Fcuk around and find out: Why Fcukers are putting fun first

The evolution of dance music has long relied on moments of serendipity. Acid house was born from the untrained twist of knob on a synthesiser designed to mimic bass guitar. Producer Tom Moulton only spread the groves of a dance track over a 12-inch single because his engineer ran out of 7-inch acetates. ‘Blue Monday’, ‘One More Time’, ‘Born Slippy’: the list of seminal dance tracks that were the result of messing around in the studio — or for various reasons, almost never emerged from the vault — continues to grow. 

Rather than questioning the curveballs, flukes, and happy accidents that have come their way, Fcukers have built a career on embracing them. “I feel like that’s been the nature of this whole thing,” Shanny, one half of the NYC duo, tells me. The party girl persona she exudes in blurry Instagram posts — hoops dangling from her ears, black shades on her face in already dark rooms — is nowhere to be found on Zoom today. 

Her girlish timbre is unmistakable though, and dials in from her apartment on the Lower East Side, where she’s been chilling after casually running a half marathon the day prior. “It’s crazy how many random coincidences happened in the universe for everything to line up the way it has for us,” she continues. “Especially because we had no plan at the start.” 

When she’s not racing from Brooklyn to Central Park, Shanny and her bandmate Jackson spend their time bolting between old-school dance genres as one of electronic music’s most aloof, and arguably coolest, pairs. Formed in the ashes of their respective indie bands, their first EP ‘Baggy$$’ introduced us to the Fcukers formula: her playfully deadpan hooks backed by his sleazy symphony of trip hop, jungle, pop, garage, dub reggae and breakbeat. It’s a good thing their uniform consists of a thrift store’s worth of vintage sportswear, because since the project dropped in 2024, Fcukers have been on the move. 

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In the last year alone they’ve been catapulted far from their 10002 zip code to Coachella, Glastonbury and Primavera Sound; toured some of the world’s sweatiest basement clubs; and stopped off in Ibiza for a Boiler Room. “We definitely took that EP as far as it could go,” she laughs. 

But reaching such lofty heights with the six tracks meant they faced back-breaking pressure to create a follow-up. Work on their debut album started in early 2025, but quickly, they hit a wall. “It wasn’t moving,” Jackson, who calls from his apartment a block away from Shanny’s, admits. “We had the pressure of making a debut album, but also the conundrums that a sophomore album has.” 

It’s hard to imagine the producer and DJ — who sports a shaggy head of Britpop hair, has a stoner laugh, and used to be a skater — stressed out, but he got there. “It reached the point where we told the label they wouldn’t be getting any music from us for the year. I was like, ‘Don’t ask. Shop’s closed.’” 

In the first instance of kismet we touch on, days after this declaration, Fcukers met Kenneth Blume, formerly known as Kenny Beats. Producer for names including FKA twigs, Denzel Curry and Vince Staples, he DM’d them a year prior with an invite to his California studio. It wasn’t until they were in town for Coachella that they took him up on it. “There were no expectations we were going to make anything,” Shanny recalls. “We were just stopping by. We had plans afterwards!” But after making two songs that first day, both parties cleared their schedules, and what began as a pit-stop snowballed into a whirlwind two weeks crafting their debut album ‘Ö’, which just dropped via Ninja Tune. 

Shanny and Jackson were trapped in their heads, but thankfully, Blume, GRAMMY-winning engineer Tom Norris (whose credits include work with Lady Gaga and Charli XCX) and 100 gecs’ Dylan Brady offered them an escape route out. “They were really great at pushing us forward and making sure we didn’t get stuck on things,” Shanny says, describing the collaborative process as “freeing”. “It allowed us to write a lot faster without getting tied down whether we thought a bassline or drum sounded good. Working with Kenny, who is so good at what he does, whose opinion we really trust, made it so easy.” 

With ‘Ö’ — pronounced “ooh” — the genre collagists agreed it was time to “push the sound forward” without departing from its core. “We kept hearing left and right from A&Rs that big popstars wanted big beat demos,” Jackson says. “I remember having a conversation with Shan like, ‘Man, if everyone’s about to drop all this '90s stuff, maybe we gotta move’.” Trademark wobbly basslines and rave sensibility in tow, their intuition took them back to the hip hop and R&B club hits they grew up listening to in the 2000s, namely Kelis, Nelly, Outkast. “I kept saying in the studio, ‘What would Basement Jaxx do now, if they were our age?’” he explains. “They were sampling Gary Numan because it was what they grew up on.” 

The result plays like a house party they’ve probably frequented, the kind where the sofa is ruined, cigarette ash stains the carpet and bedroom doors are locked for reasons you can imagine. We’re cordially invited by Shanny repeating the refrain of 'if you wanna party, come over to my house' over its slippery house beat, and the night gets into full swing thanks to Atlanta bass (‘Lonely’), juddering blog house (‘L.U.C.K.Y’) and trap-infused drum ‘n’ bass (‘Play Me’). After a throwback to Neptunes-era R&B (‘Beatback’, ‘Butterflies’), as expected, the comedown creeps in on the sunrise Uber ride home, embodied in the lethargic trip-hop of ‘Feel The Real’. 

Governed by tight arrangements (a purposeful move to mimic the magic of 2000s hip hop), in a surprising twist for a dance project released in 2026, ‘Ö’ is one totally free of samples. “I’d sample until there was no tomorrow if I could,” Jackson laughs, blaming the headache-inducing process of clearing for their absence. Instead, an upright bass player from Juilliard provides the strings, an old friend (Screechy Dime, who sang with Shaggy in the '90s) the raga vocals, while Shanny handles the woozy, nonchalant vocals that tie the 11 tracks together. “We share a strong creative trust,” she says of the pair’s dynamic in the studio. “If we’re not both in unanimous agreement about something, it’s not right.”

Music was destined to be a part of NY native Shanny’s life — her parents met because her mum was in a punk band and her dad produced demos. “Ever since I was a little kid they’ve been very encouraging,” she tells me as a package arrives at her front door. “They’d be like, ‘What’s that song you made up, Shan? Sing it for the camera!’”. With her school friends she started making cinematic indie tunes as The Shacks. They enjoyed success — one of their covers appearing in an iPhone ad — but soon enough, it stopped scratching her musical itch. 

She quit, and with the help of a quick lesson from a friend, swapped guitars and straight-to-tape recordings for production software Logic. When she wasn’t bartending or galavanting around the Lower East Side, she’d spend her free time experimenting with “R&B, Aaliyah-style beats”. She found the newfound musical universe at her fingertips exciting — “I knew I wanted to make something ‘crazy’… like dubstep,” she laughs — but she just didn’t know how to… yet.

At the same time, Jackson — born in LA to a dad he calls a “recreational” guitar player — began gaining traction as a vinyl DJ at venues including Le Bain, leaving behind his music industry introduction as a member of indie rock band Spud Cannon. “It was one of the reasons I quit, because I was like, “Woah, this is what it feels like when something’s going well!’,” he laughs. “I never planned to be a DJ, but it was the first time in my life I was playing exactly what I wanted to.” The result of dollar bin diving at his local record store, he developed a taste for '90s house: “I’d purely go off whether the cover said ‘D. Morales red zone mix’ or ‘Strictly Rhythm’, then I knew I was good.” 

Both bartending, disillusioned with indie rock and hungry to make people dance, Shanny and Jackson just needed to meet. Although their circles occasionally crossed — especially at thrift store Leisure Centre, where they played a pop-up on release day — an introduction eventually came from a mutual friend. “I knew Jackson was a DJ, so I thought he wanted to throw a party at the spot I worked,” Shanny remembers. Instead, he played her the only beat he had prepared, a scratch of what would become ‘Homie Don’t Shake’. “I thought I’d have to give her a whole speech about singing over electronic music,” he smiles. “But she was already there.” 

Their laid-back demeanours, yet another commonality, meant that things got off to a slow start, though. “The first few months we were like, ’Sooo…. What do you want to do?’” Jackson mimics in an even more laxed voice, which I didn’t think was possible. Eventually, they stumbled on a name inspired by a vintage French Connection hoodie he wore at the time. “We felt that it perfectly encapsulated us. ‘This is just for us, we don’t have any grander aspirations, who cares? Fuck it.’” 

Considering they play around with UK-originating genres (dubstep, jungle, UK garage) and have named themselves after one of the country’s most popular 2000s fashion labels, it’s little surprise that subreddits and comments underneath their music videos (many of which Shanny has produced) are full of listeners astonished to learn that Fcukers aren’t actually British. In another life, it's plausible they might’ve spent their teen years cutting around Boomtown, clutching water bottles with rollies hanging out of their mouths. 

“My dad listened to Fatboy Slim and Happy Mondays when I was growing up. It made me think the UK was the coolest place in the world,” Jackson remembers, quick to clarify that he still thinks it is. This enamoration led him to study at Goldsmiths University in South London on an exchange programme. Although his lecturers went on strike early on, he returned to the States having experienced the back room at the Amersham Arms and a taste for Coldcut, Roots Manuva and playing pool. 

Back stateside, Fcukers are part of a wave of electronic acts that have emerged out of New York since the pandemic, including friends like The Dare, Chanel Beads and Frost Children. “Nobody was looking to become anything bigger than what they were doing here,” Jackson explains. “Harrison [The Dare] was throwing parties once a week for a year.” But coming up during the indie sleaze revival means they’re often pigeonholed themselves. “We got lumped in with whatever that means. I always tell people, ‘I don’t know any indie sleaze drum ‘n’ bass songs from that time,’” he laughs. 

It’s this very community that rallied around the band when they played their first show at Baby’s All Right in March 2023, just hours after they dropped their first two tracks. The sold-out gig — a dance party which included Shanny’s friend getting naked on stage — set the tone for their high-octane shows, which straddle live gigs and DJ sets. “From the get-go, we knew we wanted to perform as a band,” Jackson explains. “You can have magic in the club, but there’s something visceral about watching a band perform.” 

Typically accompanied by a drummer and scratch DJ (who’s a DMC champion, they add), Shanny and Jackson have warmed up Madison Square Garden for Tame Impala and Haim and simultaneously become the go-to afterparty vibemaxxers for fashion weeks, award ceremonies, and Charli XCX. “We can be in all kinds of spaces, which gives us a lot of freedom to perform in different ways,” Shanny explains.

This summer, they’ll make their first trip to Brazil to open for recent dance music convert Harry Styles, a gig they admit they still can’t really comprehend. “We’d heard murmurs, but we didn’t know he was a fan,” Jackson says, sharing that the offer email was so tightly-guarded it didn’t even list Styles’ name, it used a superhero’s instead. “We found out when it was announced. I don’t think we fully know how it’s happened, but I promise we’ll get to the bottom of it.” 

Despite the success and recognition from their heroes — whether it’s a remix by Junior Sanchez, an invite to open for Justice, or praise from Nia Archives at a Portola Festival afters — Fcukers remain humble, and in typical fashion, chill. “This has gone way further than we ever thought it would. We’re grateful, especially coming from bands where it hasn’t gone well,” Jackson says, calling his now-grinning bandmate his “pseudo sister”. ”Both of us had already tried to do the music thing. I felt like I was too old to make it in music. I’m not kidding. I thought I’d missed the boat when I was 25.” 

“We’re just going to roll with it. We just want to make music, have fun, and be true,” he responds when I ask what’s next. “If it connects, great. If it doesn’t, well, true happiness isn’t about success. It comes from, like, eating pasta with your friends or whatever.” 

The universe is clearly on their side, but the rise of New York’s dance music fatemates isn’t solely by chance. Re-imagining the pioneering genres that came before them for the dancefloors of today has struck a chord with a new generation of listeners who are living for the weekend. If one thing is for certain, they’re not going to stop fcuking around any time soon. 

‘Ö’ is out now via Ninja Tune, check it here

Jordan Page is a freelance writer, follow him on Instagram