Queer indie trio headboy lean on the friendship in “Jackal Lake”

Consisting of guitarist/bassist and vocalist Mars West (they/them), bassist/guitarist and vocalist Jess Collins (she/they), and drummer Oli Birbeck (they/them), headboy the trio was birthed during lockdown. The band won a competition in collaboration with Dr. Martens and Goat Girl which worked to help female, trans and non-binary artists be billed for live gigs post-pandemic.

You could be fooled into predicting headboy’s sound from the first minute of one of their tunes, but it's a well-proven promise that by the end of any of their tracks you'll be walking away in a completely different soundscape. Their new song "Jackal Lake" slots into their dreamily psychedelic and post-punk world, a
joyfully winding slice of guitar-pop, with heaps of lo-fi bedroom tones.

"To me this song is about the strange healing process after being hurt", Mars explains. "When I was writing the lyrics I was feeling very sad and doing a lot of outdoor and cold water swimming because the adrenaline was the only way I could connect to a clear and rational way of thinking. I’d drive out alone to various lakes and rivers around London to find that. It felt like this body of water had a transformative effect on the way I was feeling - like a potion that you jump into, or like taking medicine but reversed (instead of consuming something you are being consumed by the water). "Jackal Lake" is a fictitious place but it’s an amalgamation of all those places."

"Jackal Lake" is glazed with a slow apathy, the perfect stage to reveal the flavourful voice of Mars West. It merges together elements of the London D.I.Y. scene, whilst paying homage to the ongoing 90s revival. For being a bunch of newcomers, the band is impressively self-assured.

"This track more speaks about the vulnerability of someone going through a hard time and pain. And trying to push through it. There's times when we slip back into dependency on our mates when we need it, and being held by them to remember to keep going when you just feel so empty," Oli explains. Jess continues, "...to me, "Jackal Lake" is about trying to help a friend who’s fallen into a pit of despair, but then ending up falling in with them."

The track was plucked from their debut EP Was It What You Thought, also released to listeners today, which was written during 2022 and recorded over that summer at Hackney Studios in East London with producer Joe Futak. Written amongst the weeds of political turmoil, the collection of tracks plays with unravelling and attempting to understand the tumultuous and heady cycles of life from both a micro, personal level, whilst also more generally about feeling lost in the whirlwind.