SKORTS: NY Slice Session 2025

With their darkwave grooves, banging psych-rock chops, and buzzy NYC profile, the quartet SKORTS is ascending nationally and internationally, with a European tour in their sights this autumn.

They've only been around for three years, but dedicated New York music fans have no doubt come across SKORTS — guitarist and lead singer Alli Walls, drummer Max Berdik and bassist-vocalist Emma Welch and guitarist-vocalist Char Smith — at any number of venues in this gritty city, including the late, great Our Wicked Lady. Their taut, urgent sets and wiry singles, like their very first one, the icy-cool rockabilly rumble of "Cyclops Girlfriend," built the band's reputation fast. The usual word-of-mouth about SKORTS has been: "You gotta catch 'em live now."

In fact, SKORTS played so many venues last year, that "Oh My Rockness"anointed them as the hardest working band of 2024.

The four friends can now check off a different kind of Bronx venue on their itinerary — FUV's Studio A. For their set, they picked two fan faves for their "NY Slice Session" debut: last year's thirsty "Eat Your Heart Out" (unlike the official video, no workout moves in Studio A) and 2023's "Bodies." And yes, there's a debut album ahead, at last. Says Welch, "We don't know when but it's coming!"

Watch Walls and Welch take the "NY Slice" pop quiz too.

[Recorded 6/4/25; Engineered by Jim O'Hara with Erin Merriman, Matthew Ellersick, and Sage Rochetti. Produced by Meghan Suma. Videographers: Nikki Phillips, Olivia Iannaccone, and Adithi Vimalanathan.]