Keo open up about debut album ‘Put A Smile On For Me’ at Reading 2026

Keo have spoken to NME about their upcoming debut album, ‘Put A Smile On For Me’.

Interviewed backstage at Reading Festival , shortly after their performance, brothers Finn and Conor Keogh reflected on the London alt-rock four-piece’s 2025 EP ‘Siren’, which was mostly recorded live.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t do ‘Thorn’ live,” explained Finn.

“I wish we had, but that’s kind of why we’ve redone it now for the [album].

But for the most part, it was all done live.

It was before we had any label backing or anything.

So we just had to do what we could do in five days.

I really like it, actually.” Finn was then asked if, as a self-proclaimed perfectionist, he was tempted to tinker with the recording after the fact.

“There is the temptation,” he said, “but my idea of perfection, when it comes to music, is the sweet spot between sounding like a record and sounding spontaneous.

So, I don’t obsess over a glossy, perfect-sounding record.

“I kind of obsess over the perfect middle ground between that and a live performance – which is a really hard way to work, to be honest with you.” Conor added: “Sometimes the most well-played take isn’t the best take you’ll go for, either.

It’s a lot about the energy of the take and the emotion in that take.” “We’ve had examples where clearly something is out of time,” Finn said, “but for whatever reason, that take just gives you goosebumps or something.

You all look at each other and go, ‘Isn’t that the reason we’re doing this? To make people feel something?’ “That’s kind of what we did with this [new] record: we just spent a good amount of time in the studio, essentially just playing these songs over and over and over again until we felt like all of the dots aligned in those takes.

And those were the tracks that made the record.” Asked to pick a favourite record that encompasses those qualities, Finn immediately chose John Martyn ’s ‘Solid Air’: “I think he was super-high and he didn’t care… [But] he’s that talented and the musicians he was performing with were that talented, so it just kind of worked out really nicely.” Conor opted for Nirvana ’s ‘MTV Unplugged in New York’, explaining: “From start to finish, [it’s] full of mistakes – but it’s those mistakes that [make it].