With punchy vocals that permeate through gorgeously reverb-soaked landscapes on recent singles like ‘Outside’ and ‘Anyway’, showings of immense prowess brush aside a low gig count. “If you listen to our last song before the new chapter of Swim School, the vocal change on the newer stuff is massive,” she adds, and it is clear that the last 18 months have had a big impact here. “It pushes your confidence if each time you write a song, you’re questioning: can I pull this off?”

Even with experience, it can be difficult to discover a collective identity with internal and external events persistently reshuffling the cards to play with, and pushing boundaries has led to a transmutation of the Swim School singularity. “It was always an indie-pop band,” Billy notes, “but we knew the next chapter was going to be naturally quite dark. We released ‘Let Me Inside Your Head’ at midnight and woke up categorised as a rock or grunge band.”

“We’re a completely different band to what we were when we first went into lockdown,” Alice chimes in. “The way we sound, the way we look, even our line-up; it’s all paid off. It feels like Swim School’s just started. Are we a rock band now?” she laughs.

As with any group starting out, a lot of the same comparisons - or ‘for fans of’ suggestions – are likely to crop up; here, Foals and Wolf Alice seem a good place to start as any. “Basically, we’re Tesco Value Wolf Alice,” Alice snickers. “Ellie [Rowsell] is the reason I’m even in a band; I owe everything to her.”

The ‘Making Sense Of It All’ EP explores the rollercoaster journey of mental health through specific events of the last year, with responses to significant moments constructing a time capsule for this second chapter in the quartet’s career to date. “We went through lots of ups and downs as a band,” they collectively disclose. “That’s just life in general, isn’t it? Nothing goes according to plan, but that journey is what helps you develop.”

Employing the chaos of life as fuel for the fire of progress is just one example of the dedication committed by all four musicians in Swim School, and they’ve worked tirelessly alongside exhausting jobs in various public-facing roles to pay the bills (how relatable, huh?). With the foursome destined for imminent glory, this effort seems worthwhile.

Maintaining this mindset sounds tiring, but she says that, “for every song I question how we’re going to top it, but I’ve always been proud of the result. In all honesty, we never know what we’re going to write. Whenever we go into a room, we come out with the complete outside of what we expect. We have no idea what songs going to come next, and that’s probably the most exciting part of being in this band.”

Taken from the September 2021 edition of Dork, out now. Swim School’s ‘Making Sense Of It All’ EP is out 20th August.