After a three-year performing hiatus, London trio kid apollo comes of age on their emotional yet hopeful mixtape, “i let the sun back in”.
“We want to make it a statement,” Felix Ratigan says, discussing the buzz around the announcement of their now-sold-out headline London show at The Waiting Room on 29th October. Jimmy and twin brothers Felix and Theo Ratigan reveal their last show was roughly three years ago supporting a fellow South Londoner, Amie Blu.
With “i let the sun back in”, the new 13-track collection of genre-bending lo-fi and alternative tunes combined into a return mixtape, Theo teases that fans are in for a different experience than they were used to: “When we did that show three years ago, we had definitely a more mellow sound, slow and sad. This project has more tempo, and production-wise, it is a bit heavier. It lends itself to live way more.”
Sitting in their Deptford apartment’s dusky living room/studio, as the new season’s first heavy rainfall hits their street-facing windows, kid apollo underlines a new era with their latest body of work, by turns proud, eager, and humble. With recording equipment on the left, Theo finds a seat; a bean bag just in front of me, with Felix slouching; and a chair with cross-legged Jimmy.
All comfortable in the room where it all goes down – from the production to writing to recording – they exchange looks and collectively agree. “We’re nervous, a little bit,” Jimmy admits on the return to the live stage. “People get better the more shows they do; that’s the unavoidable process. We’re aware we’re not going to be perfect, but that’s not really the point when doing this first show.”
“Previously, it’s been just us three on stage, but this time we want to make it a bigger thing. So we’re going to get a drummer, a trumpet player, and then another guitarist; additionally, on us three as well,” Felix shares. Jimmy jumps in, “There’s going to be no room on stage,” excited to fill the low-ceilinged basement venue in Stoke Newington’s, Three Crowns.
Living together for two years now, the curiosity about how the three come to work together seamlessly strikes a chord. Felix reveals it is not music that is keeping them busy these days: “Well, at the moment, we haven’t made music for four or five months, because we’ve been doing all our visual stuff and sat in the room thinking about what ideas to do. Then when we do those ideas, we’re editing it, trying to build the best world we can around it.”
With music, though, before they commit to a track and a concept, the groundwork can be “generally quite individual,” as Jimmy describes it. Once a melody stands out, it becomes a discussion, collaboration, and tweaking of which direction they want to take the specific song. The artist rotation that first hinted at their new mixtape was Bon Iver’s 2025 record, Chasing Moving Trains, along with material by Jim Legxcy and Dominic Fike.
Discussing past influences and early inspirations, Felix, Theo, and Jimmy take us back to the early days of kid apollo, when the twins met the lead vocalist at school at 13 years old. Three years later, a new friendship formed, and what started as messing around and making beats on a laptop, “nothing serious,” as Felix put it, became a major life redirection.
Felix elaborates: “We were just doing it because we loved it. By the end of school, we felt like we didn’t want to take the conventional uni route. So we worked, trying to figure out how you even begin to do that. It’s actually a mental thing because you don’t know anyone,” admitting the first couple of years were pretty isolating.
From the get-go, kid apollo showed admirable patience as they figured out their sound without connections. As three multi-instrumentalists, producers, and music video directors, they had everything they needed. As Theo calls them homebodies, Felix adds, “We do it all ourselves, so in terms of forming connections, there is power in working with people and community, but truth be told we don’t really need that. And if it comes our way, it comes our way. It’s not essential to us.”
Going through the backlog of their recent DIY music videos, like “kumbaya”, “ups/downs”, “i let the sun back in”, and “easier,” they set the record straight about there being no specific movie references. “We’re just inspired by the sounds that we make to come up with an idea for the music video. So it doesn’t come from movies generally,” Theo clarifies.
“It’s everywhere. It sounds cliché, but it’s everything we see and feel. It’s not this linear,” Jimmy surmises.
Each video comes from a very authentic place for kid apollo and their collective experiences. They care deeply, they’re inspired, they’re hardworking, and it shows. For someone who grew up on the golden age of MTV and music videos, kid apollo’s creative DIY vision definitely revives and re-establishes what a thought-out music video should look like.
Good or bad, the question stands: Are music videos still relevant? Theo eagerly takes hold of the response: “I think they’re doing a circle. I think maybe in the past five, six years, at the start of the TikTok era, they were forgotten about a bit, because it was so easy to get numbers just from a short-form video. But now, after years of that, I think the audience of whoever they do crave something more fleshed out and thought about on a human level. So I think music videos in general are coming back. We do it because we love it; we’ve always done music videos; we never stopped.”
He continues, ” I don’t even think you necessarily have to throw money at it. It’s all about the idea. For the first four years of kid apollo, we didn’t have money to throw at videos. It was always about the idea, so that limitation actually helped a bunch, because it forces the idea to be good.”
As one becomes more familiar with their visual footprint, clips filmed across London streets, with Jimmy passionately performing the lyrics, align with their past repertoire whilst staying true to their creative vision. Jimmy admits they’ve already started to feel the pressure of learning social media and not being able to anticipate what will work and what will not.
Felix explains their headspace: “It’s about playing the game, without messing up your credibility and how you feel about your creative identity. It’s about playing the game just enough so it doesn’t affect that.”
The first inner workings of “i let the sun back in” stemmed from a transitional period in their lives and ultimately marked the beginning of a new era. Living and working together, Jimmy calls their relationship very symbiotic. “If someone’s going through something, it’s generally the case that all of us are in that same state. This project reflects that era. There’s a big mix of influences, which is why it doesn’t stay super linear, and that’s why it is a mixtape, not an album; it doesn’t want to feel too cohesive or too perfect.”
The new mixtape makes for the most vulnerable kid apollo work to date. “It’s passionate. There is an UNF behind it,” Jimmy says. Listening to “i let the sun back in,” you get a mix of polarising emotions around a mental debate: wanting to let go and trusting new feelings. The mixtape swirls between distorted memories as it fights to hold on to newfound hope and a new era.
The title track and the whole mixtape symbolise the breaking point after a breakup, when you’re ready to step back into the world. Fed up with black-and-white pessimism, you start to see colour again. Throughout the mixtape, you can feel the frustration of finally wanting to move on and reconnect with the good in the world. Jimmy first sang the chorus, “fed up of the goodbyes // but I let the sun back in,” instinctively; “I literally shouted it in the room that wasn’t written down.”
As 24-year-olds, the room and their home studio are filled with mutual understanding, maturity, and emotional intelligence as Felix, Theo, and Jimmy discuss writing lyrics, letting emotion come out without rigid conceptual plans. Jimmy confirms they’re always on the same wavelength, creating a safe space for the others: “We are letting each other know how we’re feeling; everyone understands how deeply we feel about certain things, certain moments, and people. We give the space to be vulnerable; otherwise, the songs wouldn’t be able to be written.”
Singing, “it didn’t get any easier/ I think I got used to it,” Jimmy hits the nail on the head about where all the pain goes. It stays with you; it simply becomes part of you, something you can endure now. Another of his instinctive moments, Jimmy says he lets the music guide him: “Generally, the best lyrics come quickly; occasionally, it takes more thought. It’s pretty instinctive what the music is making me feel.”
Whether it is capturing the spirit of gritty England in the “ups/downs” music video, or using personal footage from Arsenal’s victorious Premier League parade in the visuals for “i let the sun back in,” kid apollo trusts their instincts. Built around conversation, friendship, and multifaceted talents, Felix, Theo, and Jimmy are on a promising path to become the voice and hope for a new generation of British youth. With music that is not only cinematic and raw, but also intelligent, emotionally vulnerable lyrics that question and surrender to the spectrum of emotions that life uncompromisingly serves up.
Listen to the mixtape…
Words – Karolina Krampova
