genre rock

When they relocated to New York in 2023, Pierre and Henry Beasley of alt-pop duo Balu Brigada certainly didn’t expect they’d end up sounding like a Big Apple band from 20 years earlier.

“I used to be kind of cynical of that idea,” Henry says of the notion of a band’s music sounding like the place where it’s made. But as the brothers — originally from Auckland, New Zealand — started to record their new album in Harlem, they had to acknowledge that it didn’t sound like the music they had been making seven time zones over.

“You can hear the difference between [how the] aggression and tension and grit comes out in New York — and then New Zealand’s rolling hills kind of giving you a little more space to breathe,” Henry explains. (“More beachy vibes,” Pierre adds.)

It is one of those more aggressive, tense and gritty songs that has taken Balu Brigada from a cult act trying to find its major-label footing stateside — the brothers signed to both Warner Music Australasia and Atlantic Records simultaneously in 2022 — to chart-topping radio hitmakers. “So Cold,” a spiky, slinky and above all Strokes-y single the duo released in June 2024, reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart in March — a ranking more often dominated by legacy acts than a breakout outfit like Balu Brigada.

“So Cold” slotting in so easily in retro-dominated alt-rock radio playlists hardly happened by accident. Pierre recalls he and Henry (both multi-instrumentalists who share singing duties) loading up their YouTube accounts with videos of bands like The Strokes and Franz Ferdinand for inspiration while creating the song, which Pierre says originally had more of a The Police feel. “[We were watching] those guys playing big festivals, and having these big guitar riffs that people chant,” he recalls. “We leaned into that.”

Still, it took more than the spirits of such frontmen as Julian Casablancas and Alex Kapranos to turn the song into a No. 1 hit. First, the band posted an Instagram reel of “So Cold” in spring 2024, with a red jumpsuit-clad Pierre playing the bass while sitting in his Auckland bedroom. The clip caught fire on social media and attracted a ton of industry attention.

“We got so many crazy calls just from this one reel,” says Goldie Management’s Amy Goldsmith, who’s been with the band since seeing them play at a New Zealand barbecue in the late 2010s. “[Recording Academy CEO] Harvey Mason jr even rung [about] the boys and was like, ‘What is this band? I’m so excited about them.’ ”

The reel also soon got the attention of Chris Woltman, longtime manager of alt-pop superstars Twenty One Pilots. “It was pretty obvious that [‘So Cold’ was] a smash,” he says of his first impression. That inspired him to dig deeper into the band’s streaming catalog — which includes a steady run of singles dating back to 2016, along with 2019’s Almost Feel Good Mixtape and EPs I Should Be Home (2021) and Find a Way (2013).

“I quickly found out over the next couple of days that it wasn’t just one song — they’d been writing these amazing tracks,” recalls Woltman. “It raised this question of, ‘This is an amazing song, and there’s all these other amazing songs. How can this band not be getting noticed?’ ”

From there, Woltman not only signed the band to his and Twenty One Pilots frontman Tyler Joseph’s newly launched ARRO label, but hitched Balu Brigada to the Pilots’ then-upcoming Clancy worldwide arena tour. (ARRO has an artist venture with Atlantic for Balu Brigada, but Woltman says the label is otherwise independent.)

“We all came together and said, “There is something really compelling going on: They’re making great music. They have a vision that we think can be driven with discovery with our fanbase; they have a song in ‘So Cold’ that is the tip of the spear. If we come in and are their greatest advocate [and introduce] them to the Twenty One Pilots fanbase… we thought, ‘You know what, let’s give this a shot.’ ”

Despite the risk of attaching a relatively unproven band to such a major tour, they quickly demonstrated themselves to Woltman as highly capable: “I think what they just needed is a little bit of time on the field,” he says.

They got that playing time in the form of 66 shows, taking them all over North America, Latin America, Oceania and Europe, and putting them in front of over a million total Twenty One Pilots fans — known as Clikkies — who quickly took to the junior alt-pop duo. “There’s something special about the way that the fanbase has adopted Henry and Pierre,” Goldsmith says. “I think with the passion that the Clikkies have, they’ve [taken to Balu Brigada as] kind of like, ‘These are our new baby-band boys.’”

In the meantime, “So Cold” was starting to catch on at streaming services — helped by a music video with some winkingly White Stripes-influenced fashion and camera zooms, and a September synch in soccer video game EA Sports FC 25, after which the song’s weekly streams doubled. (To date, it has 12.2 million on-demand official U.S. streams through April 3, according to Luminate.) And Woltman and the team started pushing the song to alternative radio, sensing an opportunity to expand its success there. “In the alternative mix today, I think that radio still plays a role,” he says. “ ‘So Cold’ felt like it could be a big alternative radio track.”

A few weeks after Balu Brigada brought “So Cold” to Jimmy Kimmel Live! — the duo’s first appearance on American television — the song topped the Alternative Airplay chart dated March 29, in its 24th week on the listing. Woltman sees its success as validation of a long-term strategy that was nearly a year in the making.

“None of this is about an overnight moment,” he says, “as is always the case when you’re trying to build a legitimate alternative rock band. It’s not about a song; it’s not about a TikTok moment; it’s not about an influencer moment — it’s about the everything else.”

Currently, Pierre and Henry are putting the finishing touches on their debut album, expected later this year, which takes the band to new territory — including “some real emotional sensitive jams” and “some real obnoxious like pseudo-EDM stompers,” Henry says. But even though they’re nearly a year removed from the release of “So Cold,” and getting a step closer to their Strokes and White Stripes fantasies with their own upcoming headlining U.S. tour, they’re still enjoying following their breakout hit on its way up.

“Every day, it’s hitting a new peak,” Pierre says. “We’re both proud to watch our baby continue to be recognized.”

A version of this story appears in the April 19, 2025, issue of Billboard.