Kingdom of Birds (KOB) is a Toronto-based grunge punk trio that has already stood out for the urgency in their sound and their deliberate imperfection. The band formed when Asa Berezny arrived in Toronto as the new kid, Beatrice Richard carried herself like a born troublemaker, and Annabel Barbon-McGuire ruled the scene with the quiet authority of queer royalty.
Their forthcoming album, Vermin, is introduced with a single rooted in an oddly true story. The track took shape while Asa was living in Montreal, having dropped out of jazz school and left Toronto behind. Stranded in a brutal winter, broke and heartbroken, Asa found strange companionship in a neighbor he called Kenny, an older man who spent his days naked in bed, watching porn, and unknowingly haunting KOB’s creative process.
“Kenny was this odd, daily presence in my life,” Asa recalls. “I was alone, and so was he. He was strange and sad, and writing about him felt like a way of processing that isolation.”
Recorded at Albany in Toronto with Elliott Gallagher-Doucette and mastered by Kristian Montano, Vermin is expected out in February 2026.
ZR