Photo by Tamibé Bourdanné
Tokyo Tea Room’s irresistible, nuanced dance-pop is built on deep grooves, sparkling guitars and dreamy vocals. More subdued than frantic, the band’s latest album, Feel Forever, sounds less like the soundtrack to a late-night club than something a poolside DJ might spin on a warm afternoon.
Always believing in themselves while remaining realistic about the music business, songwriter/producer Dan Elliott, singer Beth Plumb, bassist Ben Marshall and drummer Sam Teather settled into careers and family life, balancing the band with the rest of their lives. But streaming algorithms had other plans. Tokyo Tea Room’s music began finding its way onto influential playlists, with older tracks like “If You Love Her” and “Forever Out of Time” accumulating tens of millions of listens and sparking renewed interest in the English band.
Beth and Dan joined me to discuss this new chapter in Tokyo Tea Room’s career, the success of their 2025 U.S. tour, and the band’s singles-release strategy.
Tokyo Tea Room has been a project for over a decade, but it feels like this is the year it’s taking off. How does it feel to look back at that timeline?
DAN: It’s hard work, isn’t it, because the music industry is so competitive. We started as a project where I just wanted to take some of my songwriting and do it live, and then we all fell in love with it, and it became its own thing. For many years there wasn’t a level of success to be had for us, we were kind of just poodling along in England, playing local shows. That can fall to the wayside when you’ve got other things going on in your life — finishing uni, getting careers, starting families — but for some reason, the four of us stayed together through it all.
BETH: We’ve all got our own things going on, but luckily it just keeps going, doesn’t it? We just love it so much.
DAN: The passion never disappeared. There was always the love and the joy of getting together, no matter what. We weren’t super prolific for a fair amount of those years, we maybe played one gig a year. But we always loved the studio. The love of production and the studio element has been a really strong connecting point for us, and even when we were only playing once a year, we were in the studio a lot, just having fun recording music. We stuck with it, basically.
Did things start taking off last year? More recognition, more shows?
DAN: Yes, exactly, pretty much last year. We gained a bit of momentum on streaming platforms over the last few years, ever since we released our first EP, Dream Room, around 2018, 2019. We got a bit of traction on streaming, but we weren’t particularly performing live, and …
BETH: And COVID came and screwed it up.
DAN: Yeah, that’s right. That put a stop in the works for everyone in the music industry, but we started to get more traction after the release of our first album, last year, in January. Since then we’ve had two tours, so the live side of the band has been picking up a lot more.
Did it feel like you’d been preparing for the day that everything started to happen or did success suddenly drop it into your laps?
DAN: Honestly, I feel like it was kind of dropped in our laps, a hundred percent.
BETH: It was always a dream. We always said we wanted to go to the U.S., that would be the ultimate dream, and now we’re about to do it twice in one year. It was suddenly out of nowhere. We were all having our lives, I had a baby, we didn’t know it was going to happen, and then suddenly it’s like, okay, let’s make this work.
DAN: It got very overwhelming. Our record label got involved, which was great, but I never knew where that road would lead. At the time it was, we’ll put out a track with them, we’ll put out an EP with them, and then they suddenly offered us a full development deal. We had only played one show that year, and then, the next thing, we’ve got a load of people knocking at our door: PR people, and managers. We ended up signing with Reflector Management, and I think them coming on board has really helped …
BETH: Kick us into gear.
DAN: Get our shit together, for lack of a better phrase, because we needed a bit of management.
Where did the band name come from, and does it still fit how you think of the music?
DAN: It was a song title from a previous band. I like the idea of it being a stepping-away-from-the-noise, a chill space to step into, a break from the chaotic reality that is everyday life, work, whatever it may be. That’s how we’ve grown into that name. When we first came up with it, it didn’t necessarily have that meaning, it was just some cool words we put together. But band names do matter, and I think we’ve grown into ours.
Who do you consider your peers? Who’s in the same musical universe as you?
DAN: It’s changed over our evolution, from the first EP we put out to now. Early on, maybe a bit of Men I Trust, and Tame Impala, in that direction. As we’ve developed, we’ve moved into more … you know a band called Leisure? And Jungle. So now, hopefully with this album, a little bit more on the chill, dancey vibes kind of thing.
That’s what I wrote down in my notes – chill, dancey. There’s even just a little bit of ’70s disco sounds that I hear, like on “Hypnotized.” It takes me back to feeling like I’m a 7-year-old kid.
DAN: Yeah, definitely. I was listening to a lot of Michael Jackson as well, which I guess is kind of controversial now, but it was a bit of Michael Jackson-inspired drum beats going on in the production.
I thought of your record almost like a meal. My appetizer is ‘90s-influenced guitar rock, my main course is Americana and folk. You guys are the dessert: not something I’d eat every day, but when I do, I love it.
DAN: That’s a nice place to be, I think.
This new record has four singles out already, with videos. Is the staggered rollout strategic?
DAN: Yeah, it’s a way of teasing the album slowly, building up some momentum. We strategized it. We wanted a good six-month campaign before the album drops, because it’s no good in this day and age to just drop ten tracks on people; no one’s got the attention span to listen to ten tracks immediately. So it’s strategic to bring out one single, hook a few people in, then drop another, and you snowball that, and hopefully by the time the album’s out you’ve got a solid group of people waiting to hear it.
It’s also about capitalizing on Spotify, because you’ve got to play the game, haven’t you? Streaming platforms don’t like it if you just drop ten tracks. They want to see how one track goes, and the algorithm might then pull in more listeners for the next one. There’s a bit of game-playing that goes on there.
Is there another single coming before the album drops?
DAN: No, this is the last one. We’ve released four of ten. For me, it’s more exciting to have heard the first half and wonder what the rest of the album’s made up of, rather than dumping the whole thing on people at once.
Every song on this record sounds like a single to me. I can’t pick out the “secret,” hidden-in-plain-sight song the way I usually can with a record. You have a very cohesive sound across the whole thing. If I had to pick two that aren’t singles, I’d say “Temporary Love” and “Leave You.”
BETH: “Temporary Love” is one of the ones I’m really looking forward to playing live. That’s one of my favorites, I think.
It doesn’t sound like you threw anything on just to fill time. Is that fair to say, that you’re proud of every individual song here?
BETH: That’s true, no filler.
DAN: I feel like on the first album there were more, kind of, filler tracks, not that they don’t mean something, but we had things that were more like a pretty melody leading you into the next song. With this record, I intentionally made it so there was no filler. There were a bunch of songs written, something like 25 tracks, and a lot of them didn’t make the cut, but I wanted this one to be a bit more pristine.
I think of this record as a book, start to end, rather than a series of short stories where one might be romance, one science fiction, one horror. This feels like ten tracks that belong together.
DAN: That’s intentional, for sure. I wanted it to be one cohesive piece of work. Honestly, that’s my favorite way to consume an artist’s music. Most of the time I’m not listening on Spotify, I’m listening on my vinyl player. I love the idea of putting on a record and getting it start to finish. Day to day, I’m not listening to loads of different artists and one song from each, I’m always just listening to one artist and their whole catalogue. I love it, it’s my favorite thing.
Are you really that dedicated a vinyl listener? Is that your preferred method, and you make the time for it? I like to think of myself that way but the reality is I mostly listen to music in the car or when I’m out running. When I’m at home, in the same room as my record player, Netflix always wins.
DAN: A hundred percent, yeah. This sounds so la-di-da, like I’m trying to be a cool kid, but it’s genuinely the way I prefer. I feel like I have the opposite disease, because I’m always in the studio, surrounded by music, consuming it while I’m driving or going places doesn’t interest me anymore. I need a podcast, or something else. So when I do come to listen to music, say in the morning while I’m making breakfast, I have my record player set up, and that’s the way I like to do it; put on a record and intentionally listen to the whole thing. I love it.
BETH: I feel like I’m probably similar to you. I’d want to do what Dan does, and I do have a player here, and I do spend some nights just listening to albums, but not as much as I’d want to. Ideally, I’d want one set up in every room. But it’s so much easier when you’ve got a speaker somewhere just to connect your phone to. It’s bad, isn’t it, really?
Where are you, feeling-wise, on making music videos? Necessary evil, or something you enjoy?
DAN: It’s interesting, isn’t it, because I remember watching music videos, and it being the coolest thing, but it’s kind of gone by the wayside these days. I feel like music videos aren’t worth as much as they used to be. I’ve not been in any of our music videos, it’s not something that interests me, I’ll be honest. Beth, you’re in one in the videos.
BETH: Reluctantly.
DAN: I think we’re all a bit, not shy, but we prefer the brand to do the talking. I guess we’re kind of a “brandy” band. We’re not going to be running up and down the stage like Harry Styles. We let the brand do the thing, let the music do the talking, and there’s a kind of brand behind it, which I think annoys the record label and management a little bit, because it’s very against the grain in this day, when everyone’s loving that kind of social media content, and you’ve got to keep putting out these little short videos. I like the mystery. I’m still into the mystery.
I loved listening to bands when I was a kid and knowing nothing about them, reading the sleeves to find out who was the producer, who was the mixer, who the band members are, and learning about it that way, rather than having it spoon-fed to you on Instagram or through a music video. I do like really silly music videos, though. I don’t really like serious ones. I think they should be silly, I think no one should take themselves super seriously. But there are some really good serious ones, too.
Dan, I don’t want to pigeonhole you, but you sound like an old music soul. That’s why I own records. I love pulling the inner sleeve out and reading the credits, the “thank you” list, the lyrics. It sounds like you love the art of the whole thing.
DAN: Yeah, I love pulling the inner sleeve out and seeing the photos that aren’t the press photos. Those are the coolest, because it’s usually just the band, fly-on-the-wall style, or in the studio, and you get some insight from that, and you extrapolate it in your own way. You’re not spoon-fed it, you just see that, and you make your own world of what this band is like in your head, and I think that’s the coolest way to experience a band.
BETH: I like that as well, because when we play live, people don’t really know much about us, so they come and see us and say, “Oh, it’s so cool to meet you, we didn’t really know much about you” and I quite like that.
DAN: People didn’t know we were English.
BETH: As soon as I introduced us, I was like, “Hi, we’re Tokyo Tea Room,” and they were like, “What? She’s English?”
What’s your relationship like with fans on social media?
DAN: We do a bit. I think it’s nice to have a little bit of interaction. We reply to people’s comments, usually. Honestly, we’re just a bunch of friends doing it, and it was manageable when we didn’t have much of a fan base, and then it sort of blew up, which is amazing but there’s a lot of messages, and sometimes you have to say, I can’t spend too much time replying to everybody, so you do what you can. But it’s nice. Usually it’s really lovely messages, people saying a song helped them get through something in their life, and I just wanted to say thank you. It’s really nice to hear. For such a long time, it was just numbers on a screen until we started properly developing it and going on the road, and meeting fans in person is so unbelievable. Some of the stories you hear, the people you meet who have really connected, it’s phenomenal, really.
It must be gratifying to translate those streaming numbers into actual faces and names at a show.
DAN: It’s phenomenal. Beth, you meet a lot of people.
BETH: It was quite overwhelming, the U.S. I don’t think we were expecting it, really but they’re very passionate out there, and they want to let you know how much everything means to them, which is amazing. It was quite intense, but it was great.
DAN: I think a lot of it, too, is because we’re quite mysterious, not by design, but just by the limit we put on social media. It’s kind of cool to let people in a little bit at the live shows. The people who want to come and say hello, I think that’s the right space for it.
You toured the U.S. this spring, what was that first trip like?
BETH: I’d been a couple of times before, New York and Florida, but nowhere near what we did this spring. We went across the whole of the U.S. this time, basically straight through. We saw so many places, and it was great.
DAN: It’s massive. You don’t understand the scope of it until you get out there. We live right at the bottom, the furthest southeast you can get in the country, and we drove up to Glasgow once, which was five, six hours. We basically drove the length of our own country. But that means nothing in America; that’s just one half of one leg. I’d only experienced America from going to Orlando as a kid. When I went back as an adult, I appreciated all the smaller details: how big the sidewalks are, how big the roads are, how far away everything is.
BETH: And that’s the massive difference about being in the U.K., you can’t really drive twenty minutes without hitting another town. You couldn’t drive for hours and hours and not see anyone or anything. It’s crazy. Some of the drives were lovely, though, especially when we got to the West Coast.
DAN: The mountain ranges are lovely. It was hell for other reasons, but lovely for the views. You don’t get to see a lot. Your basic needs get in the way of exploring, because you need to eat, you need to rest, you need to do the show, and by the time you’ve figured all that out, you’re away again. Also, I was pretty blown away by Chicago, it’s all raised up, right, it’s all on a platform. I can’t think of a lot of specifics, but when we were out there, we were constantly like, “Oh my god, that’s different.” It was never-ending, all these things about being in America.
Were the shows selling well out there?
DAN: Doing well, yeah, better than we expected. When we went out in spring, the majority of them sold out. Granted, we were doing quite small caps, maybe two hundred, but that’s phenomenal. We were testing the live market, we’d never been to America before. We’re coming back this autumn, and the booking agent’s super happy with how the spring tour performed, so the caps have got slightly bigger. We’re looking at more like three to six hundred. We sold out LA at the Academy, that went very quickly. Really pleased with what the sales have been like.
That confidence, knowing people are actually going to show up, must feel pretty good, crossing the globe to play for a crowd.
DAN: So privileged. Our version of success, what it means to us at the moment, is so not the traditional pathway that I thought it would be. I always thought you’d get talent-scouted live, very old-school. But our pathway’s been totally different. We worked on putting music out through streaming, and for such a long time it was just numbers on a screen. To see that translating into a real-world fan base and real-world crowds, we’re extremely lucky.
Is everything on the record played by actual humans, and is it easy to reproduce live?
DAN: Oh, yeah. It’s not easy to do really live, but it is played a hundred percent by humans. We’re a four-piece at our core. I play guitar, Beth sings, we have a bass player and a drummer. If you listen to our records, there’s a lot more than four things going on at one time. I play all the synths, everything that’s not drums and bass. There’s a lot of nuance, so we have a live member of the band, Max, who’s our multi-instrumentalist. He’ll play synths, keyboards, and guitars when we need him to. We also use a pedal with some backing-track elements to help round out the sound. I know some people have an old-school opinion that backing tracks aren’t really live, but I’ve seen some of the coolest bands use them, and it’s been an amazing experience. You can’t tour cost-effectively with hundreds of band members, especially at our level. We felt like we needed that fifth member to cover what we can’t do ourselves. Beyond that, until we can afford backing singers and percussionists, it’s easier to keep it on the backing track. But we’ve gotten really used to performing with it, and I think it really elevates our shows.
BETH: That’s the comment we get most from fans, that we sound maybe even better live than on the record. That just goes to show it works.
What does the rest of the year look like? Do you have firm plans, or is it wait-and-see?
DAN: It’s a bit of both. We’re very much in our infancy when it comes to the live market. We’re testing out live markets across the U.S. This time we’re hitting Canada, which we didn’t go to before, and a lot of the southern states we missed last time, like Texas. It sounds a bit silly, but it’s about pulling data and finding out where we’re working on the road. When we come back next year, we’ll be able to hit the areas we know will sell well, where the fans are. Maybe a bit of a lighter route, rather than playing every single town.
And the streaming data is specific enough that you can tell which cities are reacting to which songs?
DAN: Oh, yeah, kind of. That’s how we plot it, seeing the streaming data and where the fan base are. Our top five cities are all over the world. LA, New York, which of course we’d have hit anyway, but also London, Sydney, Mexico City. This U.S. run is a long one, and I think we’ll extrapolate a lot of good data, see where we’re working, where we’re not, plan another tour. It’s about streamlining and getting a bit of experience under our belt, since we’re in our infancy.
Beth, you said you have a child. Is that tough leaving to go on tour?
BETH: Yeah, I mean, he’s quite young, he’s going to be two in October. He’s coming out to New York. He came out to San Francisco in March, so I saw him for a day. I’ll see him for a couple of days in New York, but I’ve got such a good support system back home. It’ll be fine.
I always close interviews with the same question, and it has nothing to do with your music: what’s a song that instantly takes you back to a very specific place and time?
DAN: For me, there are so many, honestly. A lot of them are early-noughties indie, the formative years of my youth. There was “Banquet” by Bloc Party. Every time I hear that song, it takes me right back to being seventeen years old, when my mate had just passed his driving test, and we’d go driving, a full car of us, smoking cigarettes, the smell of the new car, the smell of the cigarettes, and we were playing “Banquet” as loud as the car could possibly go, all of us singing at the top of our lungs. I don’t know why, but I’ll always remember the senses around that.
BETH: Like Dan said, there are so many songs, I can’t pinpoint just one. But one that sticks out is when I was at uni. I remember getting really homesick, going through quite an anxious time, and there’s a singer-songwriter, Lucy Rose. I used to listen to the same song on repeat, “Shiver.” It kind of would always bring me down to, “Okay, it’s fine, breathe, you can get through it.”
DAN: Do you ever find yourself avoiding a song because it’s tied to a hard time? There’s one song that got me through some rough times, and I can’t listen to it anymore, because it takes me back there.
BETH: I can’t really listen to that Lucy Rose song anymore either, because it just takes me back. Even though it was getting me through it at the time, it makes me feel those feelings that were associated with it, that pit in your stomach. It’s weird.
DAN: You don’t want to remember that past version of yourself.
Just wanted to say before we wrap up, this is a very easy album for me to talk about, because I love every song. All killer, no filler.
DANIEL: Just the way we like it.
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Tokyo Team Room Tour Dates (2026)
Thu. Sep 24 – Vancouver BC – Hollywood Theatre
Sat. Sep 26 – Seattle WA – Neumos
Mon. Sep 28 – San Francisco CA – Bimbo’s 365 Club
Wed. Sep 30 – Los Angeles CA – Teragram Ballroom (SOLD OUT)
Thu. Oct. 1 – Los Angeles, CA – Teragram Ballroom (NEW DATE ADDED)
Fri. Oct 2 – San Diego CA – Quartyard
Sat. Oct 3 – Tucson AZ – Club Congress
Mon. Oct 5 – Austin TX – 29th St. Ballroom
Tue. Oct 6 – Houston TX – White Oak Music Hall
Wed. Oct 7 – Dallas TX – Club Dada (indoors)
Fri. Oct 9 – Atlanta GA – Terminal West
Sat. Oct 10 – Durham NC – Motorco Music Hall
Sun. Oct 11 – Washington DC – The Atlantis
Tue. Oct 13 – Brooklyn NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg
Wed. Oct 14 – New York NY – Bowery Ballroom
Thu. Oct 15 – Boston MA – The Sinclair
Fri. Oct 16 – Montreal QB – Bar le Ritz
Sat. Oct 17 – Toronto ON – Mod Club
Mon. Oct 19 – Chicago IL – Lincoln Hall
Sat. Oct. 31 – Amsterdam, NL – London Calling Festival
Sun. Nov. 1 – Hamburg, DE – Nochtwache
Mon. Nov. 2 – Berlin, DE – Mikropol
Wed. Nov. 4 – Cologne, DE – Yard Club
Thu. Nov. 5 – Paris, FR – Bellevilloise
Thu. Nov. 19 – Brighton, UK – Dust
Fri. Nov. 20 – Southampton, UK – The Joiners
Sat. Nov. 21 – Bristol, UK – Exchange
Sun. Nov. 22 – Manchester, UK – YES (Pink Room)
Tue. Nov. 24 – Glasgow, UK – Mono
Wed. Nov. 25 – Leeds, UK – Hyde Park Book Club
Thu. Nov. 26 – Nottingham, UK – Bodega
Wed. Dec. 2 – London, UK – The Garage
