HotWax Tickets

Getting a shout-out on stage by Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ lead singer Karen O doesn’t happen to many bands, let alone those that haven’t even released their debut album. Not HotWax however, the unruly teenage trio who are leading Britain’s rock renaissance. 

Though HotWax didn’t configure in their current form until finding drummer Alfie Sayers at music college in Brighton, the band’s origins date far further back to when bassist Lola Sam and singer/guitarist Tallulah Sim-Savage met at the age of just twelve. 

Separately they might have had ideas of pursuing music from a young age – they both picked up instruments at the age of eight, and Sim-Savage’s father was a musician who had studio space to rehearse and experiment. But it was a music teacher who would introduce the pair and encourage them to perform together at an event on Hastings pier, in an attempt to fortify their potential. From then onwards, Sam and Sim-Savage’s musical intent was unwavering, despite a few inter-band arguments which resulted in the duo not talking to one another for a year. 

Like teenagers tend to do, they buried the hatchet and rebuilt a stronger, sisterly, and more cohesive creative relationship, all the while picking up gigs wherever they could along the south coast. After recruiting Sayers, HotWax eventually self-released their debut single ‘Stay Cool’ in 2020. “We wrote it as a joke to begin with," Tallulah said. “I don’t know what our ambitions were beyond playing music together.” After the pandemic, that all changed.

The trio’s sneering confidence steadily got them noticed; in despairing times young people today consistently seem to be facing, exorcising inner rage and angst through rough and raw guitar riffs can be freeing, for both the band and whoever’s listening. Marathon Artists, who count Courtney Barnett, Pond, Lava La Rue, and Vagabon among their roster, recognised HotWax could lead the charge for a new female-fronted rock revolution and snapped them up, despite the band’s debut EP having been written already. 

Fierce and fun lead single ‘Treasure’ came ahead of HotWax’s debut EP, A Thousand Times, in May of 2023. Soon after the trio started frequently popping up on festival posters, including Mad Cool Festival, Germany’s Reeperbahn, and All Points East where they’d be supporting The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Self-confessed fan girls of Karen O, they were astonished when she turned up for their soundcheck and later dedicated ‘Maps’ to them in front of the London crowd. 

Not letting up on their newfound fandom, HotWax released their follow-up EP, Invite me, kindly just months later to coincide with a support slot for fellow Brighton-based rockers Royal Blood. The trio continued tearing up stages in the new year alongside Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes, and are set to perform at Download, Bearded Theory, Y Not and End of the Road festivals later that year.