Cassia

Prestbury, the Moss Estate and Tytherington

Cassia are three people who grew up within a few miles of one another on the edges of Macclesfield. Rob Ellis, who sings and plays guitar, is from Prestbury. Lou Coterill, the bassist, is from the Moss Estate. Jake Leff, the drummer, is from Tytherington. The local geography matters more than it usually does with a band, because the town has stayed the centre of gravity: the records get written there, the studio is there, and the promotional campaigns have been run partly through the streets rather than entirely through the trade press.

That Cheshire grounding sits oddly against the music, which has always pulled towards warmer latitudes — guitar lines that run in loops rather than riffs, percussion that carries as much of the melody as the vocal. The band's 2022 album, Why You Lacking Energy?, reached number 14 on the Official Independent Album Chart, and two tracks from it have since passed 30 million Spotify plays between them. That was the record that turned a regional following into a touring one.

The album they made in a room they built

Everyone, Outside arrived on 11 April 2025, written on the back of roughly two years of near-continuous touring and self-produced in a studio the three of them built in Macclesfield. A trip to Mexico during the writing left marks on the rhythms. More unusually, the band tracked the majority of the album live on TikTok, which collapsed the gap between making the record and showing people it being made.

Ellis has described the title as starting from something fairly plain. "That title, 'everyone, outside' started as a song about how weird it is that we stay inside all the time when being out in nature always makes us feel better," he said, before widening it: "The title is a metaphor for being your truest, most natural self. It's how we want people to feel when they listen to our music." The promotional campaign was run at home with signs posted around Macclesfield reading "Who the f*** are Cassia?" — a joke at their own expense in a town where the answer was already known.

The record was supported by the singles heat and friends, and then by a UK run in May 2025: Stylus in Leeds on the 14th, SWX in Bristol on the 15th, the 1865 in Southampton on the 16th, New Century Hall in Manchester on the 17th, Oran Mor in Glasgow on the 20th, Mama Roux's in Birmingham on the 21st and HERE at Outernet in London on the 22nd. Their first headline shows in the United States and Mexico followed later the same year.

Lemon Gelato, and a turn towards the drums

Lemon Gelato came in September 2026, released through Love Sundays. It entered the Official Record Store Chart at number 39 and the Official Independent Album Breakers Chart at number 20, both in the week dated 17 September 2026 — figures that describe a band selling physical copies to a committed base rather than one crossing over into the main album chart.

The making of it involved a deliberate shift in method. By the band's own account they became preoccupied with drums and started building melodies around grooves instead of the other way round, which is audible in the way the newer material sits live: the top lines arrive later and the rhythm section sets the terms. Lovedrunk is the single carrying the album through the autumn. Release week was marked not with a single large show but with a short run of small ones — Jumbo Records in Leeds on 6 September, the Jacaranda in Liverpool on the 7th, Rough Trade on Denmark Street in London on the 8th and Brighton on the 9th.

Where things stand in October 2026

The year's festival work included Neighbourhood Weekender on 23 May 2026 and a slot at Sziget in Budapest on 15 August, where they played the Óbudai-Sziget site from 18:00 to 18:55. Both are the kind of booking that tends to precede a step up in hall size rather than follow it.

Thirteen dates are currently on sale. The German leg of the Lemon Gelato tour takes in five cities — Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and Munich — with the Frankfurt date at Nachtleben on 15 November 2026, tickets from €33.15, and Rum Jungle opening. The venues on that leg are small rooms by the standards of a band with the streaming numbers Cassia have, which says something about the deliberate pace of the European build: the UK audience arrived first and the continent is being worked city by city.

The shape of the set

The most fully documented recent performance is the Sziget set on 15 August 2026: twelve songs in a 55-minute slot, no encore, opening with everyone, outside and running through Drifting, heat, Vitamins, Do Right, here & now, Gotta Get Through Til Monday, lemon gelato, miles out, Motions and Reframe before closing on Right There. The same twelve-song sequence was played again at the Brighton date on 9 September.

What that running order shows is a band that has not built its set around the newest record. The title track from Lemon Gelato sits two-thirds of the way in, surrounded by older material, and the show is paced as a continuous rhythmic run rather than a sequence of peaks — the self-contained festival hour rather than the album playthrough. On setlist.fm, 420 attendances have been logged by 315 users, which is a thin archive for a band at this stage and probably reflects an audience that turns up rather than catalogues.