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17 November 2025

Every Monday we will be bringing you interviews with UK or Ireland artists for Independent Music Monday. Recently we caught up with Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire band The Happy Somethings to find out more…

Who is in the band, how did you meet, where are you from and how did you come up with the name?
We are Happy, Jolly and Joy (real names!) and we’re based in Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire. The three of us have known each other for a long time but we didn’t ‘get together’ until 2016 when all three of us were ‘at rest’ musically. We just wanted to make music for fun without any of the hassles that tend to go with band life – so we decided to do just that. We love playing together and recording and putting out what we come up with. Sometimes others join in under the banner of THS and we all contribute to the songwriting process. So The Happy Somethings are a loose collective really – underpinned by the three of us but no-one can remember how we decided on the name!

Who were your musical influences when you were growing up and who are your influences now?
Joy’s earliest musical memories are mainly courtesy of her dad who was into trad jazz and Irish music. She also received a subliminal, but quite solid indoctrination of American ‘Musicals’ from her mum – and coming from Merseyside, The Beatles were inescapable. Jolly was and still is a bit of a punk – but his real backstory has a classical soundtrack. Happy was plugged into the stream of Bowie, Beatles, Bolan and any other B-listed musicians via his older brother. Not sure we’re directly influenced by anyone now (or maybe it’s everyone…) but if you’d like to know what’s on high rotation for us at the moment, it’s Blur, Ron Sexsmith and The Beths.

How would you describe your sound?
We describe ourselves as ‘Independently unpolished, unintentionally retro and effortlessly uncool’. In our early days, Tom Robinson described us as ‘Optimistic Jangle Fuzz Merchants’ but we like to think we’ve expanded our sound a bit now. We’ve been described as quirky, melancholic, joyful, dark, retro, contemporary, original, lyrically witty and observational. Most recently, for our ‘El Elu Ku’ EP, we were given the description of ‘Hawaiian Psychedelica Folk’ which we rather like! We vary our style quite a bit but guess it could broadly be described as ‘alternative indie pop’. We love melody, harmonies and a bit of jangle. Sometimes we like a bit of noisy guitar. Sometimes we like ukuleles. Words are very important to us!

What is your latest release called and what was the influence behind it?
Our last release was a four track EP called ‘EL ELU KU’. Having recently acquired an eight-stringed ukulele, we were inspired to dig out our collection of other ukuleles and just have fun playing around with them. The songs emerged from that really.

Our current release (14th November) is ‘No More Christmas Songs’ – which has a clear implication in its title! Despite them not being to everyone’s taste (including ours!) – and despite our best efforts not to write them – we’ve found ourselves over the years recording more than a few festive tracks. We’re releasing it as an early single and then at the beginning of December it will be added to our ‘Don’t Mention It!’ alternative Christmas album as the 25th and (definitely) final track. ‘No More Christmas Songs’ is our attempt to pin down those elusive melancholy chord/melody combinations and pair them with some hope-filled yet wistfully-wry, winter-worthy words… For this recording we invited a few friends to join in to offer a little seasonal warmth to the proceedings and it’s pretty close to a ‘live’ recording.

What’s your local music scene like?
Well our very local music scene is cover band and karaoke orientated – neither of which we’re particularly into. For a more eclectic choice and some excellent original music we’d head into Nottingham and Sheffield as there are loads of good bands playing there. And of course, a trip to Joy’s hometown of Liverpool will inevitably throw up lots of opportunities.

What do you have planned for the next 12 months?
We have a single planned for release on New Year’s Day – which we had a lot of fun recording. It’s a call to loving arms – and hopefully a positive start to 2026! After that, we don’t have any concrete plans but we’ll carry on writing and recording at leisure for pleasure – and release more EPs as and when.

Is there anyone you’d love to collaborate with?
Initially, we didn’t think our lo-fi methods of recording would lend themselves to working in collaboration with more digitally advanced musicians and as a result assumed we’d never be able to work with anyone else! Once we realised that some people were willing to come down to our level ha, ha, there were a surprising number of collaborations and we’ve found that we’ve actually loved working with a number of musical friends over the past few years including Lost Signal, Paul F Cook, Slovenly Boy, Cobbled Moth and The Music of Sound. Is there anyone else we’d love to collaborate with? Yes definitely!

Any funny stories surrounding your live performances?
As mentioned earlier, when we first got together we just wanted to make music for fun without any of the stresses that go with being in a band – including gigging. We also manage various health conditions so we only make music for pleasure as and when we want, and it’s not driven by anything else. So no funny ‘live’ stories from us – although we do have a lot of fun playing live to ourselves!

What is the one thing that you want readers to know about you?
Two things:

We like cheese a lot – but we don’t like wasps.

We’re true to our words – but our words often get lost in translation…

You can find out more about The Happy Somethings via Apple Music, Bandcamp, Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Linktree, SoundCloud, Spotify, Threads, X (Twitter), YouTube (channel) or YouTube (topic).