Singer-songwriter, suit lover, and guitarist Towa Bird has amassed 1.3 million TikTok followers and the credentials of a generational rockstar. On her sophomore album, Gentleman, chivalry becomes a state-of-mind.

27-year-old rockstar Towa Bird is really cool. The androgynous artist possesses an ease that can’t be copied or manufactured: tousled curls falling perfectly onto her shoulders, poreless skin, pillowy lips and, more often than not, an oversized suit and tie, as though looking like a rockstar was her birthright. Staring at her now, you’d be forgiven for thinking she’d actually emerged from the womb clutching a guitar.

The two have become synonymous. Since becoming the internet’s favourite guitarist with her sex-laden covers of Tame Impala, Towa has amassed 1.3 million TikTok followers, signed to Interscope, released her 2024 debut album American Hero, opened for Billie Eilish and her now-girlfriend Renée Rapp, who she actually met on tour, and earned admirers in everyone from Olivia Rodrigo, whose 2022 documentary she appeared in as a guitarist, to Tyler, the Creator. Not bad for someone whose rockstar awakening came courtesy of a probably-pirated Jimi Hendrix documentary on YouTube.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is exactly who I want to be. Everything that he does, I want to do,’” the British-Filipino artist recalls, sounding no less enthusiastic about the revelation years later. “Guitar was always my one true love. I didn’t really try any other instruments. This is the one that I wanted to play, so I made that decision quite young.”

As it turns out, making up her mind has never really been Towa’s problem. At 11 years old, she and her father kayaked around their home island of Phuket, Thailand. Six days later, the pair had completed the journey, and she found herself a world record holder as the youngest person to achieve such a feat. More valuable than the bragging rights, though, was the lesson. “[It taught me] you can do whatever you want, even from such a young age,” she says. And while much around her changed – trading sandy shores for skyscrapers after her family relocated to Hong Kong – one thing remained constant: the six-string companion hanging over her shoulder.

It was in 2020 when Towa started posting videos of herself covering Tame Impala, Arctic Monkeys and Harry Styles on TikTok. Before long, the clips had amassed millions of views– views which felt like proof that the life she’d been imagining might actually be possible. “It almost required external validation for me to internally validate myself,” she admits.“I’m seeing people are excited about it, and I’m like, ‘Oh, okay, maybe this doesn’t necessarily have to be a dream. This is something that could actually be reality for me.’”

On her 2024 debut, American Hero, Towa proved to the world that off-screen and on-stage, she really could shred. A gloriously ironic title – there’s her signature humour – from an artist who is neither American nor particularly interested in conventional heroism, over 13 tracks she explores love, yearning and vulnerability, with spark-filled tracks like “Wild Heart”and “Drain Me!” pairing wiry guitars with smoky vocals, and introducing an artist equally indebted to classic rock heroics as they are modern pop instincts. But it’s her newest record that truly sets her up as a generational voice to watch.

We’re speaking a week removed from what she describes as “one of my favourite ever shows”, a release gig for her sophomore album, Gentleman, at Pasadena’s Sid the Cat, attended by 500 lucky fans. Relief flashes across her face at the memory. “I was on stage when the album came out [on 15th May], and that feels quite momentous,” she smiles. “It was also the first time I was playing these tracks live, so there was a bit of nervousness. I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s not in my body yet.’”

Having spent more than a year with American Hero, Towa had become accustomed to its live demands. Whereas with the more self-assured body of work on Gentleman it’s nascent, yes, but also requires something else from its bolder material: confidence. Redefining what it means to be a gentleman, the 11 tracks’ swaggering guitar tones span sex, queer identity and biting societal observations of the uber-privileged. “These songs feel like new territory,” she says. “It’s always really exciting – that level of discomfort whenyou’re playing. It usually means you’re on the precipice of discovering something cool.”

Discomfort, as it happens, has become something of a creative philosophy for this record. The title Gentleman arrived almost accidentally. Late one November evening, Towa typed the word into her Notes app, convinced it meant something, before promptly forgetting about it. Months later, back in the studio after a brief pause from touring, she rediscovered the note and found herself staring at the blueprint for the record.“

We wrote the single “Gentleman” a couple days later, and I just thought it was such an interesting word,” she says, absentmindedly playing with her dark curls. “I love the duality between ‘gentle’ and ‘man’ – the masculine and feminine built into the word. I really connected to that through my fashion, my gender expression and my androgyny. There’s something quite profound about it.”

In abandoning old ideas of chivalry, Towa found herself asking a simpler question:What does a gentleman look like through a queer lens?

Sometimes, it looks like sitting on the front row at Miu Miu in Paris in a washed blueberry-blue denim two-piece, with sky-blue sci-fi shades. Other times, it’s a white tank top, exposing her midriff, with a punk-ish belt looped in her leather hot pants. On the Gentleman album cover, it’s seeing double, conjoining two Towa’s in matching pinstripes.

Across the music videos for “Gentleman”, “Dirty Habit” and “Dog” accompanying the record, Towa oscillates between leather and lace, satin and straps, tousled curls and slicked-back hair. “A lot of it is my personality and myself in there,” she says. “Someone said to me after I finished the album, ‘It really feels like a direct conversation with you.’”

Much of Gentleman operates in that spirit across fun, dance-y tracks. It is Towa throwing things at the wall and seeing what beauty sticks: sex and intimacy, love and heartbreak, surrender and control. Vulnerability, too. “People have been like, ‘This is the way that we really know you,’” she continues. “Someone was like, ‘You hit a huge swing and a home run with this. If I had to take your personality and visually translate it into a song, this would be it.’”

She’s talking about “Dog”, one of her favourites on the record, a sinister six-string hum underpins the track before giving way to something far louder and far more feral. “Tell me I’m so good / Tell me I’m the best / I can be your dog, I can be your dog,” she growls, detailing a sexual queer fantasy. Its companion track, “69 BPM”, sits beside it on the album because, in Towa’s words, they’re “sisters, not twins”. For someone who describes herself as “obsessed with the guitar”, the ratio of song to solo feels just right. Which, in Towa’s world, is about as high a compliment as someone can receive.

It is also where one of her clearest influences emerges. “This is something that Miley does amazingly,” she says. “She’s not scared of doing long instrumental sections. She’s so into instrumentalism. That was the same thing that I was trying to execute with these tracks.”

Mention Miley Cyrus and Towa practically lights up. Watching the Tennessee-born superstar throw herself into classic rock records and Led Zeppelin covers left an impression. “That voice is just timeless,” she says, shaking her head in disbelief. “She can sing songs from, like, 1971 and somehow make them sound brand new? She’s so sick, man. So talented – and can sing like a motherfucker!”

“She’s such a legacy artist. She’s built such a huge career already,” she continues. “But throughout every era, she’s so authentically herself. It never feels like, ‘I’m gonna try thisnow.’ It’s just Miley with rock and roll, Miley with pop.”

There’s something Towa recognises in that freedom. Gentleman finds her less interested in proving she belongs than in deciding what she wants to do with the room she’s been given. And perhaps that’s the strangest thing about finally becoming the person you spent years dreaming about. 15 years after sitting in front of a computer screen and deciding she wanted to be Jimi Hendrix, Towa no longer seems particularly concerned with becoming anything at all. With Gentleman, she lets the world see her exactly as she is, without the need for change, the way she was born to be. Perhaps she really was the first kid to enter the world with a guitar slung over her shoulder…

WONDERLAND SUMMER 2026. GUEST EDITED BY MILEY CYRUS. SHOP NOW.

Photography Mario Sorrenti
Chief Creative Officer & Styling Alastair McKimm
Words Aswan Magumbe
Hair Bob Recine
Make-up Diane Kendal
Set Design Philipp Haemmerle
Executive Producer Dana Brockman
Producer Max Bonbrest
Casting Alexandra Antonova for Samuel Ellis Scheinman

Lighting Technician Lars Beaulieu
1st Photo Assistant Kotaro Kawashima
Photo Assistants Paolo Afante, Kurt Mangum
Digital Tech Charles Meyer
Fashion Assistants Taylor Wood, Kassidy Taylor
Hair Assistant Jeelan Aleem
Make-up Assistants Eduardo Jiminez, Breanna Harmon
Set Assistants Oscar Haemmerle, Xavier Mozejewski
Production Assistant Din Morris