Photo courtesy of Throwing Up

There’s an art to making a two-minute song and the U.K.’s Throwing Up have it mastered in “Red Ribbon.” Burning through dark surf guitar riffs, thrashing hi-hats, and barely on-key harmonies in a little under two minutes, “Red Ribbon” hinges on spontaneity and its noisy but danceable melody is hard to forget. When guitarist Camille Benett and bassist Claire James Clare step up to the mic and hammer on “I know,” you get the sense that there’s a precocious wisdom behind their stress-penned lyrics.

The hard-charging pop trio is easy to connect to L.A.’s defunct punk outfit Mika Miko, for their shared riot grrl influences and preference for short and fast songs. They also share Mika Miko’s disdain of the label “girl group” — and not just because their drummer Ben Rayner is a dude. “There’s practically no examples of a bad girl group but they don’t get taken nearly as seriously,” Benett says. “With guitar music, a band with just boys isn’t considered a “boy band” – when do people ever say, ‘Do you know that boy band, Radiohead?’ “We’re clearly in the same league as Radiohead, btw.”

“Red Ribbon” is the B-Side to the band’s new single, “Big Love.”