Loud, Soft, and Full of teeth.

You never forget the first time you hear a band like Molly Ringworm.

Not just because of the sound - though, yeah, that’s part of it. It’s loud and soft at the same time, like bubblegum stuck to a boot or yelling into your pillow and hearing it harmonize back.

To me. it feels like someone took all my high school journals, turned them into songs, and made the crying danceable.

But what hits harder is the feeling - that moment you realize someone else lived the thing you thought was unspeakable.

That’s where Molly Ringworm lives.

Somewhere between secret and scream.

Maybe even somewhere between a Lisa Frank sticker and a dirty guitar pedal.

I think of it as a juxtaposition. There’s something kind of perfect about the name now. It’s sweet and nasty. It doesn’t pretend.

The project started out solo - one person strumming alone, whispering into a mic, still unsure if the songs even deserved to be heard.

It was nerve-wracking to share what felt like diary entries. I was muttering into the mic half the time - maybe out of nerves, maybe because I wasn’t confident in my playing or writing yet.

Now, It’s a full band!

Handing my songs to Johnny, Andrew, and Mike is done with the utmost trust and respect. I admire and love them so much. I’m an open book.

And that openness is contagious. It’s what makes a Molly Ringworm show feel less like a performance and more like a collective experience. You don’t watch passively. You participate - even if it’s just by feeling something you didn’t know you needed to.

Because some bands you listen to.

But some bands remind you who you were before you got scared to feel that loud.

It Used to be a Secret. Now It’s a Spell.

At the start, Molly Ringworm wasn’t a band. It was a notebook full of vulnerable little worlds built out of reverb and whispering.

That vulnerability shows up in the early recordings - in the muttered vocals, the bedroom demos, the hesitation baked into every track. Not because the songs weren’t good, but because sharing them felt like handing your diary to a stranger and asking them to scream the chorus.

Lots of muttering into microphones, which might also have been the result of a lack of confidence in my playing and writing abilities.

But things shifted when Johnny, Andrew, and Mike entered the picture. It stopped feeling like a secret and started feeling like a spell: something shared, but still sacred.

With a full lineup came a sonic shift. The songs stopped being just stories, they became structures. Arrangements. Atmospheres. Something to scream along to.

The guys bring a power to the songs I write strumming alone. I’m not sure it would be there without them.

There’s still vulnerability. Still softness.

But it’s louder now. Stronger.

Less about survival, more about showing up, fully.

Like a Soundtrack for Your Breakdown, But Make It Cute.

Molly Ringworm doesn’t sound like nostalgia.

It sounds like memory, the kind that’s half-fake and still hurts.

90s indie rock is so foundational. Writing the new songs, I had in the back of my mind iconic bands featured in 90s/Y2K high school movies — Letters to Cleo in 10 Things I Hate About You, the eponymous Josie & the Pussycats, and Lash from Freaky Friday.

You hear a Molly Ringworm song and suddenly you’re 16 again, driving nowhere, trying not to cry in front of the friend who just said something weirdly mean.

The process behind that feeling? Lo-fi in spirit, even if the arrangements are tight.

Every song is different, but I usually start with a chord progression. Then melody, then lyrics — which are often stream-of-consciousness. Just whatever comes to my head.

Sometimes that honesty is accidental. The kind of rawness that shows up before you can sanitize it.

Sometimes it’s exaggerated - playing pretend until the feeling makes sense.

Not thinking too much about what you’re saying or how you’re saying it…turns out to feel the best.

That balance between chaos and clarity is what makes the sound feel lived-in.

We like noisy rock moments a la Sonic Youth and Pixies, but they’re placed more tidily than messily.

And underneath all the noise, there’s memory.

One of which kept resurfacing while writing: a friend’s slumber party.

She wasn’t even there - she was off at another sleepover - when someone hit record.

They were all talking about how much of a bossy bitch I was. I really internalized that. Crushed that part of myself for years.

The shame stuck, but so did the spark.

The part of her that wanted to lead, to direct, to own the space - it never fully died.

I was definitely a bossy little girl and still am at heart. There’s merit in finding a balance between control freak and carefree. That’s what the new songs explore.

Even the mess has structure.

Even the breakdowns have a beat.

If the songs are going to scream, they’re gonna do it in harmony.

Let it go, but make it loud.

Molly Ringworm’s new album isn’t about reinvention.

It’s about reclamation.

It’s about walking back into the parts of yourself you tried to edit out and turning the volume all the way up.

We just wrapped recording 10 new songs and we’re entering the mixing/mastering phase now. Expect a single and video this summer.

This time, it wasn’t recorded in isolation.

No more building things alone in a bedroom, wondering if they’d land.

This one was born in a room full of noise, trust, and people who knew how to hold space.

If the last record felt like trying to whisper a feeling to yourself before it disappeared, this one throws open the windows and screams it across the street.

Because the theme that kept coming back, over and over?

Control, and my desire to have it over every aspect of my life. And some other people’s lives, too.

It’s a theme, yes.

But it’s also a wound. A joke. A coping mechanism.

And the album doesn’t try to fix it, it lets it speak.

Where Seems was shaped in pandemic isolation - all distant tracking and emotional guesswork - this record was tracked live.

There’s so much more energy that comes through. We learned to embrace the mess-ups. That’s what makes recorded music sound the most human.

The full body of Molly Ringworm. Each member pressing their fingerprints into the architecture of the sound.

When we’re arranging, it’s with the thought of playing the song live first. It’s become pretty meticulous.”

Something strong enough to fall apart onstage and still make sense.

Because that’s what the album does: It holds the chaos.

It lets you scream through the feeling and still come out clearer.

And if the previous releases felt like diary entries written in pencil? These feel like manifestos written in lipstick on a bathroom mirror.

After the worst and best night of your life.

Sometimes letting go is the only way to gain control.

SIDE NOTE: That line needs to be tattooed on my body IMMEDIATELY.

That’s what I want people to feel when they hear it. That line. That shift.

It’s not about cleaning up the mess.

It’s about finding the power inside it and turning it all the way up.

Not just a band - A bloodline.

There’s this myth that once you’ve made it onto the bill, you’ve made it.

But for Molly Ringworm’s frontwoman, the real work wasn’t getting booked - it was figuring out why she wanted to be there in the first place.

I used to be obsessed with the identity politics of it all. Not wanting to be tokenized while at the same time pushing to be that representation of girl-in-rock-band. Feeling slighted when I wasn’t asked to be on a bill with certain male-led local bands.

It’s the catch-22 of being a woman in a boy band scene: You’re either a prop, or you’re pissed about being excluded.

Either way, it’s exhausting.

But then I was like, why am I fighting to be in this lineup with these dudes whose music I don’t even like?

Now? She’s curating. She’s choosing. She’s saying no when it doesn’t feel right and saying hell yes when it does.

I’ve gotten picky about playing shows with bands I love. I’m lucky that there are lots of women and queer people we’ve met over the years that are in local scenes and scenes adjacent.

And through all of it - the scene-shifting, the self-questioning, the slow reclaiming - one thing hasn’t changed: her band has her back.

The trust is real, and it goes way back.

Johnny’s not just a bandmate - he’s her cousin. The closest thing she’s got to a brother.

They grew up together. And that comfort bleeds into every rehearsal, every show, every argument-that-never-happens.

Arguments are foreign to our rehearsals. We might disagree on where a stop might be in an arrangement, but we’re always willing to experiment and try everyone’s ideas.

The band is collaborative, not competitive.

Playful, not performative.

It’s not about ego. It’s about alignment.

It’s why the chaos never tips too far. Why the noise never drowns out the clarity.

Because behind the scream is a safety net.

Behind the frontwoman is a family

Sweet, nasty, and absolutely not asking for permission.

When the project first started, Molly Ringworm was just a name - catchy, weird, kind of gross in a funny way.

It wasn’t overthought. It just fit.

Now, it feels like a thesis.

I never really thought about it too much when we first started, but now I think it’s this perfect representation of us — something of a juxtaposition of sweetness and nastiness.

That’s the energy. That’s the whole point.

There’s glitter in the bruises.

There’s melody in the mess.

There’s power in being a little too much and a little too loud and a little too bossy and not apologizing for any of it.

Molly Ringworm isn’t trying to be your favorite band.

They’re trying to make you feel something you didn’t know was still inside you.

So when the new album drops soon, don’t listen to it casually.

Listen like it’s your teenage self slamming the bedroom door one last time before coming back louder.

DIGITAL LOCATIONS FOR YOUR EMOTIONAL DAMAGE

Want the full chaos catalog?

You can find Molly Ringworm on Spotify, Bandcamp, Apple Music - anywhere the internet lets you scream in lowercase.

Follow them on Instagram @mollyringding for show dates, new drops, and occasional existential crises in grid format.

The first single from the new album lands this summer.

You’ve been warned.