Who Are The Pretty Reckless, the Band Opening Both Foo Fighters India Shows

The official Foo Fighters India poster just dropped, but every eye went straight to the headliner. Look a little lower and one name sits on both nights, Bengaluru on 29 January and Mumbai on 31 January. The Pretty Reckless are the only support act playing both shows, which means whichever city you are in, they are part of your evening. So here is who they are, and why that is good news.

From child actor to rock frontwoman

The Pretty Reckless are a New York rock band built around Taylor Momsen. If the name rings a bell from somewhere other than a festival stage, that is because Momsen spent her childhood on screen. She was Cindy Lou Who in the 2000 film How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and later Jenny Humphrey on Gossip Girl. She walked away from acting as a teenager to chase the thing she actually wanted, which was a loud guitar and a band of her own.

She found it in 2009 alongside guitarist Ben Phillips, and the two have been the songwriting core ever since, with Mark Damon on bass and Jamie Perkins on drums. Their influences ran toward Soundgarden, Led Zeppelin, and the grimy end of classic rock, and you can hear all of it in the records.

The sound and the receipts

Across Light Me Up (2010), Going to Hell (2014), and Who You Selling For (2016), the band built a sound that is heavy, bluesy, and never shy of a hook. Singles like "Heaven Knows" and "Make Me Wanna Die" turned them into one of the most reliable hitmakers on modern rock radio.

The numbers back it up. The Pretty Reckless hold the record for the most number one singles on the US Mainstream Rock chart by any female-fronted band, a run that now sits at eight. For a band some people still file under "former child star side project" without ever pressing play, that is a serious answer.

The years that almost ended it

Here is the part that explains why their live show hits the way it does. In 2017 the band landed the tour of their lives, opening for Soundgarden. They were in Detroit on 17 May, played the show, and said goodbye to Chris Cornell in the parking lot that night. He died hours later. Cornell had been a friend and a hero to Momsen, and his death sent her into freefall.

A year on, the band lost producer Kato Khandwala in a motorcycle accident. He had shaped their first three records and felt like a fifth member, and his death broke something. Momsen has been open about what followed, a long stretch of depression and substance abuse, and a self-imposed disappearance from music and from the world.

What pulled her back was writing. The 2021 album Death by Rock and Roll came directly out of that grief. The title is a phrase Kato used to say, a battle cry about living on your own terms. The record carries Tom Morello on "And So It Went" and the surviving members of Soundgarden on "Only Love Can Save Me Now." It is the sound of someone choosing to keep going.

Where they are now

The band spent recent years on the road with AC/DC, opening stadiums across continents, with Momsen calling them maybe the greatest live act of all time. Now they have their own new chapter, a fifth album called Dear God out on 26 June 2026, led by the singles "For I Am Death" and "When I Wake Up."

That is the band landing in India this January. A road-hardened rock outfit with a frontwoman who has lived every word she screams, warming up two crowds before the Foo Fighters take the stage.

If you are going to either night, get there early. The opener is the part of the story you will want to have caught from the very start.