JJ Buchanan: My parents introduced me to my first loves in the form of The Cure and The Smiths at a young age. As a young guitarist, who was pretty revolted with the classic rock that everyone at school seemed to be learning, it didn't take me long to make my way through The Smiths' catalogue. Back in the days when I had what felt like an eternity to browse YouTube late at night, I came across Johnny Marr playing with various bands, including Modest Mouse. While I came to the band through Marr's guitar on 'We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Arrived', I ended up focusing more on Isaac Brock's weird voice, unique songwriting and lyrics that really struck a chord in me as a teenager whose mind was starting to fill with existential thoughts. In particular, I rinsed (and still do til this day) 'The Lonesome Crowded West' & 'The Moon & Antarctica' with the former that always takes me back to long drives on holidays looking out the window, thinking my teenage problems were so seismic. Little did I know…

JJ Buchanan: I heard this while working at the pub the other day, and it instantly took me back to the first time I moved to London when I was 18. I met this dude called Isaac who lived in my building, and he turned out to be this super cool guy who showed me all this great music, and we got high and went to gigs together. He was also writing and recording music that made me realise I needed to step my game up. I've since moved to Brighton and then back and long lost contact with him - I think the last time I saw him was a brief random encounter on Brighton beach close to 10 years ago, so if you're reading this man, hit me up.

James Balmont: In those angsty years of my teens, Placebo offered an androgynous foil to the rowdy Britpop of Oasis and Slipknot's oil-drum-banging shock-rock. I loved them so much that I apparently took it upon myself to make a Placebo tea towel in my school's textiles class (around the same time I started experimenting with eyeliner and backcombing my hair). I still love the raw, bare bones production on Placebo's Sonic Youth-like debut album. And the Chris Cunningham-directed video for '36 Degrees' is a classic: a live performance vid shot almost entirely underwater (I love Brian Molko's "lung" t-shirt as well). We had a lovely full-circle moment with Placebo while recording 'Hum' in Brussels this year, arriving in Brussels to find that Placebo were remastering this same album in the studio above us. Teenage me would be in awe.

James Balmont: I just saw that this release turned 20 last month. I remember it like it was yesterday. That 7" sold out instantly and The Horrors were just the coolest band in London for so long - they'd turn up at venues like The Coronet in Elephant and Castle and the Old Blue Last, fire up the room for 20 mins with this intense garage rock, smearing everyone with black paint, and then leave. It was thrilling. I don't think that energy or impact was matched again until the early days of Fat White Family. And 'Sheena' is just such a great punk song - another one with an unforgettable video by Chris Cunningham. It's thanks to The Horrors' individual Myspace profiles that I discovered bands like Orange Juice and The Sonics, too.

James Balmont: Before I met the rest of the boys in Swim Deep I used to go up to Birmingham with my friend Joel Amey (Wolf Alice) to play gigs and also to go to gigs in Digbeth in Birmingham. I have fond memories of sleeping on the floor of The Adam and Eve one time because we had no way to get home. Anyway, the best of these trips was when we went to see legendary noise-rock band Lightning Bolt at the Custard Factory, and they sang me happy birthday after the show for some reason. A few years later, I bought the 'Wonderful Rainbow' LP after playing my first ever overseas gig with Joel somewhere in Belgium while we were session playing in a '70s art-punk band called The Homosexuals. I remember referencing the album art years later when we were developing the cover art for our second album, 'Mothers'.

Austin Williams: The sound of my youth lasts 5 mins and is called 'Kids' by MGMT. That heaven piercing synth lead over the outrageously bodacious 4/4 kick drum blew open a new world to a teenage me. I would go on to hear this song ring out in so many coming of age situations, it soundtracked house parties, snogging a girl, failing college, running across Reading Festival fields with my best friends. One of our projects in music class at school was to dissect a song and re-record it — I chose Kids, and this project became the blueprint for when I made our first single 'King City'. I made a synth line, a bouncing bass line over it, and sang about being a teenager. Funnily enough the most rebellious thing we could do in indie music in 2012 was to make a 4/4 kick drum verse chorus song, and it worked. The next year, we were playing a heaven-piercing synth lead over a 4/4 kick drum at Reading Festival ourselves. Circle of life, baby.

Austin Williams: I will never stop shouting about this song and band, as it was the blueprint for Swim Deep. A song and band that changed the trajectory of my life. Me and founding SD member Wolfgang Harte (now Heavy Wild) would sit in the Birmingham High Street Pret because they did 99p coffee, and get a baguette from 'Eat 4 Less' opposite, also for 99p, and strategise our ascent to the top, and how we'd make it big so we didn't have to scrounge sofa money to eat lunch. The eureka moment was when we decided that we'd essentially just copy Beach Fossils. We already had our sound, we just didn't know it. We were good at making riffs and even better at having a good time, so this record/song/band gave us the confidence to do something with that. It's not even just a nostalgic coming of age thing for me either, I still very much listen to this record, and am still a big fan of their current music; 'Bunny' was one of my favourite albums of the year. Considering how much we change as we grow up and the years pass, I am so grateful that a band has been able to excite me throughout it all; it's a rare occurrence.

Taken from the June 2026 issue of Dork. Swim Deep's album 'Hum' is out 19th June.