Left to right: [**BY SAMII RYAN**](https://bysamiiryan.com) sweatshirt, [**COS**](http://cosstores.com) skirt, and stylist’s own chain. [**ABEL HONOR NEW YORK**](https://www.abelhonornewyork.com) sweater, and [**ECKHAUS LATTA**](https://shop.eckhauslatta.com) jeans.
On walking into an arty echo park home in los angeles, I’m greeted at the door by a number of strangers sitting on a couple of couches surrounded by beer bottles, posters, and random knick-knacks. There’s a trickle of people coming in and out of the living room and no one seems too concerned that I’m there. The space is the picture of a tired and hungover tour stop.
“People keep saying that,” groans Laura Les. She’s genuinely perplexed by the suggestion that pop punk isn’t cool. The chattier of the two 100 Gecs co-members is sitting at a weathered garden table that’s covered in leaves out the back. She’s wearing a loose black t-shirt and her long bleach blonde hair matches her bandmate, Dylan Brady’s. “People hate it,” he offers, in his way, dropping internet slang and meme references between one line answers. He’s the other half of the Chicago and Los Angeles-based duo—originally from the St. Louis suburbs—whose hyperactive cross-genre electropop has come to define a new generation of producers, and he can’t understand the hate, either. “I mean, I was going to Warped Tour, so I didn’t really know people hated it. No one hated it there.” Brady is talking about the travelling alt-rock music festival that’s been running since 1995. In that time, the mainstream popularity of skate punk has waxed and waned, probably peaking around the turn-of-the-century when Blink 182’s _Enema of the State_ was released in 1999.
High school friends Les and Brady are aged 24 and 25 respectively, so they would have been about five years old when that record dropped. And yet, the electric guitar distortion and emotional power chord changes are all over their debut album-gone-viral, _1000 Gecs_. There’s a screamo dissonance interrupting Les’ delicate vocals on “800db cloud” and a ska revival rhythm driving the quirky thrust of “stupid horse.” Much like a large-scale rendition of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” hanging in the trees nearby—it works.
Left to right: [**BY SAMII RYAN**](https://bysamiiryan.com/) sweatshirt, [**COS**](http://cosstores.com/) skirt, [**Z-COIL**](https://zcoil.com/) shoes, and stylist’s own chain. [**ABEL HONOR NEW YORK**](https://www.abelhonornewyork.com/) sweater, [**ECKHAUS LATTA**](https://shop.eckhauslatta.com/) jeans, and [**SALOMON**](https://www.salomon.com/en-us) shoes.
I’d first come across 100 Gecs and their 2017 self-titled EP on Laura Les’ Soundcloud page, after she featured her original osno1 alias on freshman PC Music-signing umru’s _search result_ last year. The shimmering pop epic of the New York-based producer’s bass- heavy production on “popular” met an Auto-Tuned falsetto flex from Les singing, _“don’t you think I’m cute ‘cause I’m so popular?”_
Her own stuff is less cocky and more vulnerable. On her 2016 _hello kitty skates to the fuckin CEMETARY_ EP, a muted keyboard meets a lonely guitar echo and an ever-present whooshing wind sample on “gone with a knife; given all wrong.” The typically dexterous lyrics delivered by Les’ filtered voice do appear, but it’s in a pitch that’s wobblier and more melancholy. “osno1 seemed like a very impersonal name that I made when I was trying to make pretty impersonal music, so I just wanted to change it,” says Les, about the old solo moniker she came up with by randomly pressing a bunch of letters on a computer. “It was actually keyboard mashing at first and I was like, ‘that looks good.’”
The pace of that earlier record is slow and introspective, featuring mostly atmospheric tunes—including a collaboration with Brady—that are basically a kind of ambient emo-folk. It’s equally as moody and downbeat as the rest of _hello kitty skates to the fuckin CEMETARY_, but nowhere near as deranged as anything on the captured, cut and mangled maximalism of 2016’s _100 Gecs_ EP or the _1000 Gecs_ album to follow.
Left to right: [**ABEL HONOR NEW YORK**](https://www.abelhonornewyork.com/) t-shirt and talent’s own necklace (worn throughout). [**COS**](http://cosstores.com/) coat and [**ABEL HONOR NEW YORK**](https://www.abelhonornewyork.com/) sweatshirt
Brady’s solo work, too, is all over the shop in terms of stylistic markers. 2017’s _Dog Show_ was mostly a crackling lo-fi guitar digression from the trendier side of soft-synth and bass EDM of _All I Ever Wanted_, while the most recent _Peace & Love_ release features a grinding, distorted garage rock guitar line you’d expect from a Jack White album. Lead single “I’ll Make You Miss Me All The Time” is the kind of classic new millennium pop punk Brady’s just been defending, while “7/11 Drone” is all dream trance drops and build- ups. It’s a record that is not easy to categorize, and it’s certainly not the kind of release you’d expect to hear from Diplo’s Mad Decent label, known for popularizing trap and dancehall. Not only that, but Brady is producer to artists as diverse as Charli XCX, Dorian Electra, Injury Reserve, and Jesse Rutherford, which is a testament to the versatility and combined talent of a band who can basically make music from anything.
“I feel like the things that I’ve done haven’t been as wide- reaching, in terms of inside the project,” says Brady about the no- holds-barred freedom of working with Les. “100 Gecs is, like, hella shit at once...just like a bunch of different shit going on, so it’s just gonna keep being a bunch of stuff.”
While waiting for 100 Gecs, who are preparing for a photo shoot, a bagel-run comes through the door and Les’ husband, Gabe Howell—a talented visual artist and illustrator in his own right—is keeping me company. I’m told that last night’s support of alt-hip hop group Brockhampton was the first time Les crowd-surfed and that the level of success the band is experiencing is wild.
“I think we have a million or two,” Brady casually corrects me later, when I say their Soundcloud plays have reached into the hundreds of thousands since dropping _1000 Gecs_ on his own Dog Show label, with little more than an announcement on Twitter.
Left to right: [**ABEL HONOR NEW YORK**](https://www.abelhonornewyork.com/) t-shirt, [**KAIMIN**](https://kaiminofficial.com) jeans, [**CONVERSE**](https://www.converse.com) shoes, and talent’s own necklace (worn throughout). [**COS**](http://cosstores.com/) coat, [**ABEL HONOR NEW YORK**](https://www.abelhonornewyork.com/) sweatshirt, [**MSGM**](https://www.msgm.it/en/) leggings**,** [**Z-COIL**](https://zcoil.com/) shoes, and [**KSLAM**](https://www.kslamclothing.com) hairclip.
“It’s just us doing what comes naturally and people just seem to like it a lot,” adds Les, about their viral success to this point and DIY approach to promotion, which includes countless fan-made 100 Gecs memes. There’s one with Zelda holding an image of the album with the text “ITS MY CAR AND I GET TO CHOOSE THE MUSIC.” In another, two clones of SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon character, Patrick Star, are leaning their heads against a rock, mimicking doppelganger’s Brady and Les leaning against a tree in Illinois on their album cover. The list goes on and on. “We just do what we would have wanted artists to do for us. It’s so fun getting somebody else’s stems and messing with them. We do that and it’s cool to allow other people to do that easily.” That’s why 100 Gecs dropped the acapellas, instrumentals, and stems for all their _1000 Gecs_ tracks online and via a website, called 1000stems.com, for fans to do with them what they please. Brady and Les have spent the last months resharing the remixes in service to Brady’s declared intention to make the music and the community around them as accessible as possible.
“I think people just end up being not as inclusive as they could be, which I think is really stupid,” says Les to the suggestion that, despite their pop leaning, the band have been more successful doing DIY punk than their pronounced DIY punk predecessors. “I think people get too fucking in their heads about being punk, or whatever. And then it gets to their head and then they’re like, ‘ah, I don’t want to do press,’ and it’s like, who fucking cares?”
“It doesn’t have to be exclusive,” adds Brady about what he describes as 100 Gecs’ ‘open door policy.’ “Obviously some communities are like that but we’re definitely not trying to build that type of community. If you don’t like it, that’s totally fine. If you do, that’s totally fine also.”
“I can totally be friends with somebody who hates our music,” Les adds laughing, as we wrap up our conversation. “It’s totally understandable.”
Left to right: [**BY SAMII RYAN**](https://bysamiiryan.com/) t-shirt, [**ECKHAUS LATTA**](https://shop.eckhauslatta.com/) jeans, [**CONVERSE**](https://www.converse.com/) shoes, and stylist’s own chain. [**KENZO**](http://kenzo.com) coat, [**COS**](http://cosstores.com/) t-shirt, pants, and shoes, and stylist’s own chain.
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Photographed by: [Andi Elloway](https://INSTAGRAM.COM/andi.elloway).
Styled by: [Britton Litow](https://INSTAGRAM.COM/wanna__b).
Grooming: [Sarah Higgins](https://INSTAGRAM.COM/mr.sarah__) using [Bobbi Brown](https://www.bobbibrowncosmetics.com) at [The Rex Agency](https://therexagency.com).
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