In conversation with SZOU: SZOU Are Building a World Beyond the
Single

Words by Kasia Krawczyk

For SZOU, the next chapter isn’t about simply releasing another collection of songs. It’s about building a world.

The duo — Zoe and David — have spent the past year moving away from the idea of treating each release as its own isolated moment, instead thinking about how their music can form something bigger: a story that unfolds across songs, performances and, eventually, a whole project.

“Over the past year, we’ve been thinking more about spending more time on the writing, and not focusing just on singles, but on a narrative arc as a whole,” they explain.

Part of that shift came from an unlikely source. SZOU found themselves drawn to Sleep Token, the genre-blurring metal band whose music exists inside an elaborate mythology and ongoing narrative. For SZOU, it sparked a question: what if their own music could become more than a series of individual tracks?

“They’re a metal band, but they’re also a lot of other things,” they say. Their whole thing throughout their albums is essentially a concept, and it’s a story they’re trying to bring us into. “It’s kind of more than just music; it’s more of an experience.”

That idea of experience has become central to SZOU’s new era. Described as pop-rock, their latest material pushes further into the energy they’ve always wanted to bring to the stage.

“When we’re writing, we’re always thinking about the live show,” they say. “We want it to be as high energy as it can.”

The rock element, then, isn’t necessarily a radical reinvention. Instead, it’s an amplification of something that was already there.

“We’ve just sort of tried to amplify it a bit more than was there,” they explain. “When we were just writing, it sort of came out quite naturally.”

And that instinct has been helped by one major change: SZOU are now housemates.

Living together has blurred the line between everyday life and the creative process. Rather than having to carve out a specific day to write, the music can simply happen whenever inspiration strikes.

“We wanted to make it official as a band, take it one step further, and it’s been amazing for our writing,” they say. “It means that the process is ongoing. It’s not like we have to pick it up every week where we left off.”

Instead, their home has become something of a creative laboratory — a place where ideas can develop without the pressure of having to arrive fully formed.

“It has just completely opened up our creative avenues,” they add. “Just feeling a bit more free with it, and trying stuff out as well.”

That freedom feeds directly into Will They Won’t They, a song built around the familiar tension between friendship and romantic attraction. While the track is loosely inspired by real events, SZOU are less interested in presenting it as a straightforward retelling than they are in using it as the opening scene of something much bigger.

“It is loosely inspired by real events,” they explain, “but I think now it just feels different to when it was originally written.”

The song, they reveal, is effectively the first chapter of the new project — the moment where the story begins and the listener is introduced to its central situation.

“It’s like chapter one, slash act one, of the story.”

That makes Will They Won’t They  more than just a single. It was the catalyst for everything that followed.

“That was kind of the first song that we wrote from this whole project,” SZOU reveal. “That kind of set everything off in motion, really — that idea, and the sound of it.”

They spent time getting the track exactly where they wanted it before using it as a blueprint for the rest of the material.

“We spent a little bit of time getting that one to a point, to then inform what we did with the rest of the songs on the EP,” they explain. “So that was kind of the catalyst for everything else.”

The partnership itself wasn’t quite as immediate.

Zoe and David originally met through Zoe’s solo project, with David initially working behind the scenes on production. They began by collaborating on productions before eventually making the leap into writing together — a process that took a couple of years.

“I think it took us a while to actually write together,” they admit. “But we would work on productions together, so Zoe would write, and then I would produce.”

“Probably a good couple of years,” Zoe adds, before joking: “Yeah, before he committed.”

“We’re not the committed band, are we?” David laughs.

Eventually, though, the collaboration became impossible to separate from the music itself.

“It felt like it wasn’t just my thing anymore,” Zoe explains. “Without David, it wouldn’t be the same thing at all.”

Now, that partnership is leading somewhere much bigger.

SZOU have a new single released on September 25th, “Tell Your Mother”, with the wider project following in October. They’ll celebrate its release with a show at Paper Dress Vintage in Hackney on November 10.

“We’re going to have a really, really fun night,” they promise.

If their plans for the future are anything to go by, the Hackney show is only the beginning.

Asked where they want to be in five years, the answer starts modestly: bigger shows, more people in rooms together, and a career built around performing rather than chasing numbers.

“We’ve always talked about just wanting to play bigger and bigger shows,” they say. “Just making sure that we can have people come down and watch us and have fun together rather than chase streaming numbers and viral videos and things like that.”

There is, naturally, still a little room for ambition.

“As much as it would be great to go viral,” they add.

Ultimately, though, the goal is simple: play live, and keep playing live.

“We love playing live so much that we just want to do that as much as we can.”

“In my head, I’m always like, I would love it to be my job,” they admit. “Being able to simply pay your rent through something that you’ve always been chasing, I think that’s a gift.”

For SZOU, bigger shows and making a living from music aren’t separate dreams. They’re part of the same trajectory.

“So I guess they come hand in hand — bigger shows, getting a wage.”

For now, though, the ambition isn’t really about numbers. It’s about what happens when the lights go down and the audience is standing in front of them.

Asked what they ultimately want fans to take away from an SZOU performance, the answer is refreshingly uncomplicated.

“We just want people to have fun.”

There’s more to it, of course — connecting with the songs, finding something personal in the music — but the central idea is escape.

“Being able to escape when you’re going to a gig and just be pretty present.”

And perhaps that’s the real thread running through SZOU’s new era. They’re building a bigger world around their music, but the reason for doing it remains simple: create somewhere people can step into, lose themselves for a while, and have a really good time.

The story is only just beginning.

Photo by @hjmurrel