“I had to say ‘No, guys I swear we’re a real band’”: South Arcade on how they became the figureheads of a growing Y2K revival

South Arcade.

Fusing sledgehammer nu-metal riffs with the communal euphoria of classic pop punk, South Arcade have honed a sound that will immediately make some wildly nostalgic. And, for those who didn’t live through the early 2000s, their colourful, carefree universe serves as a soothing balm to the chaos of the 2025 news cycle.

But the band - formed following the pandemic at university in Guildford (UK) - have seized upon a modern, TikTok-angled strategy to garner attention.

Filming their regular band practice antics, South Arcade are keen to use the tools of the now to bring the sound of a time well before the web’s domination of our lives to the masses. It seems to have worked. If their 11.1 million TikTok likes are anything to go by.

With a growing fan-base (both young and old), South Arcade have caused something of a ripple. With the constant barrage of negative news, many are unsurprisingly keen to return to (or long to have been born early enough to experience) the relative simplicity of the early 2000s.