Covet plays Foufounes Electriques on June 13th, their first Montreal date behind a touring cycle that has seen the band steadily expand its reach since rebuilding its lineup in 2022.
The band was founded in 2014 by guitarist Yvette Young, who developed her two-handed tapping technique as a solo artist before assembling a full group around that voice. Her background in piano and violin runs through Covet’s approach to guitar writing in a way that’s more structural than stylistic — lines that unfold the way keyboard parts do, with melody distributed across both hands rather than delegated to a single lead.
Covet released its debut full-length, Technicolor, in 2020, then followed with Catharsis in 2023. The second record showed a band working with more texture and less urgency to prove its technical credentials, which was a meaningful shift. The math-rock world is crowded with players who can execute; fewer of them are interested in atmosphere. The band has toured alongside Polyphia, Chon, and Jason Richardson, which maps the general territory accurately enough without telling the whole story.
Young’s profile as a solo artist has grown alongside Covet’s, and the two audiences overlap almost entirely. Her Instagram following runs into the hundreds of thousands, driven by guitar content that treats the instrument as something closer to a piano than a rock tool. That platform has given Covet a direct line to a fanbase that doesn’t necessarily find the band through traditional music press.
Supporting on the night are Lite and Hikes, two acts that understand the same tension between precision and feeling that Covet has built its reputation on. Japanese instrumental quartet Lite have been making that case since the mid-2000s; Hikes bring a more recent, loop-driven take on the same territory. For anyone with any interest in the technical end of rock music, this bill is difficult to argue with.
Foufounes Electriques can hold only a few hundred people. Tickets are available now.
