NY duo QTY channel early grunge through glam Bowery spirit to create a singular vision of rock

The pair met as 17-year-olds on New York's Houston Street - the northern boundary of SoHo, once home to Nikola Tesla's laboratory. "We feel connected to the city," Lardner tells us. "It’s a large part of who we are as people and the culture here has influenced us in ways we’re probably not really entirely aware of but we’ve never felt it was anything we need to shove down anyone’s throats or anything."

Niemetz and Lardner had just broken free of their high school bands and they bonded through a love of early '70s glam rock (Bowie, Roxy Music, T.Rex). They balanced their growing creative partnership alongside "all the low paying jobs that typically get attributed to musicians".

That age-old origin story nicely frames their debut single "Rodeo", which drips with the same ambition that's driven some of this century's best leftifield rock 'n' roll (we're thinking Girls, The War on Drugs, Future Islands) but resonates musically with the big riffs of J Mascis, Lou Reed, Mick Ronson and Marc Bolan. The Bernard Butler-produced track is part of a two track 7" which gets a release via Dirty Hit (The 1975, The Japanese House, Marika Hackman).

"The person getting referenced every chorus is Alex...[the song] is a summarization of how I viewed the moments in life between the ones where Alex could be there to get my head straight," Lardner says. "[It's] half of our relationship summed up in a 2 minutes 30 second song."

Next up for QTY? "We’ll play some shows, then the album will come out, then a lot of shows. We do particularly enjoy being on a stage and getting to yell at a captive audience."