When the world shut down last year, guitarist and songwriter Towa Bird had to find an alternative to shredding at festivals and sweaty clubs. Enter: TikTok. Since posting her first video in January 2020, the artist’s talent and effortless style have propelled her to more than 800,000 followers on the app, hungry for riffs on Blondie classics, 2010s indie (see: “The Less I Know The Better”) and modern hip hop bangers (try: Brockhampton’s “Sugar”).

Towa Bird is far from just a TikTok star, though. Pre-lockdown, she had a bunch of shows lined up with her band, Cassyette, alongside studying at London’s Goldsmiths. She’s also been making inroads as a producer since she first started making beats in her room as a teenager, and she has been outspoken about the lack of female representation in the industry too.

Needless to say, Towa Bird looks poised for big things as lockdown lifts, and can already count Tyler, the Creator and Willow Smith among her thousands of fans. Right now, we’d recommend just heading to her TikTok and gazing in awe.

Text Thom Waite