kyko STORY: RACHEL COKER // PHOTOS: ROSIE MATHESON
Ed Sheeran may be the resident ginger song-writing king of the UK, but there are still a handful of sandy-haired kids running around the streets of London with guitar picks and demos, playing small pub gigs every Friday night and waiting for their chance in the spotlight. Scott Verrill is one of those guys, eighteen years old with a studio bedroom, fifteen hundred Facebook fans, and an EP on the way. His one-man band, KYKO has already been featured on The Hyve twice this year, as he drops new singles and builds hype for his first solo venture. Its title track, “Animals,” pulses with electronic beats and sounds almost like a previously undiscovered Ellie Goulding song. Only this time we get a silky male voice delivering lyrics like:
“See the stars in the full sky / Cause time is all we need and more / Let’s chase the light that you’re searching on / It’s the fire . . . Maybe we’re like animals.” It’s no wonder indie music lovers everywhere are anxious to give the mop-topped South Londoner a chance. Ask Verrill about his song-writing inspiration and you’ll get answers all over the board, from Paul Simon to Ladysmith Black Mamboza to a Green Day obsession in grade school. “Music has been my thing for as long as I can remember,” he says, explaining that he wrote all of “Animals” in his bedroom before getting together with David Goodes, to produce. “Animals was really pretty quick to write, for me especially as sometimes I can take months to finish a tune. I hadn’t written properly in a few months and “Animals” was the first one since that, which probably helped it come out easily as I had a big build up of ideas in my head I just wanted to put into a song.”
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