AFTER a hugely busy 2024 which saw them tour all over the UK and further afield, swim school are back and ushering in an exciting new era with the release of their new single ‘Heaven’.

The new single is a triumph – opening with a dark, heavy, dirty riff and driving forward with a propulsive drumbeat and a delectably catchy chorus. Showing their darker, heavier side, it’s imbued with the influence of 90s alternative bands, while still shining bright as a classic swim school track.  On the week of its release, singer Alice Johnson talks us through the bands’ inspirations behind their upcoming material, their ambitions for 2025 and much more.

How does it feel to be named as one of Ticketmaster’s Breakthrough Artists of 2025?

To be named as one of Ticketmaster’s Breakthrough Artists for 2025 really means the world to us, we’ve got a really exciting year planned and to have that level of support means the world to us – alongside the support from our fans too. I think it’s really gonna push us in a good direction, and the right direction – helping us level up massively.

Can you tell us what your ambitions are for your busy year ahead?

We’ve got really big ambitions for 2025, our main one being releasing our debut album which we’ve already started recording. we’re just really excited to get a big body of work out there, we’ve never really done it before, only EP’s – so now this feels a wee bit different and is a bit more special.

“You always hear those stories of once a band releases their debut album, that’s when things start taking off, and we couldn’t be more excited for it!

“We also can’t wait to get out there, playing more shows, playing  new cities and countries – we’re really excited. And we have kind of changed the live set up as well, so we’re really excited for this year. Out of the five years we’ve been doing this, 2025 feels like  the big year and we cannot wait to see what it has in store.

The trio’s highly anticipated headline show at London’s 100 Club as part of Dork’s ‘Here Comes Your Jan’ series is now sold out, featuring support from She’s In Parties and Cosmorat.

What are your inspirations behind the new material?

The inspirations for our album and new material is kind of based on everything that’s happened to us within the last year. A lot of the tunes so far are based on the darker side to the music industry, the less glamorous side, and the kind of brutal reality, as well as other things that have happened in our lives.

We always kinda see Swim School being a diary of our lives really, of events that are personal and that happened to us as a group – a kind of fun way to look back and see how far we’ve come and what we’ve gone through with each song having its own individual meaning.

“Sonically, we have taken inspirations from 90’s bands, we love that kind of, almost raw and full band, heavy sound. We’re not using using lots of different things to make it really interesting, we’re just doing what we love and using the guitars, the sounds, the tones of everything that we love – and letting the songs speak for themselves.

How has your sound evolved over the years in to its current form?

Over the years I think we’ve definitely become more and more confident as people and as musicians, and you can hear that within our sound. We’ve also really found our voice and our sound, and who we wanna be as musicians, going in to sessions feeling confident and knowing that we want to get out of it. I’d say our sound is a lot more mature now, but also more direct and passionate, less afraid to say what we wanna say.

We’ve always really struggled to answer the question “what genre are you?”, because we’re a mix of all of our favourite genres from bands like indie, to shoegaze, to rock/ alternative, we just love mixing them all up and creating our own unique sound. But now, I’d say our sound is more mature and confident – that’s the only way to sum it up.

How has your experience been on the road in 2024?

I would completely say that being on the road has affected our songwriting in the best way possible. It just leaves you hungry for it. When you’re touring and you’re playing every night and you’re hearing people singing back your lyrics, When you come home from that, you instantly feel inspired and you want to go in the studio and you want to write, then release and get back out on the roads. It’s the best thing for songwriting and it’s definitely made us more confident as songwriters too. 

We started to record our debut album in a studio on Edinburgh called 456. It’s right around the corner from our own studio, so we’ve got everything that we need and the studio is beautiful and it’s amazing. And I think we always used to get caught up in the fact that we always used to get caught up in the fact that we used to be in London, but there was something really special about recording some of the album in Edinburgh. Our recording process has always really stayed the same. I think because it works, we’ve never really had to change it.

We always start by jamming the songs out first, making sure one, we can play them live, and two, it sounds the best we can, and then we’ll go on to record it individually. One thing I have can I notice is that our producer, Ian Berryman, who’s one of the most talented musicians you’ll ever meet, he loves to kind of push us out of our comfort zones, whether that’s vocally or with guitars or drums.

He really, really sees the potential in US and he pushes us out of that comfort zone and we almost surprise ourselves that we can play some of the hard things we do. I think that is really important to have someone like that when you’re wanting a new sound or you’re going to a new direction or just creating something different.  

You’ve given your social media pages a blackout and refresh for the new year ahead, tell us a bit about this!

When we did our social blackout, a lot of people did clock onto it, which we were surprised at first. It just kind of creates that anticipation that someone’s coming and it’s exciting and it’s something new. We’ve never done it before as well, so a lot of our mega fans instantly clocked onto it as well. It just indicates that a brand new era of swimming school is coming and it’s a new era in many ways, from how we play live to the sound of the songs.

It’s just, it’s such an exciting time, we’re really all buzzing for this new chapter of swim school and it feels like everybody else is too, which is amazing. And as always, we love the support we get from our fans.

Photo by Joseph Hall.