VMP Magazine

To spend any amount of time, in any capacity, with Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty is to hear, witness, and experience chemistry. It comes off in the most superficial sense: despite having done countless interviews since their 2013 debut, they found themselves bouncing off one another, winding themselves down a path of jokes or jabs or memories, only to come-to moments later, remember they were being interviewed — sometimes even apologizing — and got back to answering the question at hand. Their speech, movements, and indyosychracies clicked and moved together like cogs in a machine. But that’s just an inevitability of any group of people that are so close, that spend so much time together. CHVRCHES’ chemistry goes far beyond that.

It’s unexplainable and instantaneous. It’s the kind you don’t have to be in the room to experience, the kind you can hear. If you need any more proof than simply listening to the molecular-level movement in their music, the anomaly of CHVRCHES’ lightning come-up bears witness to that calibur chemistry. Sitting on stage at the cozy Brooklyn venue The Knitting Factory, as a part of Project Unfollow — an art, music and fashion series celebrating the world’s most iconic Unfollowers presented by the first-ever BMW X2-- I asked them when the last time was they played a stage this small.

CHVRCHES have gone their own way since they burst on the indie rock scene in 2012. Self-producing their music and originally putting it up for free...

Stepping out onto the sidewalk in front of Los Angeles' Amoeba Music record store, a jet-lagged Little Simz extended her hand, “I’m Simbi.” As if I didn’t know, as if the entire team standing next to us wasn’t here just for her, as if I hadn’t watched every video, listened to every song, read every interview she’s done in her 15-year career. Of course, this wasn’t ignorance or insult, but her undying homeostatic hum of humility. Despite the kinetic trajectory of her career, it’s tough to imagine 24-year-old London MC Simbi Ajikawo ever feeling above an introduction.

Little Simz, an up-and-coming rapper from the U.K., first took a stage as a rapper before she turned 10. She’s followed her own path ever since, de...