It’s been a little over a year since Westside Cowboy released their debut single, and yet they were one of the most talked-about bands on the UK indie scene in 2025. Three of the four members – Paddy Murphy (drums), Aoife Anson-O’Connell (vocals/bass), and Reuben Haycocks (vocals/guitar) – first met during Freshers’ Week at Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music. The fourth, Jimmy Bradbury (vocals/guitar), worked at the local guitar shop Johnny Roadhouse.

Before they’d even recorded their first track, “I’ve Never Met Anyone I Thought I Could Really Love (Until I Met You),” they received a message from one of their heroes: Black Country, New Road drummer Charlie Wayne, who tweeted that the song was his “favourite of 2024.” Wayne urged them to record it, and a week later, it was released into the world. Five months on, Westside Cowboy announced they’d be supporting Black Country, New Road on their European tour.

Then came the annual, free-to-enter Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition for unsigned artists, which earned the band £5,000 and a game-changing slot on the festival’s Woodsies stage (formerly the John Peel stage). Their debut EP, This Better Be Something Great, dropped in August 2025, and their second arrives tomorrow (January 16). Titled So Much Country ’Til We Get There, the new five-track project stays true to the genre they coined themselves: Britainicana – a blend of hazy American country and rock with nostalgic British punk and indie.

Alongside work on their debut album, the band are heading back on tour this spring, this time supporting Geese on their sold-out Getting Killed tour. To kick off what’s shaping up to be a huge year for Westside Cowboy, we caught up with band members Paddy Murphy and Reuben Haycocks.

How are you feeling about the release of your second EP? 

Paddy Murphy: Good! We’ve changed our approach a bit. The first EP was intentionally bare, we wanted it to be as stark-sounding as possible as a starting point. We’ve been working a lot with Loren Humphrey [producer to Lana Del Rey, Geese and Boyish], he really enabled us to think outside the box a little bit more. 

How did you come up with your own genre, Britainicana? 

Paddy Murphy: I came up with it one morning in the bathroom. We didn’t even have any music out at the time, it was like, we’re a band and we have our own genre – it was stupid and precocious. But the whole idea was: we grew up, like so many people in the UK our age, being spoon-fed so much Americaness. Film, TV, music, literature, even down to the food we eat and the clothes we wear. It seemed like this shiny place where everything is great – they’ve got cowboys and greasers and Back to the Future. But then you grow up and realise the place is a fucking hellscape. But as a kid in rural Lancashire or Shropshire or wherever, you’re not going to look like Marty McFly. You’re not going to be Ferris Bueller. 

Reuben Haycocks: And God, did we try! 

Paddy Murphy: But what’s fun about when you fail at these things is that you end up somewhere that’s often way more interesting than if you had succeeded. We’re from England, we love English, Irish and Scottish folk music, we love classic indie and punk music, and so that all mixes together. 

Do you think it prevented people from trying to categorise you or putting you in a certain box? 

Paddy Murphy: When we started out, it was around the time of the dying embers of the post-punk explosion, so every band that played in certain venues would be labelled a post-punk band – but obviously, we sound nothing like that. 

Reuben Haycocks: It was mainly to get away from the awkward thing of ‘we’re a little bit indie but also a little bit this…’ when people would ask us what type of music we play, we had this word. 

Paddy Murphy: We’re going to trademark it! Watch out for a letter from our solicitor. 

[America’s] got cowboys and greasers and Back to the Future. But then you grow up and realise the place is a fucking hellscape

Do you have a dream venue you’d love to headline? 

Reuben Haycocks: The Ritz in Manchester. When we first started the band, as a joke, we made a list of all the things we wanted to achieve. It was just rubbish really – one of them said ‘support Bruce Springsteen’, but one of them said ‘play The Ritz’, even though we’d only done one gig in a coffee shop. Luckily, we ended up supporting English Teacher there, but to headline The Ritz would be a dream. 

So, headline The Ritz and then support Bruce Springsteen?

Reuben Haycocks: Yeah, Bruce Springsteen supports us. 

The whole band is either vegan or vegetarian. Is that for personal, ethical or environmental reasons?

Reuben Haycocks: It’s a bit of everything. It mainly comes from the ethics of eating living things. It’s a part of us that we’d like to incorporate more into our outward-facing presence. 

Paddy Murphy: But also, to be creative is a political thing. Whether you’re lyrically political or not, we owe it to the immense privilege that we have to use it to stand up for the causes we believe in, including the genocide in Palestine and the climate crisis. 

Do you think artists have a responsibility to speak out? 

Reuben Haycocks: Yes, because you’re given a platform and you should use it. I don’t think all creatives need to be inherently political in the art they create, but we feel an obligation to give back because we’ve been given this amazing privilege to have this as our job. 

Paddy Murphy: It’s the very least we could do, but we’re not doing enough. We’re a band, but how could we be a band when there’s so much awful stuff happening in the world? How can we justify this job? But the reality is, there is always something more we could be doing. It’s one thing to say something, but you should always try to take it one step further, whether that’s donating or joining a movement like Youth Demand, exercising your right to protest, or talking to people. 

Reuben Haycocks: In the future, we’d like to try and make all our venues accessible and have gender neutral toilets. It’s the little things that make people feel more comfortable. 

Paddy Murphy: Billie Eilish does this amazing thing where the venues for her shows only serve vegan food…

Reuben Haycocks: When we play the Co-op arena, it will be fully vegan! 

Is it true that when you discovered you’d won the Glastonbury Talent Competition, you had tickets to see Cameron Winter that you had to resell because the dates clashed? 

Paddy Murphy: Yeah! We were like, “fuck! Are they sure they can’t move that?” 

But now you’re supporting Geese on tour…

Reuben Haycocks: Yeah, we wanted to see Cameron Winter that badly. 

Paddy Murphy: It’s very surreal. We’ve been listening to them forever. When we were starting out, we were listening to 3D Country a lot. It’s just great rock music. 

Reuben Haycocks: But I hope they know, they had the Declan McKenna effect, as in, they’re a year older than us, and they’re on their fucking third album. It was like, we need to write ten albums! We need to catch up. They put a rocket up our arse. 

Paddy Murphy: That’s the big bold lettering, ‘they put a rocket up our arse!’ Whenever we see a band like them, we’re like, we need to practise more. It makes us better – and it means we don’t have to get tickets to see them anymore.