Introducing she's green: A Band to Watch in 2026

If you play loud enough in a Minneapolis basement, eventually the rest of the world is going to hear the feedback. For she's green, the project started simply with guitarist Liam Armstrong annoying everyone in his shared college house with his music, until he finally asked his roommate, lead vocalist Zofia Smith, to lay down tracks over an instrumental. They soon moved the operation underground, rounding out the five-piece lineup with Kevin Seebeck on drums, Teddy Nordvold on bass, and Raines Lucas stepping in on second guitar. Now, halfway through 2026, the quintet is more than earning their title as a Tape Wounds "Band to Watch." They are sharing festival billing with Chapterhouse and Hum, currently touring alongside Turnover and Narrow Head, and packing their pedalboards for the Reading and Leeds festivals and a European headline run. As Armstrong puts it plainly: "We started touring and haven’t stopped."

But the sudden momentum hasn’t sanded down their edges, nor has it made them eager to accept the standard genre labels the industry keeps trying to assign them. Instead of shoegaze or dream-pop, they classify their output as "moss music." It operates as both an aesthetic manifesto and a defense mechanism, meant to conjure a miniature universe for listeners to step inside. “We love what moss represents,” they explain. “It’s resilient and helps other living things around it.”

That friction—between the abrasive and the deeply inviting—anchors their new EP, Swallowtail. Recorded with producer Sonny DiPerri (DIIV, American Football, Nine Inch Nails), the project captures a group actively pushing its own thresholds. The band worked to take every track to its logical extreme—making a soft song like “Empty House” even quieter, and a heavy track like “Mettle” outright aggressive.

Making that kind of heavy, cathartic noise in a scene still stubbornly dominated by men requires a specific type of armor. For frontwoman Zofia Smith, navigating the live circuit often means confronting an exhausting, unspoken demand to justify her presence on stage. "There’s this inherent feeling that I have to prove myself every. single. time," she admits. Early on, there was a temptation to dress like a man just to bypass the hostility directed at women who have the audacity to look confident holding a guitar. She has since dropped the camouflage, trading the pressure to shrink herself for a total refusal to compromise. Her policy on the gatekeeping is absolute: “Respectfully: Fuck that.”

Ahead of Swallowtail’s release, Smith and Armstrong unpacked the band's ascent from Midwestern basements to international stages. Here, they discuss the surreal reality of opening for their 90s heroes, the desire to "block out the noise with noise," and the sheer force of will required to carve out your own ecosystem.

What’s the story behind She’s Green? How did each of you find your way into the band?

Liam: Zofia and I were roommates, and we would always hear each other working on music. I would probably annoy everyone in the house with the stuff I was making. Eventually, I had her sing some vocals on an instrumental, and that became "Smile Again". We had a basement with a drum set, and we’d have friends of friends over to jam. Kevin was the resident drummer. We’d been looking for a bass player too, and I had asked Teddy, whom I worked with at the University of Minnesota student radio station. One day, we just decided we were going to try to play some of the stuff we’d been making live and play a show. Eventually, our original guitarist wanted to focus more on school, and I asked Raines if he’d be down to join. I saw that he had almost the same pedalboard as I did, and then we started touring and haven’t stopped.

If you look back to your childhood, what are your absolute earliest or most vivid memories of experiencing music?

Zofia: My mom put on ABBA when she was cooking, and I just remember it making me so happy I couldn’t stop running in circles around the kitchen. It felt like I was flying. I had never heard anything so invigorating before; I just couldn’t stop.

Liam: My dad was always playing CDs around the house and in his old Jeep. I really have him to thank for showing me so much music as a kid. He even built me this toy guitar out of plywood, and I would listen to CDs in my room and rock out on it.

Do you feel there’s a direct thread between those early, instinctive feelings and the textured, ethereal sound you make now?

We definitely think that music, or any creative endeavor, is a way to reconnect with our childhood and all those feelings from that time. Things just flowed through you and out of you so freely. The world seemed so open and endless. I think that the music we make definitely evokes those same feelings for us.

You often reject standard labels like shoegaze or dream-pop in favor of your own term, “moss music.” Why moss? What is it about that texture and living, breathing image that feels most true to She’s Green?

Hopefully, it evokes a more symbiotic relationship with our listeners. We love what moss represents. It’s resilient and helps other living things around it. It also represents a kind of unseen miniature world, and we sometimes like to think of our music like that: a small universe to enter.

You’ve mentioned Wong Kar-wai and Studio Ghibli films as major inspirations. What is it about those cinematic worlds that attracts you so deeply, and how do you translate that atmosphere into the sound, lyrics, and visual aesthetic of She’s Green?

They’re very magical and dreamy films. The worlds those films create are mysterious and grand, and we want our music to feel that way too. At their core, those stories make you realize how magical the world we inhabit really is. We try to translate that same emotion into our songs by writing about places or memories that are important to us.

You’ve said before that during the Chrysalis era, you wanted to push the band toward two extremes: abrasive and gritty, or warm and inviting. Where does your new EP, Swallowtail, sit between those poles?

Swallowtail is just pushing those two extremes even further apart. I think as we grow, we are just expanding on that spectrum’s boundaries, and it’s exciting for us to explore those new territories.

What is the overarching idea behind Swallowtail? What are the core messages, themes, and emotions driving it?

It begins with a song about being stubborn and closed off, struggling to accept yourself. It then leads into a succession of songs about searching for hope in chaos, and ends with a reflection of what you’ve lost. It’s a journey through the acceptance of life change. And sometimes, uncomfortable reflections are the only things that can push you to become yourself, which is why a butterfly was fitting.

It’s the most work we’ve put into a project yet. It’s also the first time we recorded in a professional studio with a producer. So, we wanted to give it more of an emphasis. We wanted that change to be evident when listening to Chrysalis and Swallowtail, but also for them to work in tandem.

You seem to be experimenting more on this new EP, but every song still feels unmistakably like She’s Green. What is the core DNA of the band that always remains, no matter how far you push the sound?

That’s definitely something we’re always trying to pin down and refine. However, we want all of our songs to be emotional and to evoke something in the listener. Oftentimes, that means songs with cinematic soundscapes, dynamic changes, and intimate lyrics.

For the Swallowtail EP, you worked with producer Sonny DiPerri (DIIV, julie). What did he bring to the table, and did he challenge your existing idea of your sound?

Sonny was a big influence in pushing our boundaries. We talked a lot about wanting every song to feel unique, rather than having a consistent sound throughout the record. He helped us determine what each song was meant to be, and then pushed the song as far as we could in that direction. That meant making “Empty House” more soft, “Close Your Eyes” more maximalist, “Mettle” more aggressive, etc.

Is there a version of She’s Green that still only exists in your imagination and hasn’t fully made it onto a record yet?

Definitely. There’s a ton of ideas and sounds that haven’t made it out. Since releases are so delayed, there really is a ton of magic that’s happening behind the scenes that we’re still figuring out. With all of this touring, there hasn’t been music coming out soon that was created after we started. So, a lot of this material isn’t new to us. Touring has changed us so much, and we’re psyched to work on something with this experience and explore more.

Zofia, looking back at your own musical journey, which female artists or frontwomen made you look at the stage and feel like you could do this too?

Zofia: Growing up watching Disney Channel and watching shows like Hannah Montana and Wizards of Waverly Place, I adored Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez when I was a kid, and I would pretend to perform their songs. As I got older, I adored Stevie Nicks, Liz Fraser, and Victoria Legrand; I’d watch live videos on YouTube.

Shoegaze and heavier guitar scenes can still be very male-dominated, and you've found yourself playing a lot of these bills. Have there been moments where you felt underestimated or felt you had to prove yourself more simply because you’re a woman fronting a loud guitar band?

You can read the entire interview in our second issue of Tape Wounds Magazine, which is all about female-fronted shoegaze music.