“Welcome to the art-punk renaissance”, declared Rolling Stone magazine last year, triumphantly heralding Crocodiles’ debutalbum. It was all just deserves for a San Diego duo who’d spent years kicking against the mundanity of their sprawling military town.

As singer Brandon Welchez remembers it: “My neighbourhood was just so boring that a lot of my friends started doing hard drugs at an early age. A lot of kids were growing up too fast, like, in a gross way…losing teeth. Plus my high school was full of racists and homophobes. Music was an escape from all that.” Sharing both Brandon’s love for girl groups and punk, and his feeling of small-town-alienation, was guitarist Charles Rowell. Meeting at an anti-fascist rally when they were teenagers, the two have been in countless bands together since.