Let The Festivities Begin!

Los Bitchos play an eclectic instrumental fusion — a funky surf-rock disco psychedelic sound — and their origins are far-flung as well. Guitarist Serra Petale is Australian, drummer Nic Crawshaw is English, bassist Josefine Jonsson is Swedish, and keyboardist Agustina Ruiz hails from Uruguay. All were living in London when they met, and it remains their base.

Touring with their debut album, Let The Festivities Begin!, the band will appear at Soho on April 19 on their way to Coachella and Austin Psych Fest, among a long list of stops on their international line-up. (Check out their latest video here.)

Petale and Ruiz met in 2016, when the former fell into a body of water at a party. “I didn’t know many people there,” Petale said. “And Agustina sat with me and helped me dry my socks. We really connected.”

A few months later, when word got out that Petale was putting together a band, Ruiz learned to play keyboards and joined her.

“Josie, we knew well through another band,” Petale said. “And we found Nic with a Facebook post. We’ve been going ever since.”

And how did they come to be called Los Bitchos?

“Serra’s brain spewed it out one day,” said Crawshaw. “And we loved it.”

The inspiration to write instrumental music came from a Peruvian cumbia compilation Petale heard. “Writing instrumental music was something I really liked doing,” she said. “And it was just pure inspiration, this album, so moving that it truly created this project.”

They use a wide variety of percussion instruments in their music.

“I think layering of sound is really cool,” said Petale. “And because we’re taking out words, we have room to experiment with these really cool instruments… It’s a field day at the recording studio.”

“We love touring in the U.S.,” said Crawshaw. “Everyone’s so friendly; people come and chat when they buy a T-shirt. We felt really welcomed when we came last year for the first time.”

“Most of our listeners are actually in the US, it’s awesome,” Petale said. “And we can’t wait to play for the Santa Barbarians!”

See sohosb.com/events/folkyeah-presents-los-bitchos.