Lauren Mayberry

​ Mayberry still remembers what it felt like to sit alone in her teenage bedroom, headphones on, listening to artists like Tori Amos and Fiona Apple as if it was some kind of private spiritual practice. “It was a lot of confessional female singer-songwriters, music that I knew people I was in bands with had no interest in” she says, “and I thought of them like, ‘These are my friends who live in my headphones.’ Something that was just for me.” Growing up in Scotland, Mayberry began playing piano and drums in her early teens. By 15, she had started playing in bands, learning how to get her ideas across in environments where her gender often felt an obstacle, or a kind of invisibility cloak.