Snow Strippers have the internet under their spell

Snow Strippers are so hot right now. The underground duo consisting of Tatiana Schwaninger and Graham Perez met on Tinder five years ago. Schwaninger, a Depop girlie, and Perez, an aspiring EDM producer making tunes for the ascendant New York collective Surf Gang. They began releasing music when the pair moved to Detroit, starting with their first two singles in 2021, and going viral shortly after – their remix of “It’s Just a Dream” with Lil Uzi Vert was one of last year’s summer anthems, while a three-part April Mixtapes series, a full-length self-titled project, and their most recent instalment Night Killaz Vol. 1 and 2 have already made their way into the internet canon.

Snow Strippers makes big room EDM for the Gen Z underground. By this, I mean they’re front-runners in the electroclash and EDM revival hurricaning across North America and Europe, and also clout bait for club promoters, selling out shows with hoards of young ravers eager brought up on a hyper-online diet of Soundcloud rap and TikTok. Today, the duo are speaking to me ahead of two shows at Primavera Sound, to add to an already impressive schedule of live gigs – the week prior they performed at Swedish label Year0001’s homecoming event, which saw the fur-hooded crowd light up in a frenzy. Another night at London’s Trance Party a few months back had one seasoned raver confess to me that it might be the first time he felt he might die in a mosh pit. “It’s crazier in the states though,” Perez grins, “like we always have big collapses and it's kind of fun.”

These ravey antics carry into the duo’s trademark sound – a dopamine rush of subwoofers and synth stacks, best experienced live under the heady flash of strobe lights, where Schwaninger can be found dancing wildly on the decks, with Perez flexing his muscles in a tank top. “[It’s] just shit you can dance to, turnt up music,” Perez insists. We like songs you can stick into your veins type shit, just play over and over again.” They insist that what you see on stage is what they’re like IRL – no stage persona, no pre-planning. “Yeah, we just want to bring as much energy when we perform to the room as we want,” Schwaninger adds, “When Graham and I leave the stage, I feel like it’s a bad show if we’re not drenched in sweat.”

For all the hype surrounding the pair, it’s strange to think that it wasn’t so long ago they were hustling like the rest of us. Both of them worked “shitty” jobs in anything they could find – retail, bar-work, landscaping, the standard stuff. “I’m not saying that COVID made me do it. I don’t really pay attention to the outside world, but I just wanted to do my own thing,” elaborates Perez. “During COVID, I was trying to make my own music, like shit that I just wanted to hear. We had Tati sing on it and finally we landed on the sound, so we started shooting music videos and shit.” I wonder what they think about all the online comparisons to Crystal Castles. “I think it’s cool. I mean we love that whole genre of music. They’re comparing us to the goats, so yeah sure.”

“We like songs you can stick into your veins type shit, just play over and over again” – Snow Strippers

The pair have a reputation in the scene for their subversive, softcore aesthetics – think: the cover for April Mixtape 3 featuring Schwaninger posing crotch to camera. Most of the pair’s promo is self-shot, featuring Schwaninger in indie sleaze get-up, usually with guns or weed bongs. It’s youthful hedonism at its peak with the same conventionally attractive norm-isms as an American Apparel ad, and conjures a similar feeling to the track “Just Your Doll”, depicting Schwaninger and friends dancing around in a hot tub, singing “I am just your doll, I promise”. On socials, she’s labelled by hornyposting fans as “my favourite white girl”, while other clips veer on the side of controversy – Perez dancing with strippers, Schwaninger posing besides a dead fawn – presumably a play on ‘deer pretty’ online discourse. “We like to keep it as real as possible,” says Schwaninger.

For these reasons, Snow Strippers is associated with New York’s (now-defunct) Dimes Square crowd, a clique of internet cool kids associated with anti-woke aesthetics and the Vibe Shift – eg Red Scare’s Dasha Nekrasova and Anna Khachiyan. I mean, it adds up – I remember seeing one friend look at me uneasy during a Snow Strippers show to say, ‘I don’t think they’re good for society’. This doesn’t seem to bother Schwaninger and Perez however, neither do they seem too eager to talk about it. “We don’t know what Dimes Square is,” they say in near unison. “I think that that affiliation comes from like, the people in that area or listening to our music, but really I don’t know,” Perez follows up. But personally, I’m unconvinced.

In some ways, there’s a strange poetry in seeing America’s disaffected youth making it big. Whichever way you look at it, the pair have an entire generation’s mewing youth under their spell, so clearly there’s something that hits a nerve – probably the same reason why trad wives and looksmaxxing are all over your feed. “I don't know, we just like having a good time,” says Schwaninger all nonchalant, her deadpan expression highting in the magic girl formula that hints: life is euphoric, let’s vibe. 

“The music just takes you to a different place.”