedi Slimane at Paris Fashion Week; and amassed fans like Billie Eilish, Charli XCX, and Julian Casablancas, all off the hype of 2024’s Baggy$$ EP. Their first-ever show, at Brooklyn’s Baby’s All Right in 2023, sold out when they only had one single to their name (the lovelorn house banger “Mothers,” uploaded just hours before the set). By the time they appeared on the cover of NME, they’d released four songs. It seemed all you needed to know about Fcukers was that they didn’t need to try very hard to have a good time.
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On Ö, the New York indie sleaze-adjacent group that’s best poised to break downtown containment attempts to cement these vibes in music. Completed in a two-week blitz with Kenneth Blume (fka Kenny Beats), their debut album stakes out their vision of easy, deadpan cool. Fcukers know their reputation—club rats, downtown hedons—and play to it: “In my blond hair, white Nikes/Make the whole club wanna fight me,” Wise chants gamely over chintzy horns and sparse drum machines on “Shake It Up.” Turn one way and her languid, deadpan vocals are wondrously dreamy and suggestive, like on Dylan Brady-assisted tracks “L.U.C.K.Y” and “Butterflies,” where club grime sounds almost blissfully innocent: breathy whispers full of shy flirtation, soundtracks for long summer evenings dancing close. Turn another way, though, and Wise’s delivery comes out in the dead-eyed, Xanax’d-up model-off-duty drawl of “Beatback.” Here, she’s not archly looking away; she’s just not looking at you, or anything.
Though Fcukers are often lumped with acts like Snow Strippers and the Hellp, the sound of Ö is more rooted in, say, Groove Armada or Basement Jaxx rather than the Crystal Castles-indebted electroclash of their peers. The fixation on clubland across the pond produces a mixed bag. On dub-infused “TTYGF,” it works: Saint Vincent-born rapper Skiifall’s patois-laced verses melt into a libidinous swamp of strangled horns and wubby bass, a brilliant accompaniment to Wise’s icy taunts: “You say you’ll love me till the world ends/Why don’t you just go/Why don’t you tell it to your girlfriend.” Trippy and pheromonal, the song evokes the 3 a.m. underbelly of a night out, when good times smudge into a nightmarish haze. “Play Me” is similarly entertaining, propelling a drum’n’bass rhythm into a Triggaman break; Wise’s demented-baby rap is the cherry on top. But “Lonely” speeds by on generic garage beats, and Wise’s delivery is weirdly deflated compared to the similarly UKG-inspired “Butterflies.” The string-laden downtempo closer “Feel the Real” stands apart, evoking Portishead and Saint Etienne while lacking its predecessors’ fullness and melancholy. It’s a gentle comedown that leaves a dull hangover.