Who Are Angine de Poitrine? The Masked Duo Behind the Noses—and the Band They Were Before

Few bands have appeared as suddenly, or as mysteriously, as Angine de Poitrine.

Covered head to toe in black-and-white polka dots and wearing oversized papier-mâché masks with impossibly long noses, the Quebec duo seem less like musicians than characters who wandered out of an absurdist dream. The costumes get the clicks. The musicianship is what keeps people watching—and, increasingly, what sends them digging through the internet for the two men underneath.

After a KEXP session introduced millions of listeners to their blend of math rock, progressive composition, and microtonal experimentation, one question spread faster than the music itself: who are the people behind the masks?

Here’s the short answer most fans are chasing: before Angine de Poitrine, the same two musicians played unmasked in a Saguenay progressive-rock band called La Poësse—and that footage is still online. This is the story of both projects, and why the earlier one makes the masked one even more impressive.

Angine de Poitrine in May 2026 at The Great Escape by Paul Hudson

A Joke That Became a Global Phenomenon

The origin story is almost as strange as the band. The project was born in Saguenay, Quebec, in 2019, when two longtime collaborators found themselves booked to play the same local venue twice in a short stretch. Worried the same faces wouldn’t draw a crowd twice, they built oversized masks, adopted pseudonyms, and walked on stage as a completely different band.

The one-off disguise stuck—because it gave them something they hadn’t had before. Behind the masks, nobody could fixate on personalities, fashion, or celebrity. Everything collapsed onto the music and the surreal theatrical world they built around it.

Today they perform as Khn de Poitrine, who handles guitar and a custom double-necked instrument built to play microtones, and Klek de Poitrine, the drummer whose shifting rhythms anchor the band’s unmistakable sound. They describe themselves, with a straight face, as a “Mantra-Rock Dada Pythago-Cubist Orchestra”—a label almost as hard to pin down as the music.

La Poësse: The Band They Were Before

Both musicians grew up in the Saguenay region and have played together since they were teenagers. Over roughly two decades they built their technical vocabulary through a string of local projects—the most important of which, for anyone trying to trace their history, is La Poësse.

La Poësse is an instrumental progressive-rock outfit with a completely different visual identity: no alien noses, no polka dots, just two musicians locked into intricate compositions, heavy baritone-guitar riffs, and knotted rhythmic structures. It’s the same guitar-and-drums duo, the same experimental instincts, the same telepathic interplay—only without the costumes.

That’s what makes the earlier band worth knowing about. The precision and communication people marvel at in the KEXP clip weren’t invented for the masked project. They were already fully formed years earlier, under a different name.

The Video Everyone Is Searching For

When Angine de Poitrine went viral, listeners went hunting for photos and footage of the men underneath—and the trail leads straight to La Poësse.

The clip circulating across Reddit, YouTube, and Instagram is exactly what fans are looking for: the same duo, faces uncovered, playing raw instrumental math rock. You can watch Khn drive the music on baritone guitar—the direct ancestor of the double-necked microtonal instrument he uses today—while Klek navigates the same restless, shifting time signatures without ever losing the groove. There are no masks, no bits, no theatrical framing. It’s just the playing.

Seeing it side by side with the masked project is the whole payoff. The compositional habits are identical: crushing riffs built on mathematically precise rhythms, sudden drops into quieter passages, improvisations that resolve into unexpected melody. Angine de Poitrine didn’t reinvent these two musicians. It gave a fully developed partnership a striking new costume.

A Sound That Defies Classification

Conventional genre labels fall apart fast here. Progressive rock, math rock, jazz fusion, microtonal composition, folk, and outright Dada all surface across their recordings—but the duo never blends them into a smooth hybrid. They cut between them, building music that feels meticulously calculated and completely unpredictable at once.

One moment it’s crushing, rhythmically exact riffing; the next, delicate acoustic passages or seeming chaos that resolves into melody. Every piece plays like a puzzle whose picture only comes together after a few listens. That refusal to sit inside a single category isn’t an accident—it’s the point. They treat composition as exploration rather than repetition.

The Influence of Dada and Absurdism

The visual identity isn’t a marketing gimmick bolted onto the songs. The masks, exaggerated costumes, and surreal stage presence draw directly on Dada, the early-twentieth-century movement that answered an irrational world with deliberate absurdity. Humor, nonsense, and visual contradiction become tools rather than distractions.

Even that self-applied “Mantra-Rock Dada Pythago-Cubist Orchestra” tag is part of the joke—a string of words so excessive it parodies the urge to categorize music at all. But the comedy sits on top of serious discipline. The apparent chaos only works because the technique underneath it is airtight.

The KEXP Performance That Changed Everything

Angine de Poitrine already had a devoted Quebec following, but their international breakout came through KEXP, one of the most respected platforms in independent music. Millions met the band there for the first time.

The reaction was immediate: response videos, forum threads, and working musicians breaking down the performance frame by frame. Guitarists studied Khn’s microtonal techniques; drummers marveled at Klek holding groove through constantly changing meter. Even listeners with no prior taste for progressive or experimental music got pulled in—drawn by the spectacle, kept by the emotional intensity and sheer command.

More Than a Gimmick

Plenty of artists have hidden behind masks and fictional identities. Very few pair the costume with playing that can stop experienced musicians in their tracks. That combination is why Angine de Poitrine spread the way it did: the masks earn the click, the musicianship earns the stay, and the La Poësse backstory gives fans a second layer to dig into once they’re hooked.

There’s a neat irony in all of it. The masks were built to pull attention away from the individuals and onto the music—yet the harder the band hides, the more determined people are to find the faces. And when they do, the discovery doesn’t puncture the mystery. It confirms that the disguises were never covering for a lack of substance. They were covering two musicians who had already spent decades earning the right to wear them.