Biography
The Beths formed in Auckland in 2014, when Elizabeth Stokes, Jonathan Pearce, Ben Sinclair, and Ivan Luketina-Johnston — all alumni of the University of Auckland jazz programme who had previously played together in Sal Valentine & The Babyshakes — decided to start a guitar band. Trading jazz for the indie rock and power pop of their youth, the group built their sound around Stokes’ candid, self-examining lyrics, four-part harmonies, and Pearce’s hook-dense guitar work. As Stokes put it: “I loved learning about music, but I missed lyrics… I was missing songs, and being able to express myself that way.”
The debut EP Warm Blood arrived in March 2016 on Carpark Records, establishing the band’s template of sweetly sung melodies wrapped around anxious, self-deprecating lyrics. After Luketina-Johnston departed to focus on Sal Valentine & The Babyshakes, the band cycled through touring drummers before Tristan Deck became a full member in 2019. The debut album Future Me Hates Me followed in August 2018 and earned the band five Vodafone New Zealand Music Award nominations, including wins for Best Group and Best Alternative Artist. The band spent the next eighteen months playing roughly 250 shows across Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia, supporting Pixies, The Breeders, Weezer, and Death Cab for Cutie.
A wonderful little record that never lets up, piling on unassumingly buzzy fun until you start realizing you might be in the presence of a true power-pop monument.
Jon Dolan, Rolling Stone
The second album Jump Rope Gazers, recorded in lockdown and released in July 2020, reached number two on the New Zealand charts and won Album of the Year, Best Group, and Best Alternative Artist at the 2020 Aotearoa Music Awards. The third album Expert In A Dying Field (September 2022, Carpark Records) debuted at number one in New Zealand. The title track won the 2023 APRA Silver Scroll — New Zealand’s most prestigious songwriting award — and the track ‘Watching The Credits’ appeared on Barack Obama’s official Summer 2023 playlist. The band performed at Coachella in 2024.
The title track is one of the absolute best singles of 2022, a virtuoso showing of both musical and emotional intelligence… The Beths continue to make the difficult task of bringing great pop songs to life sound remarkably easy.
Chris DeVille, Stereogum
The fourth album Straight Line Was A Lie, released in August 2025 on ANTI- Records, marked a label move and a shift toward a cleaner, new-wave-influenced pop-rock sound. Produced by Pearce at his Karangahape Road studio, the album takes its theme from what Stokes called “existential vertigo” — the idea that linear progression is an illusion and that meaning lies in maintenance rather than milestones.
Members
- Tristan Deck (Instruments, The Beths)
- Ivan Luketina-Johnston (Instruments (former), The Beths)
- Jonathan Pearce (Instruments, The Beths, Artisan Guns)
- Benjamin Sinclair (Instruments, The Beths)
- Elizabeth Stokes (Instruments, The Beths, Dictaphone Blues)
Discography
- Warm Blood [EP] (2016, Carpark Records, CAK127)
- Future Me Hates Me [LP] (2018, Carpark Records, CAK128)
- Jump Rope Gazers [LP] (2020, Carpark Records, CAK143)
- Auckland, New Zealand, 2020 [Live] (2021, Carpark Records, CAK157)
- Expert In A Dying Field [LP] (2022, Carpark Records, CAK164)
- Straight Line Was A Lie [LP] (2025, ANTI- Records, 88131-1)