Games We Play

About Games We Play

Games We Play started in a London flat share in 2014 when producer Alex Chen and vocalist Maya Khatri realized their bedroom demos sounded better than anything either of them had made before. Chen had been doing remixes for indie bands nobody remembers, Khatri was singing in a covers band at weddings. They put a track called "Electric" on SoundCloud mostly to see what would happen.

What happened was that Huw Stephens played it on Radio 1 at 2am, and suddenly they had labels calling. They signed with Lucky Number in 2015 and spent the next year figuring out how to turn their laptop arrangements into something that worked live. The solution involved hiring a drummer and just accepting that some of the more intricate production bits wouldn't translate. Their self-titled debut came out in early 2016, and the title track became one of those songs that soundtracks a very specific moment in British indie. Familiar but not derivative, electronic but not cold.

The album did well enough that they could quit their jobs, which sounds more glamorous than it was. They've talked in interviews about spending 2016 and 2017 in various practice spaces and studios, trying to write a second album that didn't just repeat the first one. "Waiting" came out as a single in late 2017 and showed where they were heading: a bit darker, more interested in negative space, Khatri's vocals pushed further up in the mix.

Their second album, "Lost in Translation," landed in 2018 and split people. Some thought they'd figured out how to make sad electronic pop that didn't feel manipulative. Others missed the brighter energy of the debut. "Neon Nights" became their biggest song regardless, the kind of track that gets added to every melancholic playlist on Spotify. It's currently sitting at something like 40 million streams, which is both their blessing and curse since it's not particularly representative of where they've gone since.

The pandemic did what it did to everyone, but they used the time to get weirder. Their third album, "Severance," came out in 2022 with less obvious singles and more ambient interludes. It's the kind of record that makes sense if you've been following along but might confuse anyone who only knows "Neon Nights." They toured it extensively through 2023, playing a mix of festivals and mid-sized venues, generally to people who very much wanted to be there.

These days they're based between London and Berlin, working on album four. Chen's been doing more production for other artists. Khatri scored a short film. They're in that interesting position of being successful enough to keep going but not so huge that expectations become paralyzing. The new stuff they've teased suggests they're leaning further into experimental territory, which probably means the next record won't be the one that breaks them wide open. But it might be their best.

Shows are quiet and attentive. The band doesn't chase energy so much as create moments where the room goes still. Crowds lean in rather than jump around. Their restraint is the whole point.

Known for Games We Play, Waiting, Electric, Neon Nights, Lost in Translation

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