Oli Fox and Scott Verrill, the duo behind rising UK indie-pop outfit Good Neighbours, have been quickly turning heads (and earning streaming numbers) since a casual studio meeting in 2023.
Both singer-songwriters in their own right, Fox and Verrill bonded over a shared love of upbeat pop and a disdain for irony, and soon began experimenting together. Their collaboration quickly evolved into a band with a name as literal as it is charming.
The duo’s first taste of viral success came unexpectedly last year, when a demo clip of their song “Home” blew up on social media. Released officially as the debut single soon after, “Home” has since become ARIA platinum-certified and racked up over 500 million streams globally. Sweet and soulful, the song triggered instant nostalgia for early 2000s and 2010s indie anthems, and fans have since used it over 2.5 million times on social media, generating more than 2 billion views.
Fox says the pair didn’t see its virality coming: “‘Home’ was this complete anomaly. I mean, I still don’t think we really understand that. We’ve almost stopped trying to understand that record because it keeps going – I think it’s doing nearly 700,000 [streams] a day at the moment. That’s just crazy to us.”
Despite the song’s massive success, Fox adds that they haven’t set out to chase another viral hit. Instead, their focus has been on the songs that first defined Good Neighbours, like recent singles “Keep It Up” and “Ripple”.
“They were the original goalposts for Good Neighbours, they were the first songs we wrote. And we’ve been really lucky that they’ve been received in as good a way as ‘Home’ was, maybe they haven’t gone viral, but taste-wise people love them. So that’s been really nice to be able to follow it up and show we’re a real band, not like a one-hit wonder.”
The breakout single set the stage for the duo’s subsequent releases, including their debut album Blue Sky Mentality, out today (October 3rd) via Polydor Records.
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With over 8 million monthly listeners, the album is a crucial next step in solidifying Good Neighbours’ reputation. “It’s like the first step of Good Neighbours, we’re about to kick off from here, so it feels really good,” Fox says.
Blue Sky Mentality was a year in the making, created during the duo’s busy schedule jumping mainly between the UK and US.
“It was so chaotic,” Verrill reveals. “At the beginning of this year, we were like, the idea of writing an album on the road was something bands did and sounded like a cool idea, so we were like, ‘Yeah we can finish it.’ And then we realised how little time you have, we ended up in the back of the bus recording things. But it was kind of nice, it added to the DIY-ness of the album. It was scrappy in a homemade way.”
Good Neighbours were recently shortlisted for the Brit Award for Rising Star, got added to the BBC’s Sound of 2025 longlist, and were nominated in the Best New Artist (Alt and Rock) category at the iHeart Radio Music Awards. VEVO DSCVR’s named them among their list of Artists to Watch, as did Amazon Music UK. A Glastonbury debut and North American tour supporting Mumford & Sons cemented their live credentials, with Marcus Mumford hailing them as “the best thing to come out of the UK in a while.”
Gaining such accolades, Fox says, excites the pair. “They just gas us up,” he jokes. “The Brits one was insane — we were at our guitar player’s birthday and we got this FaceTime at like 11pm from our manager Joe. We’re like, ‘This is weird, someone’s died or something weird has happened…’ And it was honestly just such an amazing experience, we flew back [to the UK] just for the ceremony, then flew back out on tour.”
Australia has also fully embraced Good Neighbours. The country is now their second-biggest market outside the US, with strong radio support across commercial networks and triple j, including a recent Like A Version performance of Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso”. Their viral hit has even been covered by a local artist, Meg Mac, who reimagined “Home” late last year.
Two successful Australian tours in just two years precede a third visit later this year, for Melbourne’s newest festival New Year’s at the Bowl, with plans to squeeze in some sideshows during their summer Down Under.
“Having a hot New Year’s in Australia is pretty crazy for us… it’ll be a good comparison to the freezing cold gigs back home,” Verrill says.
Reflecting on their earlier tours, Fox recalls feeling taken aback by the fervent fan response: “It still stumps us every time, because we do know that we’re doing well in Australia, but when you go and play a gig in Brisbane, a place you’d never plan on going to, and there’s a queue around the corner, you’re like, ‘This is so odd that this is for us.’
“I know it sounds really cliché, but we really felt a bit of imposter syndrome when we were there earlier this year, like the gigs were sold out and the crowds were going mad for it.”
Good Neighbours’ Blue Sky Mentality is out now.
