During the 2026 festival season we were lucky enough to catch lots of new bands and we caught tonight’s band KYTES set at Y Not Festival back in July. Coming all the way from Munich, Bavaria there is some great German engineering involved here! The band are Michael Spieler (vocals & guitar), Kerim Öke (guitar & synthesizer) and Timothy Lush (drums), the trio waste no time as they all take to the stage wearing boiler suits that wouldn’t be out of place on the F1 track.
The fifty or so that turned out for the show were treated to an hour of indie rock at its finest … or should that be Indie Rave? After all that is the title of the band’s fourth album, EPA is a fine way to start the set that is infused with plenty of dance elements, just as he did at Y Not vocalist Michael Spieler displays the energy levels of three people. There is not much time for the crowd to catch their breath between songs either, this is a high energy show that deserved a much larger crowd. There is a mixture of tracks from the four album released with the next three being very energetic, Runaway and Up In My Mind are early standouts in the set while The Race is referred to as a ‘hamster race’, us humans are always running around so busy. KYTES released the Good Luck album just prior to the pandemic and it contains their biggest release to date Go Out, now this one DOES get the crowd moving. “Put your hand on my heart and feel what it does/tell me you’re not believing” are the opening lines of the opening track Believing from the Indie Rave album and stands up well among the older numbers, the lyrics are heart-warming and has everyone smiling and singing along.
Personally we thought that Apricosa was a standout from the show, this is the track that changed the direction of the band introducing more dance influences, it works so well. Happy Hangover is another one that is kind on the ears with the addition of an extra drummer making it much more fun, rest assured that all three band members are working their arses off tonight! Singer Michael is out in the middle of the crowd for the French influenced Tout Le Monde whilst Cope is the penultimate song of the seventeen, this one is lyrically strong as these lines show “A lonely drop in the deep blue sea/one little star in the cold dark sky/a ray of light from the bright shining sun/one fine day we will live as one”. Mister Burns is the last of the set and sends the crowd home with the high-energy beats still playing in their heads, well it did to us anyway. We would love to see KYTES return to the UK festival circuit next year, they have so much potential.
We shall end this review with a joke … the KYTES are flying high! Hope to see them on a bigger stage next time too. 8/10
Written by: Alan Brown
