'The dogs were getting upset': How LA band Muna survived their worst ever gig - Published Every band has to earn its stripes. Some have it harder than others. At AC/DC's first gig, the club owner cut the power because they were too noisy.

Sam Smith started at barn dances, singing on top of a haystack. At Robert Smith's first concert, he got so drunk that he sang David Bowie's Suffragette City while the rest of the band played Jimi Hendrix's Foxy Lady. But LA pop trio Muna can top them all.

At the start of their career, the band got a call from their record label. We know you've just flown overnight from London, they said, but you have to get to Las Vegas. Why?

Because they'd been booked to play Pet-A-Palooza, a dog adoption festival sponsored by the local radio station. If they turned up, the station would support their new single. "We were all sick, so it was doomed from the start," recalls guitarist Josette Maskin.

"It was an acoustic set, but we didn't have a sound guy, and the guitar started feeding back." The noise, according to singer Katie Gavin, was like an unholy screech. "The dogs were getting upset," says Maskin, wincing at the memory. "They just howled the whole time.

"We were mortified, but looking back, it is so funny. And I've gotten to share those experiences with some of my best friends, and that's what life is really about." Nowadays, that canine catastrophe is a dot in Muna's rear-view mirror. Over the past decade, they've become one of the most compelling live bands around – a little bit punk, a little bit electronic, a little bit 80s, eminently watchable and endlessly impressive.

Fans include Harry Styles and Taylor Swift, who handpicked the trio (completed by guitarist/producer Naomi McPherson) to support them on tour. They were won over by sing-along anthems like I Know A Place, a great big exuberant hug for the LGBTQ community; and the more introspective Stayaway, where Gavin locks herself in her bedroom to avoid anything - friends, music, drink - that could tempt her back into the arms of an ex. In 2020, all their momentum nearly came to a crashing halt when RCA Records dropped the band, citing pandemic-era cost-cutting.

"That's obviously one where we had to put our heads together and be like, 'OK, we want to continue doing this. Let's just make an album and we'll figure it out'," says McPherson. 'We need movement' That album, simply titled Muna, was eventually released by indie star Phoebe Bridgers, who swooped in to sign the band to her Saddest Factory label in 2021.

"Phoebe's manager had made it very clear that if we were ever single, she'd be interested in working with us," Gavin told the BBC at the time. Bridgers also provided guest vocals on Silk Chiffon, a freewheeling sapphic love song that became Muna's breakthrough single. It pegged the band, in its members' own words, as "the queer joy mini-skirt rollerblade, external" crew - but their music has always dug deeper than that.

I Know A Place, for example, was written as a response to the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, acknowledging the fragility of the communal LGBTQ spaces it celebrated. Their fourth album, Dancing On The Wall, is their most powerful yet.