When Girl Scout were deciding on the title of their debut album, blind faith seemed to lead the Swedish indie rockers to the word ‘Brink’. “You kind of lose yourself in that process,” says drummer Per Lindberg of the album journey, as he tries to pinpoint the moment the trio – which is completed by vocalist/guitarist Emma Jansson and guitarist/bassist Kevin Hamring – realised their experiences could be encapsulated in this existentially charged word. “You don’t really know what it is until it’s done,” he adds, his bandmates bobbing their heads in agreement from their respective Zoom windows. “It kind of crept up on [us],” agrees Jansson.
Existing on the verges of uncertainty can be unnerving for some artists, but this is exactly where Girl Scout have struck gold. Since forming during the COVID-19 lockdown and releasing their debut single ‘Do You Remember Sally Moore?’ in 2022, the group have broken out beyond their Stockholm roots with their soaring guitar anthems that thrash with the spirit of their ’90s garage rock and Britpop influences. Across a trilogy of personality-filled EPs – 2023’s ‘Real Life Human Garbage’ and ‘Granny Music’, and 2024’s ‘Headache’ – they zeroed in on the angst and anguish of young adulthood with a healthy mix of panic, acceptance and good humour.
Girl Scout on The Cover of NME. Credit: Jakob Ekvall for NME
In that time, Girl Scout have toured across the UK and mainland Europe, hit international festival stages, nabbed opening slots for Alvvays, Holly Humberstone and Miriam Bryant, and even recently featured on the soundtrack for the 2025 reboot of the iconic Skate video game series. So when it came to writing their first-ever full-length project, it was an opportunity for a much-needed life “catch-up”. “It’s kind of a diary for the band, and for us as individuals, and where we are in life,” shares Jansson, pensively gazing out of frame. “We were flailing a little bit in our own lives. It’s like when you’re in one of those quarter-life crises, how things are fine and then all of a sudden very not fine, and it pivots back and forth.”
“It’s very different choosing to live life as a musician” – Kevin Hamring
Since their formation, the group have documented the awkward growing pains of being in your twenties that, despite what people may tell you, long persist after adolescence. “I don’t feel like a woman / I’m just a kid, trying to stay hid from everyone else,” Jansson confessed on the spiralling ‘Weirdo’ from their first EP. It’s a theme that’s threaded throughout all their projects, and is pulled into sharp focus once again on ‘Brink’. The members of Girl Scout, now in their early thirties, have felt the weight of their choices crashing down on them all at once. “Being at this point in life and doing music, you start to see the disconnect between people who are the same age as you, with where they are in life,” says Hamring. “It’s very different choosing to live life as a musician.”
Those recurring doubts are all too relatable for anyone who’s ever chosen to pursue a career in the arts. Thankfully, though, these are feelings they can all relate to. “I guess you absorb it from each other. It’s kind of like…” Lindberg trails off, before Jansson picks up his thought: “Now this is everyone’s problem!”
Credit: Jakob Ekvall for NME
Driven by varying degrees of rumination, ‘Brink’ is home to confessional “purges” (‘Keeper’) and frosty industry jabs (‘Crumbs’), to youthful daydreams (‘Same Kids’) and unserious rock-outs (‘Operator’). Paired with the trio’s lyrics, full of heart and wit, are infectious, layered guitar compositions that bear traces of the legends they’ve been inspired by over the years, including The Killers, Nirvana and Jonny Greenwood. That pool of artists expands even wider when you take into account their regular listening habits, which range from Pavement to Big Thief and LCD Soundsystem.
These influences have been seeping into the music ever since Girl Scout’s formation. The group “accidentally became a serious project”, Jansson says, after she and her schoolmate decided to start a jazz duo for some extra cash while studying at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. Bonded by a shared love of artists like Elliot Smith and The Beatles, they eventually started writing their own songs and brought in other school friends to create a four-piece.
“[The album is] kind of a diary for the band and us as individuals. We were flailing a little bit in our own lives” – Emma Jansson
As momentum built, they found a manager through Instagram, signed to the indie Made Records (though they’re now with AWAL) and, on the strength of their earliest songs, were tipped as rising stars in the NME 100 of 2023. They’ve since undergone a couple of line-up changes, but there’s “no hard feelings” around their former members’ exits, says Jansson: it simply came down to who was available to commit to the oftentimes “unforgiving” demands of being in a band full-time.
As for their name, while it’s true Jansson was a member of the Brownies in her childhood, that’s merely incidental to the origins of Girl Scout. “I was like, ‘Let’s just try it out for a couple weeks and then we can reassess,’” she remembers. “And then we never did, and it stuck; it’s been our name since.” Are Girl Scout, then, anything like their accidental namesake: eager, adventurous, resourceful? “Per has one of those knives that folds out,” Hamring deadpans. “I own a multitude, so I could absolutely be a Scout!” Lindberg laughs.
Credit: Jakob Ekvall for NME
What the band might lack in badges, they certainly make up for in musical intuition. What’s most impressive about ‘Brink’ is how it interlaces introspection with humour for a realistic – and defiantly optimistic – portrait of human emotion. With Jansson spending much of her early childhood in Japan, the US and Germany as the family moved with her dad’s work, her perspectives are as multifaceted as her formative years. “It feels more real when it’s not deciding to be one core emotion, because I don’t think things really are just one thing,” Jansson reasons. “There’s a lot of things happening at once.”
Indeed, somehow a song bluntly titled ‘Dead Dog’ is one of the album’s most powerful reckonings as it reflects on a relationship’s decline, elevated by a racing drum beat and shimmering guitar riffs reminiscent of ’90s-era The Cure. “I’m your dead dog / Give me all my favourite bones on one last walk”, sings Jansson as she builds to a piercing chorus. There’s a similar feeling on ‘Ugly Things’, which contrasts mundane limerence with a gauzy, dream pop riff: “Ugly places / Sad and ugly things / You make them better / Than they’ve ever been”.
Credit: Jakob Ekvall for NME
There’s also intrusive contemplations about society’s expectations, particularly those imposed upon women. “I could never be a mother to myself or to any other”, Jansson declares on the synth-filled ‘Keeper’, a song which reflects an admittedly distorted outlook. “It’s how I could think about it on a bad day when you wake up hungover and you’re like, ‘Jesus Christ, what am I doing?’” she scoffs. It’s a theme that artists like Charli XCX and Wolf Alice have gestured at on their most recent albums, and reoccurs again on the “stream of consciousness” song ‘Simple Life’, as the singer remarks that she “could make some babies, be a loving wife”.
“When you’re a musician, [motherhood] is not really something that fits into your life the way I’m imagining it would,” Jansson elaborates. “It feels kind of like a juxtaposition. On a personal level, I’m not opposed. I think I probably do want kids at some point, but it feels so far away because it doesn’t fit into any other aspect of your life.”
“[Grassroots venues] in the UK have been very important for us” – Kevin Hamring
But for every moment of reflection, there’s a rollicking crescendo waiting on the other side. To maintain this careful equilibrium, the group brought in North Carolina-based producer Alex Farrar to mix the record. As fans of the artists he’s worked with – Farrar’s impressive roster of past collaborators includes Wednesday, MJ Lenderman and Snail Mail – Girl Scout first contacted the producer a few years ago in the hopes he could work his magic on their music.
After the group recorded and self-produced the songs in Stockholm whenever their schedules allowed, he proved to be the second pair of ears they needed. “He brought out stuff in the music that we maybe didn’t think was the obvious thing, to the forefront,” explains Lindberg, “and he absolutely had a big part in how it sounds, how it’s perceived, how the music comes at you.”
Credit: Jakob Ekvall for NME
Girl Scout are now preparing to head out on a European tour, which means re-immersion in the grassroots scenes that have played such a significant role in their journey so far. “These places in the UK have been very important for us,” reflects Hamring. “There weren’t a lot of venues for us to play [in Sweden] when we started out, but the UK was full of life when it came to that. It was really a place where we could get going.”
It’s not just opportunities that these indie venues have afforded Girl Scout, but a sobering sense of perspective when so many are in jeopardy. “Coming to a venue and seeing Coldplay played here half a year before their debut album was released,” Lindberg says, “[we saw] that was a stepping stone for them as well. Without those venues, where would they have gone? Where would everyone else go?”
While they still have moments of doubt about their chosen path, one thing helps Girl Scout keep sight of it all: the band. Girl Scout want to keep living the dream: travelling, playing music and connecting with others. “I don’t want to do anything else,” asserts Jansson. “I think if I wanted to work with something else, I probably would have already. The whole spiral that the album came from, why I think we’re all OK with it, is if we wanted to do something else, we would have done that. We don’t want to.”
Girl Scout’s album ‘Brink’ is out now via AWAL.
Listen to Girl Scout’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: Hollie Geraghty
Photography: Jakob Ekvall
Photo Assistance: Douglas Ekman
Location: City Studios
The post Girl Scout’s anthemic indie-rock grapples with the mess of life appeared first on NME.
