Internet Girl have been making waves since the 2010s and recently hit another high mark with their ‘Role Model’ EP.
Internet Girl, the South African band that has been making waves in different capacities since the late 2010s, has just returned from a two-show tour in Paris and is still buzzing from the experience of it all. “Too short, but it was really dope,” is how the iconic frontman TK, real name Ntsika Bungane, describes it on the other side of our virtual conversation.
TK and Matthew “Neese” Burgess, the drummer and ‘sheen’ specialist whose synthesizer work lends Internet Girl’s songs their edgy appeal, have known each other since the fifth grade. With time, they discovered their musical chops and formed the pop-trap outfit Lynch Party.This coincided with a moment when a new wave of South African acts were knee-deep in their Soundcloud era, with artists such as PatricKxxLee, Champagne69 and the late Costa Titch racking up streams by the busload while championing a new musical aesthetic. In 2019, Lynch Party morphed into Internet Girl, a name that initially meant nothing when TK and Neese thought it up at a restaurant one day.
However, it came to represent the archetype for the songs they were writing — angsty music with love as a loosely running theme. This archetype is heard on songs like 2020’s “Follow Me Around,” where TK casually sings, “I know it’s in my head. I keep seeing you too many times.” The ‘you’ in the song is that internet girl archetype.
Guitarist James “Griggs” Smith found the duo online and expressed an interest in working with them. “Meeting James for the first time, I felt like I’d known him forever. We were tapped in, we all had a similar vision [and] similar goals in terms of [how much] we wanted to be out of this country, [and] wanted to be one of the best,” says TK.
Band life comes with its own set of challenges, which members have to be uniquely poised to deal with if a long-term career is what they aim for. One of the biggest hurdles the collective has managed to overcome is being honest when they don’t like a piece of music one of the members has composed. Getting to this balanced phase has taken years of experimentation, editing, re-recording and deciding when the song is done. This can be a challenge for the band, whose mischievous studio expeditions are carefully portrayed in aself-titled documentary released in 2023.
The film works well to bring viewers into the inner machinations of the crew. There’s Griggs, who’s super-animated and quirky in the most wonderful of ways. TK is the rockstar — cool, calm, collected and not necessarily a fan of the hours the other two spend in the studio perfecting songs. Griggs is the silent observer of the bunch and has the unique quality of having Skrillex’s record label’s logo, OWSLA, on his arm.
Dubstep is how he and TK became friends, “We just came back from a holiday. I had green headphones, and he got an iPod touch. And then he was like, ‘Bro, let me put you on some Skrillex,’ and I’m like ‘damn, this is the shit.’ We just became friends based on music. Dubstep was a big thing, which is also a huge part of why we’re making the music we make now. It’s always been trying to be different and listening to something no one else is listening to.”
TK, Neese, and Griggs of Internet Girl pose alongside a model on the set for the visualizer for “Boss.”
Photo by Imraan Christian.
Before moving to Cape Town and living as a unit in a rented house, the crew members were scattered across the country. It all changed when 2020’s “Next Summer” got them on Spotify’s Fresh Finds playlist, effectively securing them a record deal with the LA-based R&R Digital in the process, an experience Griggs says was the biggest at that point in their career. Within a few months, their advance had run out, and they had to move back in with their parents. Irrespective of their material conditions, they never stopped making music. Griggs says their love for music kept them going during these moments. “Getting the bag is nice, but we love making music.”
For Neese, it’s the fear of failure that keeps him going. “The thought of us failing and giving up is scarier than being broke. Not succeeding is worse than not being able to afford food for me. You have to keep going until you do succeed.”
TK adds: “There were different moments where I felt like I can’t do this. But the moment in my mind where I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m not gonna do music anymore,’ I’m immediately unhappy. I can’t not do this. I could get evicted from my crib, but if I made a good song that day, it’s an okay day.”
Cape Town has a revered history of nurturing left-of-center sounds and talents. Internet Girl found their music, an ever-changing concoction of electric guitars, processed drums, the most cataclysmic-sounding drone sounds this side of pop culture, and crushing synths that implant themselves inside your brain in that environment. “The sound just lends to this area; it’s really beautiful,” says TK.
The vocalist attributes their longevity thus far to understanding that they’re all friends at the end of the day, while Griggs adds that they all want the same thing: to make the type of music that will set them apart as among the greatest ever to do it. “There’s never really crazy conflict. We have a good time hanging out in the studio and making music. Whatever conflict there is is pretty easily resolved.”
It took three EPs and tons of singles, with collaborations ranging from Jimi Somewhere to Maglera Doe Boy, for them to feel that their impact is translating beyond the confines of the internet. They hit their mark on 2024’sRole Model EP, a collection of in-your-face, punk-inspired bangers that provoke the politically correct while soothing the mentally disturbed. Songs like “Cokehead,” “Role Model,” and “Pull Up” are shining exhibits of what a couple of talented gentlemen can achieve once they decide to put their heads down and grind endlessly.The “Pull Up” remix features Maglera Doe Boy, who hit the band up to say he messes with their sound. Neese shares the story of the day they recorded the song. “[The session] was a cool experience. He brought two huge guys into my small apartment and kicked us all out of the studio, was like, ‘turn the lights off,’ rolled a fat blunt, and was like, ‘Now I’m gonna record.’ And then we were all sitting in my lounge with my ex-girlfriend, watching Top Gear, us and the two guys. We just had to sit there for maybe an hour or two.”
Getting the opportunity to gig regularly gave the group an idea of what works in a live setting, which fed back to their songwriting process, an experience TK says made them better at their craft. “We started writing songs with that mindset of ‘how is it gonna translate in a live setting?’ That’s why ‘Role Model’ goes so hard, and it’s not that sweeter stuff because we were like, ‘the hard shit goes really hard!’ It was fun to play as well.”
On January 31 and February 1, Internet Girl is embarking on its Family Values Tour, a two-city marathon that begins in Johannesburg and ends in Cape Town. The line-up is acts who, on some level, share the same ethos as Internet Girl — be it musical, as in the case of Twenty One Children, or just based on vibes and values, as in the case of Brotherkupa. “The line-up is our idea of our family in this country. We’re trying to create a scene; we’re trying to create excitement around certain artists. It also juxtaposes with our music; our music is not about family values. When it all comes together, it feels kinda wholesome,” explains Neese.
In the long-term, TK says they want to be the biggest band out of South Africa, alongside regularly touring. “I think we’ve gotten a knack and a taste for playing shows overseas and to be truly appreciated as one of the best bands to come out of this continent.”
- 15 South African Female Musicians Pushing the Boundaries ›
- The Best Southern African Songs Right Now ›
- Finding Black Girl Magic in South Korea ›
