Single out now: Keo "Be Happy"

After a year of momentum, sold-out tours, headline and main stage festival slots, and songs that have travelled far beyond the venues they were written for, Keo’s debut album is here. ‘Put A Smile On For Me’ is out now via Island Records, a raw and deeply personal record that captures a band finding themselves in real time. Written and recorded in a matter of weeks, it moves between ragged guitars, bruising emotion and huge, undeniable melodies, holding onto all the chaos and uncertainty that made it worth making in the first place.

Alongside their album, Keo share ‘Be Happy’, the record’s opening track and new single. It takes the idea of happiness and pulls it apart, questioning what it actually means to feel good when you are still trying to make sense of yourself. There is humour in it, but something darker underneath too, with the song constantly threatening to tip from euphoric into something more unsettling.

LISTEN TO ‘PUT A SMILE ON FOR ME’

WATCH OFFICIAL VIDEO FOR ‘BE HAPPY’ LISTEN TO ‘BE HAPPY’

The accompanying video, directed by Tommy Davis, takes that idea somewhere stranger. Set inside a forgotten cinema, Keo perform to a room of unhappy people, while another version of the band appears on screen inside a vibrant technicolour dream of sunflowers, sunshine and perfect skies. As the audience begins to smile, laugh and slowly lose control, the two worlds start to bleed into one another, turning happiness into something increasingly overwhelming.

“Be Happy is about envy towards people who feel content with the banality of life, who seemingly believe in happiness,” Finn Keogh explains. “There have been times in my life where I have questioned its existence. But near the end, in all the song’s chaos, I brush all of those feelings to one side with ‘nevermind’. If you think about all of that stuff too much, fear takes over and then you never really live anyway.”

‘Be Happy’ arrives after a run of singles that have each revealed a different side to the record. ‘That’s Me’ introduced the album with its huge, self-questioning hooks, while ‘Pistol’ pushed that into something more visceral. Recent offering ‘Bird On The Wire’ offered a quieter turn, stripping everything back to its most vulnerable and accepting.

At its heart, ‘Put A Smile On For Me’ is an unfiltered examination of shame, accountability, memory and vulnerability, with frontman Finn Keogh confronting the parts of himself he would rather avoid. But there is something equally important in the act of making it. Recorded mostly live and self-produced by Finn alongside guitarist Jimmy Lanwern, the album feels like a document of a band figuring things out in real time, turning confusion, contradiction and self-doubt into something loud, immediate and alive. There is humour in it, but also a real sense of self-recognition, as though the songs are finding their shape at the same time Finn is finding his own.

Musically, Keo turn that introspection into something huge. Ragged guitars, bruising dynamics and towering melodies pull from the likes of Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden and Radiohead, while Finn’s songwriting keeps the chaos tethered to something real. The record swells and recedes around those ideas, moving from huge, anthemic moments into something much more intimate without ever losing its sense of urgency.

That combination has fuelled a remarkable rise for the band over the past year. From their beginnings on London’s underground circuit, Keo have quickly graduated to some of the biggest stages of their career, supporting Wolf Alice before returning to Reading & Leeds for a Main Stage appearance this summer. Their October UK headline tour sold more than 9,000 tickets in its first 24 hours, with every date now sold out, including O2 Forum Kentish Town.

But for all the numbers around the band, it is the connection in the room that has always felt most powerful. Crowds sing every word back, often to songs that have barely been released, turning their live shows into something that feels less like a performance and more like a shared experience. With very little reliance on social media, Keo have built their audience through word of mouth, relentless touring and the palpable feeling that something is happening when these songs are played in a room full of people.

That momentum now carries into 2027 with O2 Academy Brixton, London on Friday 12th March, their biggest headline show to date, also very close to selling out. For a band who have built their ascent from the ground up, it feels like a significant next step, and another marker of just how far these songs have travelled.

The critical response has followed suit, with The London Standard calling Keo “the next big guitar band”, while Rolling Stone UK praised “a sound that has given UK guitar its biggest kick up the fretboard in years.” MOJO, DORK, Kerrang!, DIY, Clash, NME, Wonderland, Man About Town, Dazed and more have all followed suit.

‘Put A Smile On For Me’ captures Keo in a moment of becoming. But there is nothing static about it. Even as the band look inward, the songs are already pulling forwards, towards bigger stages, wider horizons and something that feels increasingly difficult to contain. Stay tuned for more from Keo, coming soon.

LISTEN TO ‘PUT A SMILE ON FOR ME’

‘Put A Smile On For Me’ - Track Listing

Side A

• Be Happy
• That’s Me
• Fly
• Best I Can Do
• Bird On The Wire

Side B

• Pistol
• Loser
• Black Dress
• Blue Song
• Thorn
• Spent On You

Keo Upcoming Live Dates 2026

• Sat 17 Oct - Neighbourhood Festival, Manchester, UK
• 24 Oct - O2 Guildhall, Southampton (SOLD OUT)
• 25 Oct - Tramshed, Cardiff (SOLD OUT)
• 27 Oct - O2 Academy, Glasgow (SOLD OUT)
• 29 Oct - O2 Academy, Liverpool (SOLD OUT)
• 30 Oct - O2 Forum Kentish Town, London (SOLD OUT)
• 12th Mar 2027 - 02 Academy Brixton, London