Rising: IMISSMYMOM are making existential shoegaze with a side of doom

Sounds like: Existential shoegaze with a side of doom
Soundtrack for: Screaming into your pillow
File next to: Swervedriver, Cocteau Twins, Electric Wizard
Our favourite song: Nasal Spray
Where to find them: @imiss.mym0m

With their second album, London-based band IMISSMYMOM are holding onto the spontaneity that first brought them together.

Listening to the lurching, lost-in-the-groove squall cranked out by London’s IMISSMYMOM, it’s not a complete shock to learn they began life with a spontaneous jam session back in January 2024. Exuding the same chemistry through a laptop screen that saw them lock in during that inaugural wig-out, the band share an effortless group dynamic, bouncing off one another as they recount their journey so far. 

Although guitarists Marley and Tommy, bassist Cameron, and drummer Kyle already knew each other through London’s music and creative scenes, Toronto vocalist Tennessee was the final piece of the puzzle. She happened to live in the Hackney Wick warehouse where Kyle and Tommy, working on a commission together, had scheduled their fateful jam. Tennessee dropped in to introduce herself, with Marley and Cameron joining a little later, and before long ideas, lyrics and propulsive noise were emerging from their shared flow state. “It just felt right and we realised this could really work,” Marley says.

“I was told that Electric Wizard were the inspiration before that initial session,” Cameron jokes. In reality, the band’s sonic identity is perhaps a smidge less Dorset stoner metal and more Swervedriver, with smears of HTRK and Sonic Youth’s timeless, untouchable cool dissolving into their wash of guitar noise.

A third of the band’s 2025 self-titled debut album, released on THEFT, was partially recorded during one of the four-hour improvised sessions that followed their first get-together, with most of the finished songs preserved as first takes. This first-idea, best-idea approach translates into searing urgency on record. On standout track I Miss My Mom, Tennessee’s whirling, eerie vocals cut through a harsh scree of guitars as she cries out for home, her voice crescendoing into a scream while guitar reverb drives the track into a psychedelic swirl.

MISSMYMOM II, their upcoming follow-up, is a leap forward in both sound and ambition. Some of the record was written at Berlin’s Funkhaus, the celebrated studio housed in the former GDR broadcast centre. (Fittingly, one of the tracks, One in a Million, features a field recording of an old Soviet-era phone and lobby bell.) “This new album feels more structured for us,” Kyle explains. “The tracks were written more cohesively, as if they were made to be put together for an album.” The others quickly interject, reiterating that it retains the same in-the-moment spirit of their debut. “You can still hear the spontaneity in our music,” Cameron explains – a component of their sound that caught the ear of IB Kamara, the Crack Magazine cover star and all-round creative polymath who is helping shape their visual identity for this latest chapter.

Moving forward, the group are excited to perform live more, channelling their immediate, on-the-fly alchemy into a live context. “We bring high energy to our shows,” Cameron says. “The crowds love it, and we love playing it.” Perhaps their biggest fans are their parents, mind. Tommy’s mum even made T-shirts for the band. “We need to get our actual mums at a gig together,” Tommy jokes. “Yeah,” Kyle laughs, “we should recreate the photoshoot for the album, but with mums instead of us.”

As our time together wraps, the band reflect, again, on the spontaneous jam that started it all. “I was this close to staying at home and having dinner with my girlfriend,” Marley says. “But Tommy convinced me to come and jam. I just firmed it and came, and I’m forever grateful that was the decision I made.” You get the sense that this fated affinity gives them a feeling of inevitability, an almost mythic quality. “We’re all so different, but we connect as one and make the music happen,” Marley philosophises. Tennessee agrees, noting that she’s never felt this level of synergy with a group of people before. “It’s kind of creepy, but it’s also really cool.”