There Were Stars in Your Eyes: The So Young Records Story

It was June 11, 2021, and London post-punk outfit Folly Group released its debut EP, Awake and Hungry. Not only was it the band’s first release, but it was also their label’s, So Young Records. Neither side really knew what to expect going in—So Young Magazine was a prominent U.K. music zine, not an established label, after all. 

But longtime friends and So Young Magazine founders Sam Ford and Josh Whettingsteel had connections in the industry through running monthly “We Are So Young” club nights in London and the magazine, of which Folly Group lead singer/drummer Sean Harper was a semiregular contributor. When they all went to Rough Trade East on release day to soak it all in, they couldn’t find the EP on the shelves. “We were like, ‘Fuck, that’s really embarrassing, they haven’t even stocked it,’” Harper remembers. 

But when Ford went and asked someone working at the record shop what was going on, they said every copy had already been sold, even though it had only been on the shelves for a few hours at that point. “The look that we all gave each other was like, ‘Holy fuck, you guys have started a real record label, and we’ve just released a real EP that people want to buy,’” Harper says. “That was really nice. That was a good feeling, for sure.” 

To understand how this could happen, and how So Young Records ended up having one of the more intriguing rosters in indie rock—complete with bands like Cardinals, Lime Garden, Folly Group and Slow Fiction and, initially, Been Stellar—we need to go back to the beginning of So Young Magazine.

Ford and Whettingsteel met each other when they were 12 or 13 years old. They went to school together, but, as they tell me, they weren’t really friends back then. “We had a mutual friend that said it was criminal that we weren’t best friends because we both loved the same kind of music,” Whettingsteel says. “So we got on the periphery of this friendship group, but then it wasn’t until we were at university and started going to gigs and just kind of sharing our love of music together.” They went to different universities—Ford was in Cardiff and Whettingsteel was in Bournemouth, about three or so hours apart—but they acted on their friend’s recommendation to hang out whenever they were on breaks from school. “Our friendship has always been purely based on similar interests and being into music,” Whettingsteel says.

Soon after, they began to dabble with DJing and going to see the bands in concert that they were reading in NME, of which they were both avid readers. When they were coming back from seeing Palma Violets at Reading Festival in 2012, Whettingsteel came up with the idea of starting a magazine. “What the fuck, why? Why are we going to do that? It sounds really difficult!” Ford remembers thinking.

Named after a Splashh song, the first issue of the magazine came out in June 2013. Almost 12 years later, the duo released issue #54 in mid-February, with Black Country, New Road on the cover. Each physical issue, along with regular blog posts online, focuses on new, up-and-coming bands, primarily from the U.K.’s indie and alternative scene. Both Ford and Whettingsteel live in London and always have their ear to the ground, particularly documenting the scene that developed around the Windmill, a Brixton music venue that helped birth the careers of bands like Black Midi, Squid and Black Country, New Road.

After starting the magazine, Ford and Whettingsteel began putting on monthly “We Are So Young” club nights. Initially hosted at the Five Bells in New Cross and later at the Social in Central London, bands like Fontaines D.C., shame and the aforementioned Folly Group have graced its stages over the years, along with countless others. It was this combination of the magazine getting a foothold in the London indie scene and the “We Are So Young” club nights that led to increased brand recognition. And Ford’s and Whettingsteel’s focus on writing about new music put them in touch with the country’s best bands, along with their managers and publicists. It was only a matter of time until they started a label, too.

“The question of a label has been put to us probably since the second year of the magazine existing,” Ford says. “Printing a magazine is expensive enough, let alone trying to press some records. And also the physical element to releasing music—and the physical element of the magazine—is so important to us that if we were going to run a label, we just always wanted to do it properly and be able to afford to press records to vinyl. We’ve always been really keen on collaborating with people, whether that’s on the live front, whether that’s the magazine with all the illustrators and writers, or just any projects. So we’ve had a couple of people who we really trusted who presented that idea.”

Sometime in 2018 or 2019, they got a pint with Jamie Emsell from Communion Records, who also brought up the idea of starting a label. Emsell likely got the idea to reach out to them from some of the members of Sports Team, who were just starting to release music themselves. (The band’s manager was also one of the first people to ask about starting So Young Records, looking for a more organic way to introduce the band than via the major label it eventually signed with.) 

Ford and Whettingsteel always thought Emsell was a great person to work with, and since he kept bringing it up throughout COVID, they decided to take the plunge as a Communion imprint. After all, in those early days, they’d routinely watch Upside Down: The Creation Records Story and daydream about starting a label while at their retail jobs. Communion gave Ford and Whettingsteel “full creative freedom to just go and sign what we want, and work campaigns how we want to, and then have their amazing team help us make fewer mistakes,” Ford says. Because So Young was so ingrained in the London scene, finding a band to sign wasn’t an issue.

“By the time they launched the label, they had a certain amount of prestige, and brand cache by association, because of the magazine,” Harper says, reminiscing on their decision to sign with an upstart label. “The really tight quality control that they have with [the magazine] and the quite singular vision helped us realize right out the gate that as much as both parties were gambling on a new thing, they did know exactly what they were doing, and clearly that vision was going to translate to the label. They never did anything to create a sense that we were working with people who hadn’t done it before.”

Others soon followed. Gently Tender, made up of three members of Palma Violets—the band that led Ford and Whettingsteel to start So Young Magazine in the first place—was the first band to release an album on the label, 2022’s Take Hold Of Your Promise! “To have an opportunity to go and work collaboratively with people that we respected so much and had obviously instigated such a big thing for us in our personal lives was really exciting,” Ford says. “It was really nice to feel that they wanted us to be involved too.”

Lime Garden, a four-piece hailing from Brighton, had followed So Young Magazine since they were teenagers. Lead singer and guitarist Chloe Howard’s first So Young memory was seeing Goat Girl on the cover (issue #28) when she was 15 or so. “We’ve been obsessed with every band that had come from that whole subculture,” Howard remembers. “I remember our first single we released got added to their playlist on Spotify and we were freaking out about it. We thought anything they touched was gold, so to be a part of that was unbelievably cool to us.”

The band also attended multiple “We Are So Young” club nights at the Social over the years, well before they ever signed with the label for their 2024 debut album, One More Thing, which ended up hitting #11 on the U.K. Independent Albums Chart and became the label’s third and most successful full-length release to date. “Anything So Young put their name on, me and the girls were like, ‘We’re fucking going,’” Howard says. “It feels like nowadays it’s really hard to be a part of a scene or a subculture because of social media. It’s kind of hard to feel like you belong to something, but with these guys, it feels like they’re making something that young people in the U.K. feel like they’re a part of that’s almost slightly exclusive.” And as a fan from the band’s early days, Howard is still starstruck: “Sam is still saved on my phone as ‘Sam From So Young,’ in brackets, ‘Oh My God.’”

All these years of holding a torch for new indie bands in the magazine and putting on club nights has helped to foster a burgeoning indie scene and create space for likeminded music fans in the U.K. It’s not every day you see bands like Fat Dog, Sorry and Just Mustard grace a magazine cover—Howard seeing Goat Girl on the cover ”opened my eyes to the whole So Young vibe,” she remembers.

“So Young as a magazine is ultimately like a place to show fanship and champion music,” Ford says. “We are so focused on providing a platform and discovering new, exciting talent.” 

Every band Ford and Whettingsteel have ever signed first appeared in the magazine itself, usually beginning with artists looking for an early feature or review in the magazine. A manager or publicist would send over a song, and Ford would put it on in their “small little room in Southampton.” 

“If I put [a song] on for the first time, and Josh will just kind of look over and go, ‘What’s this?,’ that’s how I know that he’s into it,” Ford says. Whettingsteel adds: “As much as we’re in the same world, we hope to have fairly different tastes, to some degree. So it makes those ones where we both really align really special.”

One of those bands is the rising Irish band Cardinals, who are playing Paste’s SXSW showcase this Thursday. The duo remembers listening to the Cork five-piece’s early song “The Brow” as a big moment. “I just put it on, and we gave each other that sort of look,” Ford says. “It just ticked all the boxes really quickly, and you just had faith in the songwriting. You knew that whatever was coming next was going to continue to tick those boxes. I built an unhealthy level of excitement in this room.”

“Kids 1995” by New York band Been Stellar was yet another example. Their manager reached out with the song in hopes of an online feature, because the band’s guitarist Skyler Knapp was really into the Windmill scene and was aware of So Young Magazine as a result. “Sky had been doing a ton of research, just looking for inspiration for zines and for other aesthetic stuff,” Been Stellar’s bassist, Nico Brunstein, tells me. “Sky is really into old print stuff, and he thought So Young was doing really cool stuff with their magazine.”

The relationship blossomed from there, eventually flying out to play one of their club nights at The Social and then releasing their self-titled debut EP in 2022 on the label. “Every time we’re over there, we make a point of seeing them, and even though we’re not on their label anymore, we’re good friends, and they’re always going to be close to my heart,” lead singer Sam Slouch adds. “Genuinely two of the best people working in music, period.” Fellow Brooklyn band Slow Fiction, who were likely more aware of the label through Been Stellar than the magazine itself, soon followed with their 2024 EP Crush, and So Young Records began to make a foothold in New York, an ocean away from where So Young had name recognition. 

While some bands have gone on to sign with bigger labels—like Been Stellar, which left for Dirty Hit for their debut album, 2024’s Scream From New York, NY—Folly Group returned to So Young Records after signing with Ninja Tune, releasing their debut LP, Down There!, in 2024. “We just missed So Young, we genuinely did,” Harper admits. 

Despite putting out a growing number of singles and EPs—12 bands thus far have released music on the label—So Young Records has only dropped three LPs to date. That’s set to change this year, as the label is gearing up for potentially five album cycles: Cardinals, Humour and Most Things are all working on their debut records, while Lime Garden and Folly Group are both writing LP2.

With the magazine, club nights and now the label, how do Ford and Whettingsteel find the time to almost double their LP output in 2025? “We’ve said this before: ‘We’ve got so much on right now and we can’t take on any more.’” Ford says. “And then you just hear the song, and you’re like, ‘Wow, let’s do this,’ because the music, ultimately, creates the space and the bandwidth. There’s always room for great things. If we come across another artist tomorrow that we love, we’re going to find a way to release that music and be a part of it, because that’s just why we’re in it.”

Steven Edelstone is the former album reviews editor at Paste, currently a senior editor at Law360, and has written for the New York Times, Billboard, Entertainment Weekly and more. He will always order lox on a bagel.