Wet Kiss Share Piano Ballad-Turn-Rock Saloon Single, 'Chick From Nowhere'
[Friday, June 6, 2025] Rising queer punk outfit Wet Kiss share 'Chick From Nowhere', the latest single from their upcoming album Thus Spoke the Broken Chanteuse, out June 27 on limited-edition lipstick-smacked vinyl via Dinosaur City. The new single comes alongside the announcement of an album tour this August, with stops in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.
'Chick from Nowhere' is a janky piano ballad (of pianist Aldo, who Brenna affectionately calls "the Barry Manilow to my Bette Midler'), that descends into a full-blown rock opera. It's about picking up lovers in the early morning, relishing the freedom of being an unknown entity in an unknown city. The melody was written back in Melbourne, the band high on ecstasy and suddenly eager to write a really tight pop song. 'It's not really a standard pop song at all,' laughs Brenna, 'it's more of a rock saloon song.'
Thus Spoke the Broken Chanteuse is exactly what the title suggests. Our chanteuse here is the sensational jezebel Brenna O: Part Factory Girl, part Fassbinder heroine, all peroxide locks and shiny, skin-tight '$2 dresses', sneering and growling across the stage, mixing greasy punk with cabaret excess. What is she saying? Well, a few things. Produced by Andrew Huhtanen McEwan, Thus Spoke the Broken Chanteuse is about the grubby pleasures of hopping on the Melbourne-to-Berlin artist pipeline. It's about 'daddy at the abattoir,' slaughtering piggies. It's about gloomy waits at the gender clinic so you can get your estrogen. It's about dingy, crap clubs, desolate glamour, strutting down the street with your dignity in tatters, upskirting, indulgence and the glory of turning fantasy into reality. The album name is also something of a joke, melding a music journalist's snide comment about the band ('broken chanteuse') with a nod to Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
The story of Wet Kiss is the story of myth-turned-real. Brenna knew what she wanted — glam-rock mutated for the adderall age — she just needed to find the players. So she put out ads in local rock magazines and found them: daniel dog (they/them - guitar), Al Amour (he/him - piano), Ben Addiction (he/they - bass), Ju Sugar (he/they - lead guitar), Ruby Rabbit (they/them - drums) and Agnes Wailin' (they/them - dubbed 'Screamin'' for their tenacious vocal belts). The band quickly moved in together, quickly put out their beguiling debut record She's So Cool, and quickly built a live reputation. Their performances left crowds gobsmacked: there were floppy bunny ears and buckets of sweat; costume changes and clothes ripped to smithereens; ecstatic howls and hilarious antagonism.
Plenty of Thus Spoke the Broken Chanteuse is brimming with this tension – between the hedonistic triumph of inventing oneself, and the dreary texture of modern life. Brenna became well acquainted with this conflict during a long stint in Berlin. Much of the record was written there, and as such, many of the songs are slathered in a thick glob of Weimar decadence. 'I want to carry on that spirit of dirty street decadence, but also the great tradition of self-invention,' says Brenna.
Wet Kiss catapulted onto the scene with the release of their debut album She's So Cool via Dero Arcade (cumgirl8, Divide & Dissolve) in 2022. In a somewhat shock move, Olver and daniel dog relocated to Berlin just a month after the album dropped. When plans of their 2024 return became public (alongside whispers of a new record), a frenzy was ignited with fans and media alike. In the nine months since, Wet Kiss have played Melbourne Town Hall for RISING's sold-out DAY TRIPPER festival alongside Bar Italia and HTRK, showcased at SXSW Sydney and made their 'Sup debut for Golden Plains alongside PJ Harvey and Fontaines D.C. On top of that, they've scored support slots with Amyl & the Sniffers, RVG, Spike F*ck, CIVIC, Floodlights and Private Function. This momentum has been bolstered by critical acclaim from influential outlets like Bandcamp, Beat Magazine, Rolling Stone, Gusher Magazine, BBC 6, WFMU, 3RRR, PBS and fbi.radio, among others.
You can dunk yourself in Wet Kiss' filthy, lavish depths this August as they tour the album across Australia's east coast. Ticket links and more information below.
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