Spurs stories | The Marias, from The Warm Up to supporting Billie Eilish

From Grammy nominations to Coachella to the iconic Roundhouse and a stint supporting Billie Eilish just around the corner, life is good for LA-based band The Marias - and it got even better on Sunday.

Spurs-supporting band members Josh Conway and Jesse Perlman joined us pitchside for our pre-match show The Warm Up ahead of our Premier League encounter against Ipswich Town. Suddenly, the 5,000-plus miles from LA to N17 was down to a few metres for the guys as the players were put through their pre-match paces.

“I’m not going to lie, this is a top three moment in my life right now,” said Josh. “This is our Coachella!”

Formed in 2016 by Josh (drummer) and singer Maria Zardoya, with Jesse on guitar and Edward James on keyboards, The Marias’ debut album Cinema (2021) was nominated for a Grammy Award, and they opened for Halsey on her Love and Power Tour. In 2022, they collaborated with Bad Bunny on the song Otro Atardecer from his album Un Verano Sin Ti.  Now it’s time for their second album, Submarine, from which the first single, Run Your Mouth, had over one million streams in its first week of release.

Josh explained how Spurs came into his life - and pulled Jesse along for the ride!

“My dad (Lionel) has been a Spurs fan his whole life, so I've been a Spurs fan my whole life,” he said. “There's football on the TV every weekend at four or five, six in the morning because we live in LA. I became a really big Tottenham fan around 10th grade or so.”

“We grew up together, so, because of that, by proxy, I'm a huge fan too,” added Jesse.

“It's incredible to be here pitchside,” continued Josh. “We couldn't pass up the opportunity to be here. Our manager is also a Spurs fan, and he was like, ‘you guys, we’ve got to go and see the game’. We took a train from Bristol this morning - we played last night in Bristol - and took an early train back, and then we’ll take a train back to Manchester (where they had another gig on Sunday evening) and then we’re coming back to London tomorrow (Monday) to play The Roundhouse.”

Asked about playing at the iconic Camden venue, Jesse said: “We're so excited. I think it's the biggest venue of the whole European Tour. We can't wait. We've only heard great things about it. It's going to be a great way to finish the tour.”

Josh took us back to 2016 and The Marias’ journey so far. “We started playing shows pretty early on, and writing music together, and it's been kind of an uphill climb ever since, it's been great,” he said. “There are checkpoints along the way that that you just kind of like remind yourself, ‘oh, this is this is wild’, like our last Coachella performance in 2022 was one of those for me.

“Another is when we come travel all the way over here and play Berlin, Cologne, Amsterdam and these kids are singing our songs back,” added Jesse. “That's always really special. The best thing is we’re all really close, best friends, so we're lucky to be able to experience it all together.”