“The future! The idea that you are good enough to be whatever you feel. You came you saw you felt you thought about it and now you can be! You can be a sandwich, you can be a magic wand! This is your manifestation time because your thoughts that were not helping you are no longer in your way. I wanna be EVERYTHING, EVERY THING! All options are possible and equal and HOTTT MEOWWWW swish. It’s like a vortex where time disappears and the walls disappear… it’s arrived, the essential moment of being that grabs your attention and won’t let you look away.”

Something seismic shifted when bassist Lida Fox, guitarist Veronika Vilim, and drummer Chase joined forces, and their rehearsals quickly morphed into an expansive creative cosmos. Thrilled by the limitless possibilities fostered by the internet-as-metaphor, they named their punk-adventurist trio cumgirl8. Vilim explains the project’s world-built backstory matter-of-factly: “cumgirl8 is a universe through the computer. It’s a happy place that takes you away from reality, and brings you to one that is colorful, accepting and beautiful!” Evocative of AIM handles of yore, the moniker is a simultaneous wink to the freedom granted by online anonymity, and a cheer for the sex-positive, sex worker-supportive possibilities of the web at its most utopian. With tight layers of boundary-obliterating guitars, time-bending rhythms, and daring explorations in storytelling, cumgirl8 continues to vividly reinvent itself in myriad mediums, always with a focus on community, expression, and growth.

cumgirl8 is set to release its new RIP cumgirl8 EP (DERO Arcade), out October 22nd. The release follows up 2020’s self-titled album. At the band’s start, Fox and Vilim had been friends for over a decade, much of which they’d spent obsessing together over boundary-pushing music. “We were inexperienced in our instruments, but needed an outlet to express our frustrations and creativity,” Fox recalls. Both were former ballerinas with an innate sense of movement, and they found themselves quickly translating emotions into rhythm when they jammed with Chase, whose résumé includes queer shred legends Thelma & the Sleaze and Brooklynite skate rockers BOYTOY. “Lida’s melodies and timing are written in cursive with a quill pen. It’s so ornate, and so fun,” gushes Chase. Pulling from previous artmaking experience in film, photography, and book publishing, the trio launched into a new band as equally inspired by anime, Eileen Myles and iconic teen movies as it was by wide-ranging musical heroes (the Slits, Art Blakey, and Nine Inch Nails, to name a small handful).