Haute & Freddy: The LA Duo's "80s Alien" Origin Story
Haute & Freddy are on NME's July 2026 cover. The Los Angeles duo — singer Michelle "Haute" Buzz and drummer/percussionist Lance "Freddy" Shipp — build their sound around 80s synth-pop, and by the time the cover story ran, their debut album Big Disgrace (released earlier this year) had pushed them past a million monthly Spotify listeners.
Origin story: from hired-gun songwriters to "Royal Court"
Buzz is from Houston, Texas; Shipp grew up in Detroit, Michigan. Both moved to LA separately to work as professional songwriters. Buzz has a co-writing credit on Katy Perry's "Never Really Over" and Kylie Minogue's "Magic"; Shipp has writing credits with Calvin Harris, Rauw Alejandro, and Hayley Kiyoko.
Both had hit walls in the mainstream songwriting world before teaming up. Buzz says she'd wanted to make 80s-style music for years but kept getting turned down by A&Rs: "They'd say no artist would record this stuff — and eventually even producers in the scene started repeating that line." During the pandemic, the two finally joined forces, building a fictional world around the idea of "runaway carnies," and deliberately mispronouncing "Haute" (closer to "hot" than the French haute couture) to declare that fun comes before elegance.
The two named their fanbase the "Royal Court," echoing this tongue-in-cheek, faux-royal backstory. A widely quoted comment from the band's YouTube comments section reads: "It's like Kate Bush and Erasure had a baby, then sent it to performing arts school."
Influences and the Lady Gaga effect
Their shared list of 80s touchstones includes New Order, Eurythmics, Phil Collins, Tears For Fears, and Kate Bush. Shipp is especially fascinated by production details, citing in interviews the studio story of Phil Collins accidentally inventing gated reverb as a kind of origin myth: "That sound defined the entire decade — I just love that kind of magical story." Buzz says: "My whole life has been like 80s Kate Bush. Without Kate, there's no Haute."
This past March, Lady Gaga shared "Shy Girl" on TikTok, posting that she'd been listening to Big Disgrace on her birthday. Buzz says she wrote down her 2026 goals earlier in the year: "Get Lady Gaga to follow us" and "break a million monthly Spotify listeners" — both of which have now come true. "Now we have to dream up new ones."
- NME cover date: July 6, 2026
- Debut album: Big Disgrace (released 2026)
- Top streaming single: "Shy Girl"
- NME cover photography: Kristen Jan Wong
- Full interview: NME The Cover