Yaz are a newly formed Indie-Folk band that are currently taking the music industry by storm with their captivating, relatable lyrics, exceptional musicianship and soulful vocals from lead singer Yassine. YAZ create ‘feel good’ music to promote change from within.

Hailing from various parts of the world but currently residing in London, UK – the band are made up of Yassine Belkhou on vocals and guitar, Krishna Kasim on electric guitar, Oscar Joe Gross on bass and Tony Lesage on drums.

Yassine was born and raised in Montreal but originally from Morocco, Krishna is from India and is a self-proclaimed ‘third-culture kid’, Tony is from France and Oscar is from Australia.

Having only been together for just over a year, Yaz have already had a highly impressive career which will undoubtedly continue to grow as the years go on. Yaz have headlined Camden Rocks Festival this summer, performed at the iconic Ronnie Scotts, played a show at The Great Escape Festival, played their first Sofar Sounds show, had a sold-out a show at The Troubadour – the list goes on!

Recently, Yaz released their single Spark which is instantly enjoyable. A feel-good song with a late 90’s/early 00’s edge, Spark has a movie soundtrack vibe and is wonderfully anthemic! The close of the track is one of those songs that in a live setting, would be a beautiful crowd-chanting moment!

We caught up with Yassine and Krishna to talk about their career, their music and all the amazing things they have been up to!

Yassine and Krishna were absolutely lovely and very interesting. Already a fan of their work, we look forward to following and supporting them on what we believe will be a very successful career path.

Enjoy!

Hi guys – How has your weekend been?

Yassine – Yeah we are good! Yeah, busy, same old! We just had a show recently at Notting Hill Arts Club!

Oh what was that like?

Krishna – It was great! We opened for a French pop band (Saults) and it went really well. There were like 150 people there.

So please tell us about yourselves!

Yassine – So we are a band that had formed basically from four ends of the world, we met here a year ago last weekend. Kris and I first started together about two years ago – we met through some mutual friends and then on a night out he was like “yeah, I like your music, let’s do something, let’s see what we can do” and we tried and it was fantastic! From there we gigged at a Uni bar, I guess the classic ‘open mic’ night at uni bars. We used to play every Thursday for about 2 and a half hours!

Krishna – We used to do it just for a bit of money because it was better than working anywhere else! Going in and playing some live music is probably one of the best part time jobs that you can have as a Uni student. So we started off like that and really grew some traction and started being asked to play at pubs, different pubs and do the pub circuit around Camden. Then we sort of realised that we may have something special on our hands here, so yeah, once we graduated from Uni last year, we threw ourselves completely into it, met the other two (Tony and Oscar) and then we are here now!

Yassine – Yeah here we are now! I guess this last year for us has been kind of crazy because it’s the first year as a full band and I think we’ve achieved a lot more than we thought we would achieve in one single year. We had our biggest show which was 180 people and we also got a chance to play at Alternative Escape which is part of The Great Escape. We got invited to play there last minute which was awesome! Then we played at a headline sold-out show at Ronnie Scotts in May. In June we did out first Sofar Sounds which had an awesome reception and from there we headlined Camden Assembly and we also played at a festival called Good Vibrations Society just outside Surrey in August and then we played Notting Hill Arts Club. We got asked (to play there) by this bigger band (Saults) and I feel like that is just the steps of what has been happening with us – just really taking it one gig at a time but it seems to always climb higher up. It’s been great, it’s been exciting and I think we have been lucky! I think the more we play together and do these gigs the more we realise how special it is what we have and why we think we can do it for the rest of our lives – no matter how big or how small, it’s just something that we all believe in!

I was going to ask you about some of those places that you have played and it’s a very impressive list. Ronnie Scotts of course is legendary and somewhere that I have always wanted to go to. What was that like?

Yassine – It was crazy! They have these two big venues and we got to play in the one upstairs and it was just an awesome night! Everything was just so professional, the sound was amazing! The atmosphere was great, it’s really special!

Krishna – It’s surreal because they have all the pictures of the famous people that have played there. You go to the toilet and it’s a urinal and you’d be facing a picture of Tony Bennett. You’re like “I’m playing the same venue as Tony Bennett did.” You walk in and you can sense the history of the place. When we walked in, we were doing our soundcheck. We were trying to be really professional about it but at the same time we were all looking at each other and giggling like kids. We were like “my goodness, we’re playing Ronnie Scotts guys”.

Yassine – Yeah! Especially for our drummer Tony, he was really excited to play there, that was one of his dreams. He just couldn’t believe that we were playing there so soon! I think we forget, for me personally I am like the big dreamer of the band. I am always letting us know one day we are going to do Wembley haha! I tend to forget the achievements we have now and I think Krishna’s just really good at grounding me in that sense. It’s true, we have done a lot in a year and I think that the more we continue to focus on ourselves and not look at other artists. It’s never a comparison for us because I think that everyone has their own journey. I think ours is special in its own way, especially because we are all from different parts of the world. I think it allows for a more experience that others may not necessarily bring. I think that’s what we are riding, our wave of doing our own thing. It works, people like something that’s different.

Oh definitely. As you just said, you’re all from different corners of the world. You are from (Yassine) Montreal is that correct?

Yassine – Yeah I was born in Montreal but I am from Morocco. Both my parents emigrated to Canada when they were in their 20’s.

Krishna – Mine’s a whole ordeal. I’m from India, born in India but moved around a lot as a kid. I lived in Kuwait, Malaysia and Brunei. Then I came to the UK for University and just sort of ended up staying here on a graduate visa once I finished Uni just so I could pursue this music thing.

Were you both doing the same course at Uni?

Yassine – No, but similar.

Krishna – We met at Kings (College). We were pretty much in the same department. I did Politics and Economics and Yaz did International Development.

Montreal is the French part of Canada right so do you speak French? One of your band members (Tony) is from France.

Yassine – Yeah, Tony is from Normandy. It’s funny, with Tony sometimes I’ll speak French. Oscar is from Australia so we just kind of speak French and English. I grew up speaking French and Arabic and then English is what I learned at school.

So I have been listening to your music and have become an instant fan. I wanted to talk about your current single Spark!

Yassine – So Spark came about the weekend after our show we had in March. I have a goal of mine that I try to do each week that is to write three songs.

Krishna – Yeah it was written before we even put our first single out. We were just putting our first single out and this guy here (points to Yassine) he just writes songs left and right. He will be on a bus and just be on his phone writing a song. We have enough to put out more songs than Pink Floyd at this point haha! There’s an actual discography going on! He wrote it and then within 10-15 minutes we found chords for it! I remember we were sat in my bedroom and suddenly this slow ballad came about!

Yassine – Yeah and then after when we went to the studio, I think Krishna and I are a little, the best songs we write together are soft ballads but we are just waiting to put them out. We have one of them coming out in February but we brought it (Spark) to the guys and they were like “hey, let’s raise the BMP on this for a sec and see what we can do” and then literally within 20 mins of that we had Spark!

It was crazy and then we were like “wow, this is really good!” Then we spent the next few months recording it. We were meant to come out with it in July, but by Tony’s good good intuition, we actually ended up delaying it because he felt like it was being rushed.

We had been in a difficult but also good situation where we were doing a lot of shows and getting a lot of traction but were having to match that with online and releasing music. I guess that’s a good problem to have because obviously we have a lot of real fans but it is also demanding because people want new music to be out.

Tony didn’t really want to fall under that pressure, that umbrella and I think that I was starting to fall under that pressure. Luckily he (Tony) was like “let’s just give it a couple of weeks and see if anything is missing”. We made a few edits, a few changes and added a few background vocals in August, we were then like “this is ready”. We ended up putting it to release at the end of September. It’s been doing really good! We are happy with that, we are excited!

Good! Has that become a fan favourite at shows?

Yassine – It has

Krishna – A lot of our live songs are quite favourites. There’s one that is particularly a favourite that we end our set with. It’s a sort of call and response with the audience song. It always gets received really well. We are hoping to put that out next year in Summer. With Spark, I remember when we went in and showed it to the boys (Tony and Oscar) we actually played it the next day because we had a show the next day! We were like “should we just try it?” So we gave it a go, not that it sounded great because we didn’t practice it properly and were sort of running off a memory of a 20 min practice that we did . People were still like “what was that song, we haven’t heard that before but it sounds sick”. We were then like “scrap the plan, that’s the next song we are going to put out”.

Yassine – We just wanted to allow a more radio friendly, a more easy listening song . I think our music touches many different genres and moods. I think what is exciting for us is as people discover us online, as people who haven’t seen a set yet, it will be very interesting to see how they are like “oh wow this is different from the last one and this is different from the one before” but it’s all within the same sound. The song was just about igniting that spark within yourself and being happy with it!

Krishna – Yeah it’s taking a chance on someone or something and going for it and don’t spend too much on what other people may think of it. Do what you need to do and listen to yourself.

I love the fact that you said about different sounds because you are all from somewhere different and will be releasing different styles of music – I can’t wait to hear it all!

Yassine – Thank you we are really excited!

I am also loving the song ‘Beauty Hidden In Pain’.

Yassine – So Beauty [hidden in pain] was one of the first songs that I wrote where I was like “this is good” in my head haha! It was near Christmas of 2021 and I remember I had been sitting in my living room and this song sort of just came out! A few weeks later, Krishna and I had an open mic thing in London Bridge and we played it and it just worked! The song kind of just stuck to us and I think it was last year, Krishna and I were like “this is a song that kind of represents, in a way, what we can bring in terms of lyrics and emotion”. I feel like it was a good first song to release. We knew that it was a bit longer but if we could introduce ourselves with this song, it kind of promotes our message.

Krishna – Yeah it encompasses our message of ‘change starts from within’ that’s sort of like an overarching theme across all the songs that we have released or will soon release. That’s sort of our motto. Up to the point where we walked into the studio, I think that was the strongest song that we had written up to that point in terms of lyrics and instrumentation, everything! It all came together. We have written better songs since then now that we know how it all works and so on and we have other ideas in our head that we want to materialise.

I think we recorded it in three months and that’s us walking into the studio for the very first time trying to play to a click track and messing up within the first ten seconds. There were some sessions where we recorded a minute long part but we spent about three hours in the studio doing that because we kept constantly messing up to the click track. Within three months we recorded it, produced it and everything. Given the very limited resources that we had, it was quite an impressive song that we managed to produce!

It is, I agree! I am looking forward to a future album, it will undoubtedly be inspirational!

Yassine – Album will be a further away…

Krishna – EP first!

Yassine – I think we want to make our first album massive haha!

Krishna – We have always toyed with this idea of a concept album. It starts with a story and takes you through a journey and ends on a story, a conclusion.

Yassine – Our songs will relay that message for sure! With all the songs that we have now, they are all interlinked, but I think it’s just a matter of making the album cohesive but also making it for everyone. We know that if we were to release an album in the next year it will reach a bunch of people but not everyone. We feel that we need to continue to take our time to release single after single for the next little bit and from that we will basically have an EP but when an album can be properly financed and ensure that it can be sent out to a bigger audience, I feel like it can then have a bigger impact. That’s our ultimate goal as a band, to reach as many people and spread the music as much as we can, be as inspirational as we can.

Krishna – That’s what music is for us, we enjoy it, it makes us inflect on ourselves and hopefully we become better people. That’s the idea of sharing the music, it’s not about fame or money, it’s about sharing love.

What have you planned next!

Yassine – We have been invited to an industry showcase. We have been asked to play in front of labels, publishers, managers et cetera and of course we are going to bring our fans. So, we are just hoping to see what comes from that! I think we are at the point now as a band, where we need that extra leverage to open those doors into a wider audience.

Krishna – some sort of financial backing or connection. Up until this point, we have achieved all of this independently. We fund ourselves, we do our own social media, we do our own production. Tony our drummer is our producer so we do our own production. We use our connections for mixing, mastering. We are quite proud of what we have achieved so far, doing this completely by ourselves, especially with half of the band having no experience of the music industry whatsoever (points to himself and Yassine) a year ago. We are coming to that point where we are being stretched quite thin ourselves by doing this ourselves because there are so many aspects that you need to cover. We need some sort of support, financial backing, some sort of leverage to open those doors.

Yassine – Yeah exactly! That’s our next step. Once a few more doors open for us, then it starts to get easier – bigger shows, more opening acts, fans start coming in more quickly. This is actually the hardest part. We have done so well, I know that if we keep going just a bit more, then having this next show for us is going to be huge. From there, we will be able to establish what the plan is for us next.

Well I hope it goes well which I am certain it will. Thank you so much for chatting today!