Their debut Fishboy EP (2023) combines warm and fuzzy Duster-style soundscapes with the lo-fi experimentalism of songwriters like Alex G, Big Thief & Fiona Apple. Their follow-up Point Nemo EP (2024), named after the most isolated location on Earth, explores themes of loneliness and alienation while refining the atmospheric indie pop blend they laid out on Fishboy.
Since their formation in 2020, Edinburgh duo No Windows have followed a steep upward trajectory. Multi-instrumentalist Morgan Morris and lyricist Verity Slangen’s evocative blend of classic pop & folk has earned them widespread support from radio and press, as well as the coveted Sound of Young Scotland Award at the Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Awards in 2023. In 2024, they signed to Fat Possum records at 18 and 19-years-old respectively, with just one self-released EP to their name.
Verity and Morgan first met in school. They started off playing in a covers band with other friends, doing renditions of contemporary off-kilter bangers by – nothing they would say has a strong influence on No Windows’ sound, but did help build the foundation of their shared musical language. When the pandemic hit, Verity and Morgan began writing their own songs, with Verity singing and handling lyrics and Morgan “locked away in my bedroom, trying to make stuff that sounded like [slowcore band] Duster.”
Their debut Fishboy EP (2023) combines warm and fuzzy Duster-style soundscapes with the lo-fi experimentalism of songwriters like Alex G, Big Thief & Fiona Apple. Their follow-up Point Nemo EP (2024), named after the most isolated location on Earth, explores themes of loneliness and alienation while refining the atmospheric indie pop blend they laid out on Fishboy.
Coming via Fat Possum in early 2025, The Great Traitor EP expands No Windows’ sonic territory even further, leaving the more familiar indie traits behind in favour of lush, psychedelic arrangements that take their cues from 70s chamber pop (George Harrison, Leonard Cohen) and film score composer Jon Brion (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). Produced with Ali Chant (Dry Cleaning, Sorry, Yard Act), the recording process took them out of Morgan’s DIY bedroom set-up and into a studio, where they had access to a breadth of instruments that allowed for more exploration across the EPs six tracks.
Lead single “Return” picks up the closest to where Point Nemo left off. A slow burning mixture of 90s alt rock and pastoral indie that sounds like something Buffy would have swooned to at the Bronze, it’s written from the perspective of Verity at 16-years-old – understanding her autism, always feeling awkward and out of place at school. The track makes its way from dark and dissonant to sunny and delicate, like someone weaving through the woods and out into the open. “I can’t fit into your space / Mould me into the girl you want to see,” Verity sings with a fiery confidence that has come with age. “It feels quite angry,” she says of the track. “The way I sing it live, there’s a lot of emotion behind it. If I had actually written it [back then], it probably would have been a much sadder, mellower song.”
On the sadder, mellower front, “Sugarcoat” finds Verity shaking off the dissolution of a relationship, its laid-back guitars and loose percussion growing increasingly frustrated until things erupt into a fit of heavy chords and marching drums. Written about the same relationship, opener “Brown Bear” is a gentle swatch of pastoral folk. It navigates the uncertainty of developing feelings for someone new, with Verity’s vocals dancing over an instrumental that mingles melody with dissonance in a nod to Jeff Buckley. Inspired by the sentimentality of 70s chamber pop, complete with back–up oooohs and a bouncy bass, “Tricky” captures the sensation of swooning.
“Brown Bear” and “Tricky” were written in a single sitting in December 2023, preserving Verity’s feelings in lyrical amber. “This person had just left my flat, and I was like, oh my God, I think I’m falling in love. I listened to the demos and wrote those two songs in literally half an hour,” she remembers. “We broke up a few weeks later, but it’s very sweet to me. It’s nice to look back on how I felt about that person without it being tinged by time.”
Elsewhere, trumpets erupt in symphony on “Old Chain Pier,” Ali plays the waterphone across the EP, and intricate acoustic closer “Easter Island” is the first track they’ve written to be sung as a duet from start to finish. “That definitely felt like the most cohesive in its process,” says Morgan, explaining that it came out in the moment as intended, not needing to become anything more – just two voices and an acoustic guitar in a room. At the same time, the dual vocals made them work more closely together, requiring a meticulousness about the harmony and flow of words. “I remember being very excited when we wrote it,” Morgan continues. “Usually it’s just me pretending to be Brian Wilson and stacking [harmonies] in my room, so it felt good singing together. It sounds very immediate. I think it marked us becoming more intertwined as songwriters.”
Balancing tranquil psychedelia with murky indie rock, The Great Traitor also plays with the concept of dreams and reality. On reflective tracks like “Old Chain Pier,” the sounds have been deliberately distorted to feel like memories. “We would manipulate the piano, for example, to make it sound like how you would remember a piano from five years ago,” Morgan explains. On more immediate tracks like “Tricky,” the sounds are clear and candid even while playing with the aesthetics of a bygone era.
Written after the release of Point Nemo, The Great Traitor marks a transitional period for No Windows, both as a band and as individuals. The songs came together while Morgan was in the process of deciding to drop out of university, while Verity had just started university and was adjusting to life there. For both of them, 2024 specifically “felt like the transition from adolescence to adulthood.” The EP reflects that in its blooming instrumentals and its emotional nuance. “When I wrote [the lyrics for] Point Nemo I was very much a teenager and very hormonal still. I think this EP is coming out of that a little bit,” Verity offers. “For me, it’s a mediation between being a younger person to being someone in my 20s who’s figuring things out a bit more.” The result is a series of heartfelt tracks that capture transient feelings at their most acute, while at the same time arranging them within the cinematic landscape of memory; an immortalisation of significant life events that have, for No Windows, already come and gone. “Our music has always felt quite nostalgic to me,” says Verity. “I think The Great Traitor sounds like a snapshot in time. A picture, almost, of how we were in that moment.”
