There’s a particular kind of band that record shops have always been good at spotting early. The name starts cropping up in conversations at the counter. Someone comes in asking if you’ve got anything by them yet. A seven-inch disappears quicker than expected. Then the next time they’re in town, the venue is packed and half the room already knows songs that haven’t been released.
Keo feel like one of those bands.
From London's underground live circuit to sold-out headline tours, the four-piece have quickly become one of the UK's most talked-about young guitar bands - not bad for a band whose debut EP, Siren, only arrived in July 2025. Their debut headline tours sold out within hours and, at London's Electric Ballroom, thousands were already singing unreleased lyrics back word-for-word.
Now comes the bit record shops have been waiting for: the record.
Put A Smile On For Me, Keo’s debut album, arrives on 25th September via Island Records and is RSD's Album of the Month. Eleven tracks, two sides, and a band bottling everything that has made the word-of-mouth around them grow so quickly.
And this isn’t a debut that’s been endlessly buffed and polished now that more people are paying attention.
Written and recorded in just ten days, Put A Smile On For Me keeps the rough edges of Keo’s early demos intact. Self-produced by frontman Finn Keogh alongside guitarist Jimmy Lanwern, the band deliberately held onto the immediacy of those original recordings rather than sanding everything down.
Musically it sits somewhere between shoegaze and alt-rock - big guitars rubbing against quieter, more uncomfortable moments, with melodies built for the sort of rooms Keo have been rapidly outgrowing.
Side A opens with “Be Happy”, before dropping into “That’s Me”, the album’s explosive first single. Short and volatile, it runs on serrated guitars and Finn’s ragged vocal as he picks through guilt, secrecy and his own behaviour. “The weight of a secret can sometimes be heavier than the result of people knowing it,” he says of the track.
It’s there in the album’s title, too.
“I don’t want to see your true colours and you don’t want to see mine. You smile, I’ll smile, everything is fine.” Finn Keogh
It’s a line that neatly gets to the heart of the record: what we show each other, what we keep hidden, and what happens when the pretence that everything’s fine starts to crack.
There’s plenty still to come this year.
Keo’s 2026 live calendar includes Reading and Leeds, Latitude, TRNSMT and Rock Werchter, alongside two huge shows with Wolf Alice at Finsbury Park and Newcastle’s Exhibition Park.
Around the album’s release, things get a little closer to home. Keo are heading out on a run of record shop in-stores, all of which are now sold out:
22 September – Newcastle – Boilershop with Reflex
24 September – Kingston – Circuit with Banquet
27 September – Plymouth – The Depo with Jacaranda
28 September – Birmingham – XOYO with Jacaranda
29 September – Brighton – Chalk with Resident
2 October – Nottingham – The Level with Rough Trade
4 October – Edinburgh – Liquid Rooms with Assai
Birmingham, Brighton, Nottingham and Edinburgh will also host earlier matinee shows, featuring special unplugged performances from the band.
Catch Keo live at one of these shows. Or catch them on record with Put A Smile On For Me: their first full-length album, made quickly, on their own terms, with the rough edges left where they found them.
Keo’s Put A Smile On For Me is out 25th September on Island Records. Pick up a copy from your local independent record shop.
