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Sohodolls re-write classic 00’s single “Bang Bang Bang Bang” in stand against gun violence!

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London’s influential electro-rockers, Sohodolls returned last year after being out of the limelight for more than a decade. A globally enforced lockdown revived one of their classics “Bang Bang Bang Bang” into an unexpected viral TikTok hit among the Gen Z glitterati. It so happened that Madonna had posted a recording she made of her daughter Estere Ciccone performing her own original choreography to the track and as part of the ensuing TikTok trend “Bang Bang Bang Bang” rocketed up the Billboard Top 50 and is now sitting on over 100m Spotify streams.

The new viral attention inspired Sohodolls to reform and release new singles “Letter To My Ex (Thank You Goodbye)” and “Bad” in 2022, which both picked up considerable press & radio attention, including airplay from Nels Hylton on Radio 1’s ‘Future Alternative’, Frank Skinner on Absolute Radio and features with highly regarded music blog Atwood Magazine. Now Sohodolls have gone back to where it all began to re-write and re-record “Bang Bang Bang Bang” to bring it up to date for 2023.

On how the new Otabek Salamov produced version of “Bang Bang Bang Bang” came about, main Sohodolls songwriter Maya Von Doll said: “I changed the lyrics from “hold the gun” to “kill the gun” to make my standpoint clearer. I’ve always been against guns. After BBBB went viral, I could see some confusion with some people believing it was a song about school shootings and that’s not what it’s about at all and I didn’t want people to carry that narrative nor think I was glorifying guns. I was slightly referencing Kurt Cobain’s suicide but mostly because I was so shocked and saddened by what happened as Nirvana was such a big part of my youth.”

It’s the Nirvana grunge influence that Sohodolls tap into further with the “Bang Bang Bang Bang” re-write, with explosive distorted guitars replacing the original version’s synth heavy backdrop. A more raw and gritty incarnation, the new “Bang Bang Bang Bang” feels both nostalgic for the early 90s and fresh and relevant again for 2023, Maya Von Doll’s voice as sumptuous and infectious as ever.

Revealing further on the song’s themes and the updated new version, Maya Von Doll explains, “The song is actually about being a misfit and finding your tribe. I wrote this song when I was a teenager feeling like I didn’t quite fit in with any of the cliques at school, but I started going out in Soho and meeting all these wonderfully different people. Even though I’ve always been anti-guns, I wanted to update the spirit for the times we’re living in now where you have to be clearer about what you stand for. I do think gun ownership is a bad idea.”

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Michele Ducci teases new album with uplifting indie single ‘Woman Like You’

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Michele Ducci has unveiled the second single, ‘Woman Like You’, from his forthcoming album and animated film ‘Snail in the Clouds’.

‘Woman Like You’ pairs bright distorted electric guitar with an electronic drumbeat, adding in Ducci’s soulful vocals and a catchy uplifting chorus with Letizia Mandoleisi’s sweet vocal harmonies. A vintage organ pedalboard operated by Ducci simultaneously generates chords, bass and rhythm, like a one-man band. Shane Kennedy (Girl in the Year Above) joins in on guitar. Simon Milner (Is Tropical, Ysing) recorded and produced the track at his 4am Studios in London.

The album and film tell the story of a planet called ‘Snail’, inhabited by hybrids – primarily a mixture between scorpions, snails and humans – who lead a life according to the style of Pythagoras, devoted to music. There is also a cloud man named Agostos, a writer of musical operettas, who together with a talking smoke machine called Doctor Subtilis, begins to kill all hybrids, targeting in particular the hybrid musician Diodoros and his band, in an effort to steal the ark of melodies, an ancient ship that allows the whole planet to survive with music and joy.

The video for the single, created and animated by Ducci and Mandoleisi, delves further into the realm of planet ‘Snail’:

Says Ducci, “The ark of melodies, after various attempts, finally starts to work and fly in the planet Snail, while the shady Doc. Sub. and Agostos, with their platoon of soldiers made of foggy smoke, spy the miracle, planning to steal the ark for their evil and tyrannical purposes.


About the track, Michele says, I wrote this song for my love Letizia. Love seen from the mind is the sound we make. Sound is the love of matter.

We used a Technics synthesizer organ from a flea market. I tried to find a mood that was right for the song and I started using the bass of the pedal board together with the synth and the drums, and it was magical to hear the song reveal itself all coming from a single instrument. Leti was singing with me and we recorded everything live in one shot. Then we made Shane do the guitar flight, as if he came out of the window. The idea was to maintain disproportions, guitar thrust and synth drum thinness a la Haroumi Hosono, so as to create an estrangement, but naturally: it’s about how I listen, with close up something that captures me in its nuance as element of a larger orchestra somewhere. I’m glad we decided in the studio with Simon to use the layers of arrangement as the close-ups in the cinema; they look like strange enlargements that perch on parts of a mutated orchestra. I’m happy to come back with this love song at a time when everything seems to opt, even my labor in managing the flows of selfishness that have poured out on me while doing this album, for the sound of war. I’m here happy to be able to say that the sound of love always wins as did for me. Snail in the clouds is one of the most important works in my life and I am glad to start from pure love for this album that is my son.

The album and full-length film will be released on the 5th of June on Monotreme Records.

Michele and Letizia’s previous musical short film, ‘The Great Book of Nature’, is an official selection for the 2026 Venice Shorts Film Festival.

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