Alex Connaughton spent over a decade as the pedal steel guitarist for Austrian indie band Good Wilson. In 2024, he moved to Berlin, started repairing old radios, and launched Alex Knot.
When Alex Knot plays live, two things fill the stage: a nylon-string banjo his father built from scratch, and a vintage radio he personally repaired before the show. The static, warmth, and interference from each restored set are not background texture. They are the sound. When the balance between the two locks in, Knot considers the work finished. As he puts it: “When the song resonates with the right interference, the repairing is done.”
His debut EP, Out of the Factory, is due in 2026 on Cheap Wine Records. His single “Loser” landed its first major press coverage in December 2025, when Americana UK premiered the music video. For a solo project that only started two years ago, the foundation underneath it goes back considerably further.
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From Northampton to Vienna to Berlin
Alex Knot is the solo project of British musician Alex Connaughton, born in Northampton, UK. He spent several years based in Graz and Vienna, Austria, as the pedal steel and acoustic guitarist for Good Wilson, a Vienna and Styria-based indie band that built a real following across Europe. When the opportunity came to try something different, he moved to Berlin in 2024 with a clear intent: “Meet new people and try new things.”
The solo project started there, built around two instruments and a philosophy that runs through every part of the work.
A Banjo His Father Built, Radios He Fixed Himself
The banjo at the centre of Alex Knot’s music was handmade by his father using nylon strings. That material choice separates it from anything in bluegrass or standard old-time playing. Nylon produces a quieter, more fragile sound, and that quality shapes the entire atmosphere of his songs. As Connaughton describes it: “When the soft melodies harmonize our background noise, the song writing begins.”
For live shows, he sources broken vintage radios and restores them specifically to use on stage alongside the banjo. Both instruments share the same internal logic: something worn down, repaired, and given a second life.
The concept of repair is the through-line across the whole Alex Knot project. Broken objects. Personal mistakes. The kind of exhaustion that builds up when you pay too much attention to the wrong things. His website tagline reads: “a hand-made banjo, a hand-repaired radio, looking for softness in the noise.”
Good Wilson: The Band That Built the Reputation
Before launching as a solo artist, Connaughton’s career was anchored in Good Wilson for years. The band, led by singer-songwriter Günther Paulitsch alongside Julian Pieber, Mario Fartacek, and Yannic Steuerer, became one of the more recognised Austrian indie acts on the international circuit.
What that period produced:
- “Divine”, the band’s standout single, reached approximately 2.5 million Spotify streams
- Austria’s public radio station Fm4 named them Soundpark Act of the Month in 2019
- Festival appearances at Reeperbahn Festival (Hamburg, 2022), Eurosonic/ESNS (Groningen, 2023), and The Great Escape (Brighton, 2023)
- Selected by Austrian Music Export for their Focus Acts international touring program
- Nominated for the XA Award at Waves Vienna Festival
Connaughton is still a member of the band. His Instagram bio reads: “Pedal steel and guitar for @goodwilsonmusic. Banjo and singing for me.” Good Wilson’s most recent singles date to 2023.
“Loser,” a Swedish Quarry, and the Debut EP
In December 2025, Americana UK, one of the UK’s most established folk and roots publications, premiered the music video for “Loser,” the most recent Alex Knot single.
The track layers a broken electronic drum machine against old-time banjo picking. The arrangement is stripped deliberately bare. Lyrically, the song traces the aftermath of a significant personal mistake made after the Berlin move, the anxiety of carrying embarrassment, and the fragile clarity that follows. Connaughton’s own note on the experience:
“Anxiety tip: Next time you’re losing sleep over an embarrassing moment you had years ago, just try to remember other people’s embarrassing moments. You can’t, can you? That’s because you’re the only embarrassing person.”
Swedish filmmaker Joel Engberg shot the video in a deserted quarry in rural Sweden. A drone moves through trees and cliff edges while an emergency flare burns against darkness, its red light appearing and disappearing, its smoke obscuring what’s behind it. Americana UK writer Andrew Frolish described the result as carrying “a real sense of vulnerability.”
Out of the Factory, the debut EP, was recorded across winter 2024 into 2025. Connaughton describes it as “an escape from exhaustion, empty entertainment, and error” — the repair job after a mistake, the process of finding footing again. It is due this year on Cheap Wine Records, a DIY folk label based in Lisbon.
Eleven Years of Session Work Across Europe
The solo debut is new. The playing career is not. Connaughton has worked as a session and live pedal steel guitarist since at least 2014, across a wide range of alternative and folk projects:
| Artist | Years |
|---|---|
| Empty Lot | 2014 to 2016 |
| Lili | 2017 to 2018 |
| Crush | 2017 |
| Tiger Family | 2017 to 2022, 2025 |
| Dust Union | 2023 to 2024 |
| Flavie Mialon | 2024, 2025 |
| Pina Pilau | 2024, 2025 |
| Meagre Martin | 2025 |
| Claire My Flair | 2025 |
| Anirudh Chohan | 2025 |
Pedal steel is among the most technically demanding instruments in folk and Americana. Eleven years of active session work across Europe gives the Alex Knot project a depth of musicianship that most debut solo releases simply do not have behind them.
Out of the Factory is due in 2026 on Cheap Wine Records. “Loser” is available now. After more than a decade of playing inside other people’s projects, Alex Connaughton is finally making something where the banjo, the radio, and the repair work are entirely his own.
