Manchester’s rising indie frontrunners Arkayla continue their rapid ascent with the release of their latest EP, Back to Belle Vue, a four-track project that turns family history, local identity and British nostalgia into something distinctly contemporary.
Arriving ahead of the band’s completely sold-out September UK headline tour, the EP follows an increasingly significant run for Arkayla. The group have already appeared at festivals including Latitude, Truck and Kendal Calling, with a Main Stage performance at Leeds Festival also landing around the project’s release. Their momentum has been matched by support from BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music, Radio X, Rolling Stone UK, Clash, Dork, Wonderland and Notion.
The new EP follows 2025’s Don’t Look For Answers and features previous singles ‘Run Kid’ and ‘Doba’ alongside ‘Vivian’ and ‘My Number’. Across the four tracks, Arkayla move between urgent indie rock, softer acoustic textures and the melodic sensibilities that have increasingly become central to their sound.
‘Run Kid’ opens the project with a restless, punk-driven energy, while ‘Vivian’ and ‘My Number’ take a more reflective direction. Percussion sits prominently throughout, contrasted by acoustic guitar and melodic arrangements that nod towards the indie soundscapes of the 1990s and early 2000s without feeling trapped in nostalgia. The EP closes with the upbeat ‘Doba’, inspired by pioneering Polish explorer Aleksander Doba.
It is ‘Vivian’, however, that reveals the deeply personal story at the heart of Back to Belle Vue.
The EP artwork features historic images of Manchester’s former Belle Vue Zoo taken by drummer Dylan’s great-grandfather, Matt Kelly, who served as the zoo’s Head Zookeeper between 1945 and 1975. ‘Vivian’ draws directly from an extraordinary moment in the family’s history.
In 1946, Kelly was bitten by a snake after transporting reptiles to the BBC for an animal programme. With no antidote available in Manchester, police were forced to travel to London Zoo to retrieve the treatment as the venom left him partially blind and paralysed.
The doctor needed to access the antidote, Dr Viv, was reportedly enjoying a day off at the cinema, forcing police to enter the screening and locate him before beginning a race to transport the medicine back to Manchester.
Kelly survived and was eventually able to meet his newborn daughter. In recognition of the doctor who helped save his life, the family named her Vivian.
“It’s a mad story, and a day that will forever be etched into my family’s history, as will my Great Grandad’s role at Belle Vue,” Dylan explains.
That connection gives the EP a sense of place that extends beyond its title. Belle Vue becomes more than a reference to Manchester’s past. Instead, Arkayla use it as a bridge between generations, pairing stories rooted in the city with a band increasingly looking towards a much bigger future.
Their live trajectory reflects that ambition. Arkayla recently completed their biggest headline tour to date, selling out eight cities and shifting close to 1,400 tickets across the run. They also performed to a packed tent of approximately 8,000 people at Neighbourhood Weekender.
The next step is substantially bigger. Their September 2026 UK headline tour has already sold out across 12 dates, with close to 5,000 tickets sold. Among them is a headline show at Manchester’s O2 Ritz, where the band have sold close to 1,500 tickets for a single night, roughly equivalent to the total audience of their previous headline run.
The band’s growing reach has extended beyond the traditional indie circuit too, with ‘Run Kid’ recently used as the theme song for a FIFA World Cup show featuring James Corden.
For a group whose music remains deeply connected to Manchester, Back to Belle Vue feels like both a celebration of where Arkayla come from and a marker of how quickly their world is expanding. With sold-out rooms getting larger, festival stages becoming more prominent and their songs travelling far beyond their hometown, Arkayla are building their next chapter without losing sight of the stories that shaped them.
