Meet Towa Bird, The Wildly Talented Guitarist Taking TikTok By Storm

It’s a hard time to be a musician. The international touring industry has been decimated; album releases are being delayed all over the place; and artists are more vulnerable than ever before.

These are trying times, and they call for novel solutions. Enter Towa Bird from stage right, the new hero of a wave of musicians making it big on TikTok.

Towa Bird’s been on the scene for a while now, both as a guitarist in the electro-pop-rock group Cassyette, and as an adept and talented guitarist in her own right. But TikTok has blown her right up, giving her an international audience, and a way to connect with fans in the middle of a disrupted time for the entire industry.

Bird’s videos are simple. Standing in front of the camera, armed with her trusty axe and a range of stylish outfits, she plays complicated, beautiful riffs from some of the most adored songs in history.

Take for instance this clip, in which she blasts through hooks from the Arctic Monkeys, Pixies and more:

Or this one, probably her most popular video, in which she jams along to ‘The Less I Know The Better’ by Australia’s own Tame Impala:

It’s not very hard to see why Towa Bird has become one of the most adored artists on the platform. She’s a talented musician, which an unshowy, unpretentious style, and great taste. But there’s also something else going on — a grace and finesse to her performance style that we usually refer to as “star power”.

There’s a reason, after all, that her content has prompted a wave of videos of adoring fans simply… staring at her.

Indeed, Bird’s become the first true rockstar of TikTok, a maverick with a following to rival that of any indie band you could name on the planet.

oh no pic.twitter.com/spce0HNj6e

— aimee (@aimeeclarke) April 26, 2020

Better yet, Bird is using this newfound fanbase to try and find some substitute for the cashflow that dried up following the outbreak of the coronavirus.

In a recent video, Bird explains that she and her band had a “bunch of festivals and shows lined up” that collapsed in the wake of social isolation regulations.

Following a nightmare in which she was forced to once more work in the service industry, Bird decided that she would utilise the attention of her fanbase, and is now offering donations for guitar tabs, song requests and more.

The “pay what you can” system is designed to be affordable for the musician’s fans, while also allowing her a way to keep afloat in these troubled times.

If you’re interested, you can hit Bird’s Paypal here, and get supporting the future of this strange new industry.