cootie catcher

Form presents Cootie Catcher (+ special guests) at The Hope & Ruin on 1 November 2026 at 7:00 pm.

This Toronto-based four-piece combines vulnerability and energy, creating a sound that charges the open-hearted tenderness of twee pop with spiraling synths and electronics. Their new album Something We All Got is a clear and vivid reading of Cootie Catcher’s vision, with songs of sweetness, nervousness, and expectancy.

After releasing music made primarily in basements, Something We All Got is the band’s first flirtation with studio recording. The edges are still sharp, with some parts assembled from time-honored lo-fi methods and personally sourced samples seeping into the production. The sound is upbeat, with bright guitars, bubbly synth lines, speedy live and programmed drums, and other textures colliding. Cootie Catcher has three songwriters – Sophia Chavez (vocals, synths), Anita Fowl (vocals, bass), and Nolan Jakupovski (vocals, guitar) – all of whom have distinctive voices but overlap in their writing on shared concerns such as navigating the lines of romantic and platonic relationships, their city’s social scenes, and struggles in both the micro experience of playing in a band and the wider challenges of living through late-stage capitalism.

Joy touches every surface of Something We All Got. “Quarter Note Rock” moves through jangling guitar chords, scratched samples, and interplay between breakbeat loops and live drums. It remains upbeat despite lyrics about how disappointing it can be to meet your heroes. An electro-pop instrumental supports having to step painfully away from an almost realized love on “Gingham Dress,” a song that subverts themes of domesticity as a backdrop for hopeless devotion. The non-confrontational anthem “Puzzle Pop” cascades through an examination of needing to ask more from others before concluding in a swirl of samples.

Cootie Catcher carries visceral emotions throughout Something We All Got. There is a tension between the band’s energetic sonics and the raw, often uneasy sentiments expressed.