Quebec’s masked band Angine de Poitrine is blowing up. Meet the men behind the noses

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This article was published 13/03/2026 (216 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Quebec’s newest breakout band wears paper-mâché masks with giant phallic noses and polka-dot-speckled costumes covering their entire bodies. Their music sounds like a freewheeling jam session that wandered out of a dream and crashed into a carnival ride.

Who they are is a mystery.

Naturally, the internet can’t look away.

Meet Angine de Poitrine, a duo from Saguenay, Que., whose performances went viral after Seattle’s KEXP shared a clip of their meandering math-rock set, full of angular riffs and odd time signatures, in early February. Their show at the Trans Musicales festival in Rennes, France, has racked up more than 2.8 million views, sparking bewildered tweets, reaction videos and fan theories about who — or what — might be behind the masks.

Known simply as Klek and Khn de Poitrine, the self-described “space-time voyagers” prefer to remain anonymous. When interviewed on camera, they must wear their whimsical costumes and “talk non-human” — via alien grunts and squeals — their publicist says.

In phone interviews, they use their real voices.

“I won’t say we’re the newest and freshest thing out there, but maybe there is something different about us from the trend right now,” says Klek, who plays drums.

“There’s no language, there’s no political meaning. It’s just two freaking things doing music. And that’s pretty much what turns me on. That’s what we want to do. We want to keep it that way.”

But maintaining that mystery has become harder as their audience rapidly grows.

“We’re both trying to get our head out of the water right now,” laughs Klek.

The sudden attention has forced the duo to pull back online as their social media accounts are inundated with messages.

“There’s a bit of a learning curve on how to manage social media when your band is flooding the internet,” says Khn, who plays a double-necked guitar and performs barefoot, his hands and feet painted white with black dots.

The online frenzy has also turned some fans into amateur detectives.

“People are really working hard to find out who we are,” says Klek, adding that some have been successful.

“It’s giving a vibe of voyeurism that is kind of weird for us. Like, people call us on our personal telephones to talk with us like we’re big friends. It’s not that we don’t like people. We, in fact, really love each and every one of the people.”

Klek and Khn are brothers “for the sake of the concept,” though not in real life. Still, they’ve been playing music together since they were 13, bouncing through several projects — including as “the rhythm section of a stoner rock band.”

“I may have spent more time with Khn than my sister,” laughs Klek.

Angine de Poitrine began as a gag in 2019, when the pair were booked to play the same Saguenay venue twice in one week and worried nobody would attend the second time. Their solution: show up in wacky getups.

“It was a bit of an Andy Kaufman-esque joke to play on people we knew personally — to throw a new musical proposition out there and try to fool them into thinking it’s not us,” recalls Khn.

“We found it quite funny, so we just kept it going on.”

After a pandemic-era lull spent working construction as music venues shuttered, the duo returned to the project “pedal to the metal.” Their debut album, “Vol. 1,” arrived in 2024, and “Vol. 2” in April.

Angine de Poitrine has since enjoyed a surge of local momentum, turning heads at festivals including Pop Montreal, being named 2025’s artist of the year at the Gala alternatif de la musique indépendante du Québec, and being shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize.

The duo have been selling out shows across Europe and North America since becoming viral sensations, and on June 27 attracted a record 70,000 people to a free outdoor show at the Montréal International Jazz Festival.

Local music fans will get their chance to see what the hype is all about — and if it’s warranted— when Angine de Poitrine play an
anticipated set Friday at 11 p.m. at the Big Blue at Night stage at the Winnipeg Folk Festival.

The band’s name — which translates to angina pectoris, a medical term for chest pain — reflects their sound: a heady, throbbing rush that rattles the heart, thrilling and alarming at once.

Khn plays a custom double-necked guitar-bass built to perform microtones — the notes between notes in standard western scales.

They’ve long been fascinated by Turkish, Japanese and Middle Eastern music for their use of microtonal intervals, and were further inspired by prog band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s 2017 album “Flying Microtonal Banana,” which explored the sound in a rock context.

“What better way to give yourself a challenge?” Khn posits.

“Like, ‘Oh, I’m having a lot of fun with 12 notes. Why don’t you work with 24 now and see where it can go?’”

He adds their goal is to experiment with the musical language through a “more modal, modern, jazz-rock approach.”

On songs like “Sarniezz,” off “Vol. 2,” Khn plays a groovy bass line and layers dissonant, serpentine guitar riffs over it with a loop pedal until the song explodes into a frenetically paced, delirious swirl.

Though they may look like an overnight success, the pair says they spent two decades cycling through styles — from rock to hip-hop and beyond — before stumbling onto the peculiar chemistry of Angine de Poitrine.

“When you’ve been doing this for 20 years and trying a lot of different things,” Klek says, “at some point you’re bound to put something out there that’s going to speak to a larger audience.”

The masks might help, too.

“Sometimes I joke around and say we’re good clickbait,” Khn laughs.

“But if once people have clicked, they’re satisfied with the thing musically speaking — well, good for us and good for them.”