Through the unassuming door of Peckham’s Vespers Club and down its dark steps, Rowan Miles, one half of The Femcels, is absent-mindedly licking a lollipop the size of her face as the sound system blares screaming bass around her. She welcomes NME warmly, peeking out from behind her brunette fringe, completely unbothered by the deafening noise. In the other corner of the room, an Amy Winehouse impersonator is running through her scales.
The Femcels are a London-based duo who make erratic dance music with cartoonishly entertaining, sometimes polarising lyrics, and tonight is their first headline show. Soon this basement will be filled with screaming fans and sceneheads, all eager to be swept up in the pair’s disorientating blend of irony and sincerity. Gabriella Turton, the other half of the duo, arrives shortly after us, flustered but smiling, fresh from a packed tube. She’s wearing a hand-painted skirt, shiny red tights, and a leopard-print jacket. But, she says, it’s the rollers in her blonde hair that get her the most funny looks. “I like having them in, though, they make me look like a rhino”, she laughs.
After they’ve done soundcheck, Miles suggests we get fig leaves at the Lebanese grill opposite the venue. As a TV plays footage of tightly packed crowds circling the Kabba in Mecca, which Turton says is exactly what her tube journey was like, the pair’s attention turns to the impersonator with her bouffant and heavy black eyeliner, who’s preparing to kick off the gig. “We found her on Instagram,” says Miles. “She only had 50 followers, but there’s something about her.”
“I love lookalikes,” adds Turton. “I’ve always had this idea that my funeral should only have Adele impersonators. Only my parents and loads of Adele impersonators.”
The rest of the lineup The Femcels have put together for tonight includes: Special Little Ladies, two nannies from Berlin who let the kids in their care write their between-song bits; Clawmachine, whose brilliantly theatrical repertoire includes a Bruno Mars and Talking Heads mashup with lyrics dedicated to the lead singer’s “boyfriend on Club Penguin when [she] was nine”; and a talent show, hosted by a man Miles claims to have found on Gumtree.
It’s quite the programme, but fittingly absurd for the pair. “We’re naturally pretty weird,” says Turton. “And we just run with it.” Miles nods: “There’s not much thought behind anything. We just follow our instincts.”
So far, their instincts seem to have served them well. They started making music in 2024 after Miles, on a whim while working as a stylist, asked Bassvictim’s Ike Clateman to produce for them. On their first night working with Clateman (February 24 – they want it mythologised), they wrote four songs. They released two of these songs, ‘He Needs Me’ and ‘Not Ur Friend’, as singles, which quickly gained traction. Since then, they have performed with the likes of EsDeeKid and Fakemink, been photographed by Hedi Slimane, and opened for Frost Children. Miles has also made an album with Worldpeace DMT that’s well worth checking out. Finally, the duo released their first album, ‘I Have To Get Hotter’, in January 2026.
The album is a joyously chaotic, crude, and often hilarious look into the girls’ mirror-world. It’s a release of pure id that Miles says surprised even them: “It’s shocking when you’re writing a song and the stuff that comes out is stuff you wouldn’t say to anyone. But, it’s like: ‘I’ve written it now, and it works with the melody.’ You end up writing a song about sending a boob pic to a 45-year-old, and that’s the only way to explain your feelings.”
The Femcels credit: Max Mistry
Turton nods: “We’re not crude in real life. I don’t think we’ve ever really talked about sex to each other. But in our music it’s all about that.”
It’s this play between shocking honesty and total absurdity, sincerity and irony, that many find so exciting about The Femcels’ music. They manage to give us hymn-like melodies, guttural screams and twee moments, with knowingly cartoonish production and a miraculously punk sensibility. Far from sarcastic vapidity, these songs belie raw emotion while remaining fun and lighthearted.
“Most of the parts I wrote on this album came from this diary I was writing because I was heartbroken,” says Miles. “I was destroyed and trying to write everything down. I was howling in the house, and it must have been really annoying for everyone else.”
“It’s nice to make things into a joke instead of feeling sad,” adds Turton. “Not to sound like a wet tissue, but the music did heal me a bit. I actually was kind of a femcel when I started making the album, and now I’m kind of not.”
“It’s nice to make things into a joke instead of feeling sad. The music did heal me a bit” – Gabriella Turton
The term ‘femcel’ typically refers to female members of the ‘involuntary celibate’ community. It’s often used ironically, but some who identify with it can be quite protective about the label. The girls say they’ve received hundreds of comments accusing them of being ‘cosplayers’, ‘LARPers’ or ‘fakecels’.
“The project isn’t supposed to be taken too seriously; you should just enjoy it,” says Turton. “But also, I think a lot of the people giving us hate in the comments might relate to [the album], and maybe they should listen to it… Like with the body dysmorphia stuff. In popular media, it’s meant to be that you’re just effortlessly skinny; no one ever really talks about it. Lily Allen talks about it, and I remember thinking that was really cool. I think it’s important to show that people do think about it, and are stressed about it, and you’re not just in your own head”.
Whether or not these commenters come round to The Femcels’ stuff, there’s a large crowd gathering outside Vespers who clearly resonate with their music. It’s not hard to see why. The Femcels are irresistibly entertaining. Like the cartoons and ’40s musicals they say inspired them, when they perform, they become campy caricatures of themselves at their most feral. They tap into something intoxicating that wouldn’t work without the well of real experience and empathy they sneak through the snarky madness.
Miles says “something possesses” them when they’re making music. After tonight, all we can say is, who knew exorcisms could be so much fun.
The Femcels’ ‘I Have To Get Hotter’ is out now via Getting Hotter Records.
English (US) · 