Who are Angine de Poitrine? What we know about Khn and Klek
Khn de Poitrine and Klek de Poitrine perform as Angine de Poitrine in the masks and black-and-white costumes associated with the anonymous Saguenay duo.
Photo credit: LouisFVG
Angine de Poitrine are Khn de Poitrine and Klek de Poitrine, a two-person instrumental rock project from Saguenay, Quebec. Khn plays microtonal guitar and bass, building loops in real time, while Klek plays drums. They perform in black-and-white polka-dot costumes and masks with elongated noses, and the characters surrounding the music come with their own fictional alien mythology.
The musicians behind those characters remain anonymous by choice. Angine de Poitrine’s official website describes the band as an anonymous art project and says speculation about the members’ identities is unverified, is not endorsed by the group and may constitute an invasion of privacy. There is still plenty that Khn and Klek have said publicly about their history, how the project began and what they are doing onstage.
Khn and Klek met as teenagers in the Saguenay area
Khn and Klek have been playing music together for roughly two decades. In an interview with The Guardian, they said they met in the La Baie area when Khn was 13 and Klek was 14, after a mutual friend suggested they play together. Khn ended up at Klek’s mother’s house, where they began making music in the basement.
They continued playing together through different projects and styles. The Canadian Press reported that they had once been the rhythm section of a stoner-rock band, while the musicians have described years of experimenting with rock, hip-hop and other forms before Angine de Poitrine became their main project.
That history is useful context for a band that appeared to arrive almost overnight when a KEXP performance went viral in early 2026. Khn and Klek had already spent much of their lives playing together before millions of people encountered the polka-dot costumes.
Angine de Poitrine started as a disguise
The idea behind Angine de Poitrine can be traced to 2019. Khn told The Canadian Press that he and Klek were booked to play the same Saguenay venue twice in one week and worried that people they knew would not return for the second performance. They decided to appear in unusual costumes and present a different musical proposition, hoping to fool friends into thinking they were watching another act. They liked the joke enough to keep it.
The pandemic interrupted the project, and the pair spent part of that period working construction while venues were closed. They later returned to Angine de Poitrine with greater focus. The band’s current official biography says Khn and Klek have been presenting the repertoire associated with the project since 2023, while their interviews place the original disguise concept several years earlier. Their first album, Vol. I, arrived in 2024. Vol. II followed in 2026 and includes “Fabienk,” the song that later won the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize.
What do Khn and Klek play?
Khn’s instrument is central to the sound. He plays microtonal guitar and bass, including a custom double-neck instrument, and uses an electronic looping system to record parts during the performance. The band’s official description says he switches between guitar and bass lines while layering melodic patterns in real time.
Microtonal music uses pitches that fall between the notes found in the standard 12-note Western system. Khn has discussed an interest in musical traditions that use those intervals, along with the influence of rock groups that have experimented with microtonality.
Klek plays drums against those repeating and changing layers. The result can sound much larger than a two-person band because Khn is continually adding and removing parts while Klek changes the rhythmic structure around them. KEXP’s full performance credits Khn with microtonal guitars and Klek with drums.
Are Khn and Klek really brothers?
The band treats Khn and Klek as brothers within its fictional mythology. Its official material refers to the “noble brothers” Khn and Klek, while Klek told The Canadian Press that they are brothers “for the sake of the concept” and are not brothers in real life.
Their long friendship and musical partnership are well documented. They met as young teenagers, played together for years and eventually built Angine de Poitrine out of that shared history.
Why does Angine de Poitrine wear masks?
The costumes began with the 2019 attempt to disguise themselves for a second performance at the same venue. As the project developed, the masks, body paint and fictional extraterrestrial personas became part of the presentation.
The anonymity is also something the musicians have deliberately maintained. They have discussed fans trying to identify them and have said that knowing who is under the costumes removes part of the surprise. Their official website now makes the boundary explicit by asking people not to treat speculation about their private identities as verified information. Khn and Klek continue to give interviews and discuss their music, history and working methods while keeping their personal identities private.
What does Angine de Poitrine mean?
“Angine de poitrine” is the French term for angina pectoris, the chest pain associated with reduced blood flow to the heart. The group’s official mythology presents Khn and Klek as ancient extraterrestrial brothers. Interviews identify them as longtime friends from the Saguenay area who have played together since their teens, with Khn handling microtonal guitar and bass and Klek on drums.
How did Angine de Poitrine become famous?
The international breakthrough came after KEXP uploaded the duo’s performance recorded at Trans Musicales in Rennes, France. By early October, the full video had passed 19.3 million views on YouTube.
The attention carried into streaming, album sales and increasingly large shows. Both Vol. I and Vol. II reached the Billboard 200 in 2026, Angine de Poitrine drew an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 people at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, and the duo made its U.S. late-night television debut before winning the Polaris Album Prize for Vol. II and the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize for “Fabienk.”
Khn and Klek have provided a substantial public history of the project while keeping their private identities outside it. The documented story begins with two teenage friends in the Saguenay area and leads, after years of other bands and experiments, to an international audience in 2026.
