Scroll through the comments under DYGL's videos on YouTube, and the same reaction comes up again and again: I could've sworn this lot were from England.
It isn't just the music the Tokyo-bred quartet makes, channeling the best bits of guitar acts from The Clash to The Kooks into songs that sound like established parts of the indie-rock canon the first time you hear them. It's also the way frontman Nobuki Akiyama sings: not just in English, but with a convincing British accent, albeit one whose precise region is impossible to place.
This recipe has served the band well in Japan, where it has graduated from small club shows to playing the larger stages at festivals like Fuji Rock, buoyed by a solid 2017 debut album produced by Albert Hammond Jr. of The Strokes. But for the past year, DYGL's members have been living — and recording — in the one place their music is most at risk of being deemed surplus to requirements: London.