Sing & Tell :: Johnny Kills

 Credit: Christine Lloyd-Fitt

Brighton/London-based surf rock trio Johnny Kills - a Little Indie One To Watch 2018 - follow last summer’s series of singles with new release, 'Who’s Counting?', produced by Forever Cult bassist Alex Greaves (PLAZA, Trash) and out from July 4.


Who are you?

I’m Tim Lloyd-Kinnings, I play guitar and sing with Johnny Kills. The other guys are my brother Lewis and Cameron Gipp, and they play bass and guitar respectively, and both semi-sing too. We have a mysterious revolving cast of drummers.

Tell us something about yourself and how you came to be where you are today?

We’ve all know each other for a while and been in a couple of different bands together down the years, and then we decided to start another one just as we all moved to different sides of the country for uni and adult life, which was maybe weird timing (Brighton, London, York). But we’ve just finished and are looking forward to being back to seeing far too much of each other, and gigging more regularly.

Give us an idea of your musical style and influences.

We’d describe ourselves as guitary garagey indie-pop - we’ve termed the new songs as 'surf-glam' as there's a little more pzazz to them, but still with the same amount of scuzzy distortion on everything.

In terms of influences, we’d say a lot of US indie stuff like Wavves, FIDLAR, Dandy Warhols, Wolf Parade and Pixies. There’s also a really cool group of emerging UK bands we really like, like Black Honey (really excited for their album), The Magic Gang and Indoor Pets. Then there’s people you probably can’t hear in us at all but we really like, like Car Seat Headrest, Ezra Furman and LVL UP.

Explain the production and writing process behind your songs.

Seeing as we’ve been pretty far apart for most of our life so far it’s mostly been Tim coming up with rough demos and the using the power of internet to send them to each other. Then we’d get together for some mammoth rehearsals where we’d sort it out and turn them into more actual complete songs. We recorded with our man Alex Greaves up in Leeds, who produced our last set of tracks and really brings certain production sound to our stuff that we love.

Tell us a little about your new single.

‘Who’s Counting?’ is the first of two summer singles, and it’s basically about the excitement of new relationships and all the questions they bring, but with our usual early 20s, ‘I have no idea what I’m doing here’ outlook. Overthinking is still very much our order of the day.



Can we catch up with you at any forthcoming live shows?

You can! We’re playing at The Old Blue Last in London on the 17th of July, and then on the 20th we’re playing for the first time in Birmingham at The Victoria.

How's the rest of the year looking, plans-wise?

As above, we’ve got another single out later this summer, and now the two of us at uni have finished we’re gonna gig a lot more. We’re also going to be doing some more recording in the near future so there will be some more Johnny Kills coming before the end of the year (fingers crossed). A debut EP is on the cards...

Where can we hear more of your music?

You can hear our stuff on all the major streaming platforms, like Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud and YouTube if you just search for Johnny Kills.

What social media platforms can we find you on?

You can find us on:

Facebook // Twitter // Instagram