Emerging from Liverpool’s DIY scene with a cocktail of chaos, confrontation, and radical girlhood, Girl Group are carving a sound and space that’s entirely their own. Composed of Mia, Maria, Lil, Katya, and Thea, their debut EP, released on 20th June, is part-house party, part-heartbreak confessional, and as much about friendship as it is about feminist pop.
Before they were packing out DIY venues or staging holographic photo shoots, they were five very different party people – or, as Mia puts it, “individually, we’re very party people,” before joking that cohabiting turned them into “grandmas.” Lil remembers their house becoming the de facto gig space “to get the DJs around to ours,” while Katya reflects on the post-COVID era that brought them together: “We really bonded during a time right after COVID – that was very shaping for us as a group.” Whether planning a release party with a midday park meet-up or reminiscing about their wild first year, it’s clear the group gelled together through music, mischief, and a mutual longing to dance again.
Last Friday, the five-piece released a remixed version of the EP, reimagined by the band’s resident producer Maria, who takes the original tracks straight to the dance floor, doubling down on the sweaty, ecstatic energy at the heart of their sound. “We like to party and we like party music,” Maria says simply. “So it’s always made sense for us to have dancey versions of the songs.” And they do exactly that: ‘Yay! Saturday’, ‘Your Fantasy’, and ‘Shut Your Mouth (Sometimes)’ are reworked into shimmering, bratty club tracks made for sticky floors, shared cabs, and 4AM selfies. For Girl Group, the party isn’t an afterthought – it’s the point.
BRICKS caught up with the five-piece ahead of their release to talk about early hangovers, Wet Leg and Norwegian cultural shocks.
House parties, hangovers and heartbreak
Celebration is sacred in Girl Group’s world – and that’s not just a turn of phrase. “We take birthdays very seriously in this group,” explains Mia. “Every time there’s a birthday, the whole day is off. If anyone can’t come, there has to be a very, very good reason – like someone has died.”
Naturally, that energy spills over into their work. “We’ve always had a dream about [hosting] a house party [as a band], haven’t we?” Lil says. From kitchen parties with female-led DJ collectives like Queensway, to pub crawls doubling as release-day events, every Girl Group drop feels like an RSVP-only night out.
The EP’s lead single ‘Yay! Saturday’ is a love letter to the messiest of those nights. “We really wanted to capture… that, like, two weeks of continuous drinking and going out,” says Lil. The song closes with Lil’s Yorkshire accent recounting the unsavoury end of a chaotic night: “The voice note that’s at the end is also from one of those nights.”
From the very first session we ever did, that was what we were writing about: our experience being in Liverpool and being a woman in Liverpool.
Katya
Wet Leg & feminist pop
While the sound of the EP jumps between dance, drum ’n‘ bass, and crunchy indie, one band unified them early on. “Wet Leg’s album was the first piece of music that we all just absolutely loved and couldn’t stop listening to together,” says Maria.
That feminist legacy runs deep. “From the very first session we ever did, that was what we were writing about: our experience being in Liverpool and being a woman in Liverpool,” explains Katya. The band doesn’t just sing together – they write every lyric in full collaboration. “We don’t have a main couple writers,” Maria emphasises. “Having those conversations beforehand, that’s been important to us.”
Mia adds: “I think we all have this hunger to write about things we’re really engaged in – like feminism – but also focusing on the fun sides of being a woman, and the painful sides, but sometimes in a playful way.”
“It’s a process of sitting down and seeing what happens, but also planning a bit: like, what do we want to make a song about today, while still keeping to the themes of what we stand for and who we are as people?” Thea explains of the group’s writing set-up. “I don’t think it was planned too much in terms of one song sounding a certain way. We wanted to be genre-fluid so we didn’t want to confine ourselves to one style. There’s a rockier song, a DnB track, and more of a party anthem. Altogether, it creates a full body of work.”
Girlhood & nostalgia
For Girl Group, girlhood isn’t a phase to outgrow – it’s a lens through which to create. Rather than sanitising or mocking it, the band taps into its weirdness, intensity, and emotional excess. Their lyrics bounce between bratty and vulnerable, but always orbit the kinds of feelings you might scribble into a childhood diary: jealousy, fantasy, unfiltered rage.
That rawness is part of what makes the EP hit so hard. There’s yearning underneath the pop shine, and a kind of emotional maximalism that feels distinctly teenage in the best way. “Some of the things that we’ve bonded over and that we love to talk about as inspiration are the kinds of things that we [all grew up with] in our early girlhood,” says Maria.
More than just a nostalgic moodboard, Girl Group’s take on girlhood is about reclaiming softness and silliness on their own terms. “When I was a teenager, I suddenly realised, ‘oh, it’s not cool to like girly things’,” reflects Mia. “Then you grow up and you realise – you should [take] joy in those things.”
Bratz dolls, Barbies & styling on a budget
With no major label wardrobe budget, Girl Group styled their visuals the same way they write their lyrics: together, chaotically, and with DIY defiance. “It was very low budget,” admits Mia. “Trying to find the outfits for that character shoot – we were sitting there on Canva trying to piece different clothes together; it was a lot of fun.”
Without big budgets or stylists, they leaned into what they know best – improvising – leading to a visual identity that feels like the fashion equivalent of a group chat: chaotic, loud, lovingly curated, and occasionally unhinged. From the dolls they played with as children to Sex and the City screenshots, their aesthetic is a layered homage. This joy is evident in their holographic EP cover, with each member dressed in a “choose your character”-style outfit – scavenged from Depop, charity shops, and their own wardrobes – pieced together like character creators in a bootleg fashion game.
“We really wanted it to look holographic,” Katya says of the EP artwork. “A bit childish and fun, and we look stuck-on like we’re stickers. The dream would be to present it with physical stickers one day.”
In Norway, you’re not really supposed to make much out of yourself. You’re not supposed to stand out. Coming to Liverpool, you were supposed to take up that space – we would never make this music if we’d stayed in Norway.
Mia
Liverpool, Norway and cultural shifts
While the group is based in Liverpool, their origins stretch across borders – four of the five members are Norwegian, and the contrast between cultures is something they feel deeply. “Stylistically, I feel really influenced by where I’ve lived in my life,” Katya says. “I grew up in Oslo, then moved to Liverpool, and seeing how people dress – it’s very defined, and in a very different way.”
“In Norway, you’re not really supposed to make much out of yourself,” adds Mia. “You’re not supposed to stand out. Coming to Liverpool, you were supposed to take up that space – we would never make this music if we’d stayed in Norway.”
Still, Oslo lingers in their creative process. “There’s so much space there, literally,” Lil says, recounting a recent trip to Norway that the group took together. “It’s slower, too. That’s been a really nice part of working over there, it does feel very rooted in a specific time.”
From sweaty nights in Liverpool basements to peaceful family visits in Oslo, the band has found its rhythm between chaos and calm – and their EP captures it all.
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