Batbait (CH - Zürich)
Batbait have turned heads recently, and not only on the Zurich music scene. An all-female band performing edgy punk rock with strumming guitars, slacker vocals and furious build-ups? Even in 2022, this is still a total novelty in some places. Which is why the four women have definitely pumped a sizeable portion of empowerment vibes into their music. But that was never their main motivation. As singer and guitarist Gianna Brühwiler says whenever interviewed, «We just wanted to make music together.» No surprise, then, that that’s what jumps out at you in every Batbait song: from indie and punk, garage rock and psychedelic pop with a 60s touch, the quartet crafts wonderfully weird releases like the «Paradise» EP (self-release; 2019) or the «Softness» two-piece (Irascible Records; 2022), displaying pure, idiosyncratic songwriting stripped of all conventionality. On «Dirty Clothes» (Irascible Records, 2022), their debut album, Batbait set the tone with their blend of garage-rock and post-punk, offering ten varied accounts of real-life experiences that cling to clothes like smells; clothes that are found in piles in everyone's home, full of memories.