IF you’re looking for a neat origin story, Cowboy Hunters aren’t going to give you one. In an age where it’s possible to know everything – perhaps, too much – about our favourite artists, the Scottish punks are choosing to lean into a combination of mystery and farce.
Ask how the band began and you’ll get something closer to a shrug and a punchline than a full narrative. With Megan Pollock and Desmond Johnston, it’s clear that any attempt at sincerity will be immediately undermined. Crucially, though, this is by design, as well as a firm commitment to the lore.
“We met on the job, hunting,” says Johnston, completely straight-faced.
“Slim Jim or Slim Jimothy the Second, the full title. He’s still out there, don’t know if you’ve heard,” Pollock adds, derailing the moment before it has a chance to become anything resembling a typical answer.
The pair are speaking over a Zoom call, on two separate screens while in the same room, both wearing cartoon-ish wizard hats, for no immediately obvious reason. In fact, in response to my attempts to question the headgear, the reply is a simple, deadpan: “What hats?”
Even their shared time studying music at Edinburgh Napier, the kind of detail that you might find neatly folded into a band’s biography, is treated with the same suspicion. “We did, allegedly,” Johnston says. “You wouldn’t be able to tell, listening to the songs.”
That instinct to distort and dismantle expectation runs through everything Cowboy Hunters do. It’s there in their music, in their live performances, in their online presence, and even in the way they talk about themselves. There’s no grand narrative arc being carefully constructed, no sense that they’re trying to position themselves within a particular lineage or scene. Instead, there’s a deliberate refusal to take any of it too seriously – even when, underneath the jokes, it undoubtedly does matter.
Their latest release, EPeepee, is a perfect example. Where many bands might frame a new project in terms of artistic growth or ambition, Cowboy Hunters offer something far more disarmingly blunt.
“Our mission statement was just to record an EP,” Pollock says. But listening to the EP, there’s something about the absurdity, the aggression and the general apathy at life that speaks so clearly to a generation that has had enough of living through near-constant era-defining moments. On Have a Pint, they proclaim: “Look outside/What A Sight/Everything’s fucked mate, everybody sucks/But that’s alright/Have a Pint”, while the excellently titled Shag Slags Not Flags parodies the ludicrous actions of racist internet trolls: “43 with a flag in her bio/Says she hates blanks/But that is a typo/The sexual frustration/You could catch with your eyes closed”.
“They were just the ones that hadn’t been recorded yet,” Johnston says of the songs that made it on to the EP. “The ones that were best live,” Pollock adds, grounding the decision in the band’s most important context: the stage. Because for Cowboy Hunters, everything comes back to the live show. It’s the space where their identity feels most fully realised, and where their reputation has been built, pairing live bass and drums with sample pads. Ask them to describe what a gig looks like and, true to form, they keep it minimal. “Songs, fun,” Johnston says. “It’ll be us two, no-one else,” Pollock adds.
That simplicity is deceptive. What they actually deliver on stage is something far less easy to pin down – it’s chaotic, unpredictable, occasionally messy, but consistently engaging. Part of that comes from the fact that they’re not trying to replicate a studio version of their songs. The live show is its own thing – looser, louder and more in your face.
Even the decision to swap instruments mid-set speaks to that philosophy. It’s not about technical prowess or musical experimentation so much as it is about impact.
“So that people remember the band,” Johnston says. It’s a practical answer, but it also hints at a deeper understanding of how to stand out in a crowded live circuit.
What has been intentional for the pair is the gradual shift in how they approach performance. Early on, there was a pressure to get everything right – a hangover, perhaps, from formal musical training.
“When we started, we were shitting ourselves that we were going to get notes wrong,” Johnston admits. Over time, that anxiety has faded, replaced by something more instinctive.
“We’ve stopped caring too much,” he says. “It seems like the more fun we have, the more fun everyone else has.”
That emphasis on fun isn’t accidental, it’s at the heart of everything that the duo does. It shapes not just how they perform, but why they perform. Cowboy Hunters are, at their core, a band built on friendship, and witnessing how they ridicule themselves and play off of each other’s answers, it’s apparent how central this is to their ethos.
“It’s kind of like this band has a very similar approach to most animes,” Johnston says, taking on another slightly surreal analogy, “where it’s like, you use the power of friendship to team up and kill”.
“We use it to kill cowboys,” Pollock adds. “And not fall out, that much.”
“We’re doing our best,” Johnston says. “If you see us having an argument on the street, we’ll be fine, don’t worry about it.”
It’s a joke, but it’s also a fairly accurate description of the band’s dynamic. There’s a sense that the music grows out of that relationship rather than the other way around. The creative process isn’t something separate from their friendship; it’s an extension of it.
That’s part of what allows them to lean so heavily into humour without losing direction. Their music is often nonsensical, sometimes deliberately so, but it never feels arbitrary. “We’re just that funny,” Pollock says, only half-joking.
“It’s more fun to be fun,” Johnston adds. “It’s a bit miserable to be a miserable bastard all the time… even this answer that I’m giving right now is too serious.”
That instinct – to undercut seriousness before it becomes overbearing – is what gives Cowboy Hunters their particular tone. They’re not uninterested in the world around them, and they’re not incapable of addressing heavier themes. They just refuse to do it in a way that feels self-important.
You can see that balance in the stories behind their songs. Take Money for Drugs, for example, which Johnston describes with characteristic frankness. “I sold a copy of Pikmin 3 for the Nintendo Switch and bought however much that got me from the shop in drugs,” he says. “And that was so inspirational to me that I went home and wrote a song.”
It’s a ridiculous anecdote, but it also speaks to a broader approach: take whatever happens, however mundane or questionable, and turn it into something worth sharing. At the same time, there is an underlying intent behind it all.
“We want to try and cheer people up,” Johnston says. “Escapism… just have fun.” Pollock frames it in the way she imagines an ideal audience response: “Oh my God. I love this band so much. I want to buy them a drink. That’s the key.”
For Cowboy Hunters, technical flaws aren’t failures; they’re part of the experience. In that sense, their approach is almost confrontational. It challenges the idea that live music should be polished, controlled or even consistently “good” in a traditional sense. What matters is the energy in the room, the sense that something is happening – even if it’s messy.
That same attitude carries over into their relationship with the internet, which they approach with a mix of pragmatism and disdain, though they have found considerable success online. Like most emerging bands, Cowboy Hunters have had to engage with platforms like TikTok to build an audience, but they do so on their own terms and with their trademark mischief thrown in.
“That’s just the way a lot of people find music now,” Pollock says, acknowledging the reality of the situation. At the same time, she notes the downsides: the repetition, the fatigue, the way algorithms shape how music is consumed.
For both bandmates, the key is maintaining a sense of authenticity within that system. “If you are yourself on social media, then they sort of already know you,” Johnston explains. That familiarity can be a shortcut, collapsing the distance between artist and audience before they even meet in person.
“You skip that whole ‘getting to know the band’ thing,” he says. “Everyone who comes to see us knows… come, get too drunk and jump around – that’s the vibe.”
“It’s cool that people come to gigs just from finding stuff on social media,” Pollock adds. “That’s a real positive.”
Despite their growing visibility, they remain sceptical of the idea that artists should function as cultural or political authorities. It’s a position they return to repeatedly, with increasing emphasis.
“You shouldn’t expect artists to say shit that you believe, or that you want them to believe, or you expect them to believe,” Pollock says. “It’s not a responsibility. It’s good if they do and good if they don’t. They’re not the people you should be looking to for a world view.”
“You should have some fucking critical thinking skills of your own, and you should be able to assess the world around you and make up your own opinion without having to have every artist that you are into aligned perfectly with your point of view,” Johnston continues. “You can like an artist and not agree with what they think.”
For them, the expectation that every artist should take a discernable, public stance on every issue feels both unrealistic and counterproductive. “If someone’s on stage and they know fuck all, and they’re lecturing people about how to think, that is nothing but a negative,” Johnston says. “It doesn’t help anyone.”
It’s not that they avoid serious topics altogether – far from it. “We’re still talking about everything that’s happening because you can’t really avoid that,” Johnston says. “If you want to do the type of music that we do, you have to speak about everything.” The difference is that, for Cowboy Hunters, those ideas are embedded within the music itself rather than delivered as overt statements.
Touring has only reinforced their sense of who they are as a band. Having shared stages with acts like Bob Vylan and Sleaford Mods, they’ve had the chance to test their approach in bigger venues and in front of larger audiences. The result has been reassuring.
“We’ve not really changed anything about how we play,” Johnston says. “We’ve learned that you can be yourself in these bigger situations… we don’t need to change anything.”
“It’s nice to be able to flex on people,” Pollock adds, cutting through the sentiment with a wry smile.
Looking ahead, Cowboy Hunters are in a familiar position for a band at their stage: momentum building, opportunities increasing, but resources still limited. They’ve got a run of festivals lined up – The Great Escape in May, followed by Hidden Door, 2000 Trees, End of the Road, and more – and a growing catalogue of material waiting to be properly recorded.
“We’ve got a bank of really, really, really, really good songs,” Johnston says. “But we need one million pounds to make it worthwhile.”
It’s an exaggerated figure, obviously, but it points to a real challenge: the gap between having the material and having the means to realise it at the level they want. Until that gap is closed, they continue as they are – writing, playing, building an audience and, as Johnston puts it, “continuing the graft”.
Pollock’s version of the future is characteristically less detailed. “More cowboys, more OnlyFans,” she says. It’s only partly a joke – the band recently expanded their output to OnlyFans, where they say they’ll be posting exclusive “safe-for-work” content and behind-the-scenes material. “If you like us, you’ll like us on our OnlyFans,” Johnston says with a wink.
What is clear is that Cowboy Hunters have a strong sense of themselves, even if they resist articulating it in conventional terms. A couple of years in, they sound like a band that has figured out what works, not by carefully planning it, but by following their instincts and paying attention to what feels right.
“It’s very much like we can and will do whatever the fuck we want,” Johnston states.
Cowboy Hunters aren’t trying to be perfect, and they’re not trying to be everything to everyone. They’re trying to make something that feels good – to them and to the people in the room – and to trust that that’s enough. And, increasingly, it seems like it is.
