The Kowloons - Butterflies
Lead Single • Backwards Walking (2026). Southport / Liverpool, England, UK.
The Kowloons Turn Mersey Nostalgia into Psychedelic Britrock
Emerging from Merseyside, The Kowloons are built around identical twins Stephen and Anthony Ng, whose lifelong songwriting partnership is joined by guitarist Mason Jones and an expanding live lineup. Their music draws deeply from British guitar history, but their philosophy is less revivalist than evolutionary: look backwards in order to move forwards. Following 2026 EP Hallelujah, the band are already beginning another chapter with Backwards Walking. Its lead single “Butterflies” pushes their familiar melodic instincts into bigger, stranger territory, mixing Britrock scale with colourful psychedelia.
Butterflies: When Infatuation Makes Everything Feel Surreal
“Butterflies” captures the nervous exhilaration of becoming completely consumed by another person. Rather than treating infatuation as something gentle, The Kowloons make it disorientating and euphoric—the emotional rush becomes something capable of temporarily changing how the world around you looks and feels.
The production mirrors that sensation. Backwards guitars swirl around thumping drums, melodic bass and increasingly distorted guitar textures, while the vocal moves from intimacy toward an expansive chorus. The influence of The Beatles’ Revolver era is present in its psychedelic experimentation, but The Kowloons are simultaneously reaching for the larger-scale immediacy of bands such as U2 and The Killers. The result marks a conscious step away from being defined purely by Liverpool's Merseybeat lineage.
Why It Matters: British Guitar Bands Are Turning Nostalgia into Progress
A new generation of British guitar bands is discovering that looking backwards doesn't have to mean recreating the past. Psychedelia, Britpop, Merseybeat and classic alternative rock can function as raw materials rather than fixed templates, allowing familiar sounds to be reconstructed for larger contemporary stages.
That philosophy sits at the centre of Backwards Walking. The Kowloons openly draw inspiration from records that have survived generations, but “Butterflies” shows them beginning to stretch those references beyond straightforward nostalgia. The past provides the vocabulary; ambition determines where they take it next.
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