After they took Immersed! Festival by storm, we chatted to Sophie Bryan vocalist/guitarist and Rhia Greer drums of the recent Stereo Brain Records signees Bloom, the powerful alt-rock trio making waves in the underground South Wales scene right now. Their initial line-up comprised of just the two of them, with the addition of bassist Max Theobald in late September 2019. They’d like to remind you that now, “Max is in the band”, as they told us at Immersed! Of course, they’ll forgive you for being confused as they’re often the ones in the spotlight or doing interviews. At the festival, they shared the story of how Bloom formed. Sophie explained to us that herself and, “Rhia have been playing together since college”, each of them being part of multiple bands over four or five years. “But the dynamic was never really our fit. Funnily enough, we were always the ones that kept being in the same bands together.” So surely it made sense for the pair to create a band all of their own? They had that discussion a year ago. Now, Sophie told us, they’ve “been together longer than any of our other bands put together.” Neat, huh? They just celebrated the first birthday of Bloom and the three have some exciting things coming up soon. Last week, Rhia revealed that they, “are releasing their next single early next month. It’s the 30th of January now so that means within a very short amount of time.” The band has since announced that their third single ‘Crocodile Tears’ will be released on Friday 7th February and we urge you to give it a spin. Just in case you’re wondering if Bloom is for you, well we asked them about the influences they have. At the moment, Sophie said it’s, “Definitely Yonaka! And The Hunna.” Adding to this, Rhia explained that the pair “have a lot of separate influences, but they saw Yonaka and The Hunna at a festival last May and they knew they wanted to be like them on stage. Of course, Bloom is their own band too. Sophie summed them up as, “two girls who don’t know what to do with their lives and are just using music as a way to fill the void.” Slightly dark, but we’ll let them off. While Rhia exclaims, “I’m just winging it”, we truly doubt that. It seems Bloom have quite the year ahead of them. With an EP in the works and hopefully coming in spring, the scene in South Wales will be seeing a lot of Bloom. They may even cross the border as Rhia is “going to take a Masters in Bristol.” Sophie though has different plans. She’d rather focus on music and has high hopes for 2020. They include, “hopefully, more tunes, and more playing – I really want to go round the country.” So Bloom have crossed their fingers and are, “hoping that more stuff will come for us in the future and we can just sort of… bloom a bit more!” And we love that – both the blooming marvellous pun and their positive attitude. If Bloom is playing near you, you should definitely check them out – you won’t regret it.