For London-bred band BONES UK, every song is a chance to speak their minds, and to shed light on the disconnect between the status quo and the far more glorious world inside their heads. On their self-titled debut album, vocalist Rosie Bones and guitarist Carmen Vandenberg confront everything from the beauty industrial complex to toxic masculinity to music-scene sexism, embedding each track with choruses primed for passionate shouting-along. Out July 12 on Sumerian Records, BONES UK is an album that’s both provocative and endlessly exhilarating, even in its most outraged moments.
True to the L.A.-based band’s anti-conformist spirit, BONES UK unfolds with an entirely uncontainable sound, a riff-heavy collision of rock-and-roll and rough-edged electronic music. Raw defiance fuels first single “Pretty Waste”, out today. Check out the video HERE.
“Pretty Waste” is a dizzying anti-anthem driven by blistering beats and Rosie’s haunting vocal delivery.
“Pretty Waste is about this notion that if you’re attractive you can’t be clever. Or if you’re sexy you can’t be smart,” Rosie says. “As people we are judged so much for what we look like and people have opinions of what we can or can’t be because of it. It’s about being judged for what you look like and saying fuck that. What you look like on the outside doesn’t have to define who you are on the inside. It’s about not trying to live up to what people expect/want you to be because of your appearance, age, sex, race. You can be whatever you want to be. None of that shit should ever define you or be put on you by other people. It’s unimportant.”
Impressively, BONES UK create their own music videos. Rosie explains the concept behind “Pretty Waste”.
“BONES UK is a band made of two people with very distinct personalities that are linked by the music we make. With the video for ‘Pretty Waste’ I just wanted to find a way to showcase our different vibes and me and Carmen having our own box to play in was just a simple way of doing that.
We then interact with each other between the split screen (breaking it and playing with it) showing that we are linked and operating as one unit. Stuff like me inhaling a cig and Carmen blowing out the smoke gives this feeling of us being this one entity…and that entity is BONES UK.
This was really put to the test when we had to do the ‘catching the cigarette’ in the mouth trick….which took a lot of concentration and about 40 takes.”
“Pretty Waste” also features in the ANNA (2019) movie trailer, which surpassed nearly 1 million views in the first 24 hours.
A full list of tour dates can be found below with more to be added.
BONES UK – Tour Dates
Jun 01 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda (Strange 80s 3D)
Jun 10 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
Jul 21 – Foxborough, MA @ Gillette Stadium (Mad Decent Festival)
Jul 25 – Buffalo, NY @ Canalside*
Jul 26 – Utica, NY @ Saranac Brewery*
Jul 27 – New York, NY @ Rooftop Concert Series at Pier 17*
Jul 28 – Mt Pocono, PA @ Mount Airy Casino Resort*
Jul 30 – Boston, MA @ House of Blues*
Aug 03 – Auburn, WA @ Pain In The Grass 2019
Aug 04 – Hampton, NH @ Hampton Beach Casino*
Aug 06 – Dewey Beach, DE @ Bottle & Cork*
Aug 07 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club*
* w/ The Struts