In collaboration with Speedy Wunderground
Born and raised in Cheltenham, Jojo Orme (Heartworms) started playing music in her early teens, picking up a guitar during a period in which she was grounded for a year. “I had a very hard, very strict upbringing; I wasn’t allowed to be a normal kid. I ended up being grounded for a year because I had a boyfriend, and I taught myself guitar,” she recalls. “After that I wanted to pursue music.”
After a few years of working odd jobs, Orme enrolled in college to study music, but found that the environment there was stiflingly male. Although Orme had insecurity about calling it a solo project at the time, it was during university that Heartworms first began to form, Orme playing indie pop to small crowds around London. Eventually, the Heartworms’ ethereal sound began to mutate into something more resembling what it does today – a spiky confluence of industrial electronics, pop songwriting and post-punk aggression that’s darkly toned but compulsively listenable.
In Orme’s mind, Heartworms is a way for her to channel feelings of control, anger and pain into performance, one of the few acceptable outlets for the uglier feelings that exist within us all. On her debut album Glutton For Punishment (released via Speedy Wunderground in 2025), those feelings erupt in surprising ways. Despite the relative darkness of Glutton For Punishment, dance music influences sit at its core, from the minimalist experiments coming out of northern England in the 90s and early-2000s through to more modern influences like LCD Soundsystem.
The record garnered five-star reviews from the likes of NME and DIY, with Orme going on to support St. Vincent and The Kills on tour. After releasing the Poetry Edition of ‘Glutton’, Orme took a break from music, as the growing attention created a “lack of confidence” which meddled with her writing process. “I needed to get through whatever was stopping me, and I think that was realising that I was afraid of writing something that was gonna do well. Then I realised, why am I caring about that? That's not what I want.” With her creative priorities realigned, Orme returned back to her house. With the curtains drawn, it created a literal darkness that galvanised Orme to write six songs that day.
Brand-new track 'Guess I'm Stuck In The Dark', released October 2026 and produced by long-term co-conspirator Dan Carey, snakes between menacing electronics, sinister rhythms and culminates in a chanting, hypnotic refrain. With masterful poetic lyrics juxtaposing the propulsive instrumental, it’s a bouncier side to Heartworms that is the perfect invitation back into her dark, commanding world. Jojo says: “‘Guess I’m Stuck In The Dark’ is about how our minds begin to deceive us when we’re left in the dark, conjuring up fears that only appear in moments of insecurity. But also leaning into that, and trying to party alongside it.”
It's the first taste of her exciting new era, and there's much more to come...
