The Australian band “Saint Street” has officially been verified with an A+ on the coolness scale. Composed of Jess (lead vocals), Laura (guitar), and Amy (drums); these three girls are taking over the low-stream music media industry at a steady pace. Around August 19th, they hit 100K Spotify streams with only 4 singles: Cheap Apple Cider, Harbour Lights, Venus, and Bubble Tea. According to Amy: “when we hit like 20K, 50K we were like ‘oh, this is actually happening.’ So, in the back of our heads, we always knew that 100K would happen eventually, but we didn’t think it would happen so soon.”
When I first heard the story behind the band’s creation, I was shocked; turns out they all had a class in common while in college: sound design, and for their 3rd-year project they had to come up with a creative idea that involved sound. According to Amy and Jess they “were eating ice cream in like a night-drive situation and [they] were like “we can EP for our project’, and they were like ‘yes, we could.’” That’s how the band was created.
Living in a world that’s flooded with sexism, especially in the entertainment industry, I had to ask if they have ever encountered themselves in certain scenarios in which gender had been a contributing factor to the ultimate outcome. Here’s what they had to say:
“We never deliberately market ourselves as being a girl-band. We don’t put a label on ourselves. We just like to be authentic, and, in some ways, it gives us different opportunities to if we weren’t an all-girl band. Whether that’s for better or for worse it depends sometimes. We have had negative experiences being female in this industry, but we’ve also met some incredible all-female bands, played in some really cool female gigs, and gotten different opportunities in empowering spaces, which is really cool. But you can really tell there’s a difference.”
“You’re surrounded by a lot of men energy, especially if you go into places and it’s like the sound engineer is a male, the staff are men. There might be a lot of men in the audience, and you might be getting attention that you don’t particularly want. In those situations, you have to just say: well, I believe in who I am, I believe in what I’m doing and whether they agree with it or not, I don’t mind.”
“We just try to be as authentic as we can, and if that pushes us down because we’re being authentic and females, then, so be it. It’s such a shame, but we’ve also had lots of positive experiences.”
Amy actually gave a personal stand-point on the issue, stating: “I think sometimes in some of those very masculine spaces early on I felt like they (all the other guys performing, the sound engineers and so on) expected us to have this craving to prove ourselves to them and prove our worthiness of their time and their space. But what’s happened is that I think because we’re so steadfastly and self-assuredly focused on what we want to do, we often attract shows and line-ups that often align with us. That’s where we’ve met some beautiful people, made some really great friends and met really awesome sound engineers. I think we’ve had really cool experiences because we have such a high standard for what we’ll agree to.”
Also, while being interviewed, they revealed the fact that they might have some songs coming our way. According to Laura “there are several songs that we’ve written and performed live, but not yet recorded.” So, keep an eye on this amazing band because I’m sure this won’t be the last time you hear from them.
Listen to their latest EP here!