WHATMORE soundtrack the end of the world with “Last Time”

Catching up with WHATMORE the morning of member Yoshi T.’s birthday, there’s a decisive answer to how five New York musicians with wildly divergent musical tastes ended up in a band together. “The devil just came up from the ground, from the Union Square train station, and grabbed Elijah [Judah] by his ankles,” they say. “The devil also meaning, you know, friendship.” It’s as straight an answer as you’re likely to get from Yoshi, Elijah, Cisco Swank, Jackson August, and Sebastiano. Friends since meeting at New York’s famous LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, WHATMORE have spent the past few years turning that camaraderie into a fast-rising musical project. Their self-titled debut arrived last October, followed by a COLORS performance; support for Joey Valence & Brae; and a generational festival run spanning Coachella, Governors Ball, and Lollapalooza. Reading and Leeds are next on the hit list, before they make their way to London’s The Lower Third in September. “We all came together as our own individual artists who have their own pockets of sound,” they explain. Before the group, those pockets stretched from Yoshi’s hip-hop and R&B to Cisco’s ja...