English Teacher, a Leeds-based quartet, has made an impressive debut in BBC Radio 1’s Sound of 2025 poll, securing the fifth spot on the prestigious list.
The band, recognized by 180 music industry experts, is seen as one of the acts most likely to achieve mainstream success in the coming year.
Their journey towards stardom began last year when they clinched the Mercury Prize for their debut album, This Could Be Texas.
The album captures sharp portrayals of life in small northern towns, where racism, loneliness, and deprivation stand in stark contrast to the beauty of the landscapes and the strength of lifelong friendships.
The band’s music, an eclectic mix of shifting time signatures, intricate guitar riffs, and soaring melodies, is as unpredictable as it is captivating.
“We never set out to create something specific,” says guitarist Lewis Whiting. “But, that’s the fun part, right? Trying to make something new and interesting.” The band’s frontwoman, Lily Fontaine, expresses a sense of disbelief at the attention they’ve received.
“Where we come from, this just doesn’t happen,” she says. “I keep telling people that I feel like I’m living in a simulation.”
The past year has been a whirlwind for the band. They’ve played over 100 gigs in 16 countries, slowly but surely climbing festival line-ups while surviving on “willpower, laughter, and Red Bull.”
As they navigated their rise, they became weary of telling their origin story—how they met while studying music at Leeds Conservatoire. Instead, they invented playful, alternative tales, one of which involved meeting at a wedding in Leeds 20 years ago.
Though the band’s sound has evolved since their early days as a dream-pop outfit called Frank, they have come to embrace a post-punk style with influences from Radiohead, Sonic Youth, and Pavement.
Whiting admits that despite sharing musical references, the band members have differing tastes when it comes to their favorite bands.
In 2020, they released The World’s Biggest Paving Slab, a demo inspired by Fontaine’s hometown of Colne, Lancashire, where the titular paving stone is located.
The song, along with others in their catalogue, addresses the social challenges of the area while reflecting on identity, emotional turbulence, and political mismanagement.
Fontaine, who only started songwriting in her university years, had initially struggled with finding her voice in a male-dominated indie scene.
“There’d be times where I told people I made music, and they’d give a certain expression when I said it was guitar music or indie music,” she recalls.
However, as a light-skinned woman of color, Fontaine acknowledges that her experiences were likely different from those of darker-skinned musicians who may have faced more overt prejudice.
Despite these challenges, English Teacher’s breakthrough came with their debut single, “R&B,” where Fontaine explores the complexities of being a woman of color fronting an indie band.
The track touches on her personal struggles with vocal expectations and how she eventually embraced her own unique style.
“I think I’ve got a lot of privilege,” she reflects, “but it did affect me, not seeing people who looked like me in bands.”
The band’s early songs gained momentum during the first wave of the Covid pandemic, with their first live performance taking place at a socially distanced mini-festival in May 2021.
“Those first gigs were kind of jarring,” Whiting admits.
“Everything felt very online until we played a gig, and then it was like, ‘Yeah, this is actually going somewhere.’”
Their debut album, This Could Be Texas, was recorded with Italian producer Marta Salogni, and their hard work paid off.
The album was hailed by Record Collector magazine as one of the most confident debuts in years, and the Mercury Prize judges praised the band’s “winning lyrical mix of surrealism and social observation.”
Despite their success, Fontaine is still amazed by the attention the band has garnered.
“I wasn’t sure it would connect with people because the lyrics are quite specific to the area I grew up in,” she admits.
However, it is the broader themes of leaving home and finding one’s place in a chaotic world that have resonated with an expanding audience.
As the band’s popularity continues to grow, Fontaine reflects humorously on her status as “the world’s smallest celebrity” — a title that, as their fan base grows, is becoming increasingly inaccurate.
“I’m not the smallest, but certainly not the biggest,” she laughs. “In the alphabet of celebrity, I’m probably on the X-list.”
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