piri & tommy share debut video for ‘words’, Glastonbury + summer festivals confirmed

Hotly-tipped piri & tommy have today dropped their first ever music video for latest single, ‘words’. Having gone top 10 on Tiktok and currently playlisted at Radio 1, the video (directed by Rupert Holler) is the perfect introduction to the unmatched chemistry and colourful visual world of UK pop’s most exciting new duo.

Even under a handful of tracks, piri & tommy have found themselves at the front of a new wave of British music. Assimilating everything from the DIY Dance explosion online to their generation’s relationship with nostalgia – both, as exploded by the pandemic – the duo have made a real-world splash with their playful but potent dance-pop anthems. Universal in theme, each also acts as a time-capsule of piri & tommy’s very specific journey together: from viral hit ‘Soft Spot’ (about that awkward crush) to the summer-ready ‘beachin’ (your first day out together), to the importance of communication in a couple (‘words’).

Thrown together in a bubble at the start of the pandemic, piri & tommy’s own backgrounds proved oppositional, but complimentary. piri was studying Chemistry at university in Lancaster, idolising the brash charisma of Doja Cat or K-Pop superstars Red Velvet: tommy, meanwhile, was a self-confessed Soundcloud nerd originally from Essex, but living out his rock star fantasies in his then-band, Porij. Together, piri & tommy bonded over a mutual love of dance music, in particular the genre-fluid Kaytranada or Disclosure, and started out making tunes from their bedrooms. On ‘soft spot’, piri & tommy struck a nerve between the stasis of modern life, the high-energy of DNB, and the rapid pace of Tiktok culture: it soon proved inescapable, travelling far beyond the pair’s student house (“I’m amazed,” says tommy, “to see people showing the world their lives with our tune as a soundtrack”).

Having moved to London, piri & tommy have made an explosive start to life-out-of-lockdown. Their first ever headline tour, including a London date at XOYO, was greeted with stage invasions, whilst the duo’s formative summer of festivals has already been met with rave reviews (“they’re an act with longevity beyond the app” – NME, ****). With shows under their belts at Radio 1’s Big Weekend and The Great Escape, piri & tommy are one of the opening acts at this year’s Glastonbury on Thursday: catch them this summer below, whilst you still can.

piri & tommy lives dates

23.06.22 || Somerset || Glastonbury (Lonely Hearts Club, 9.15PM)
24.07.22 || Suffolk || Latitude
11.08.22 || Somerset || Boomtown
26.08.22 || Reading || Reading Festival
27.08.22 || Leeds || Leeds Festival