SIIICKBRAIN Finds the Pulse in Chaos on HOUNDSTOOTH

"We have got to find the fun in things, because if we don’t, we’re going to just get sucked into a place that we don’t want to be," says genre-breaking artist and model SIIICKBRAIN, describing the sounds of her album HOUNDSTOOTH.

In conversation with Newsweek, the North Carolina-native details her journey from farm life, through multiple career changes, and the slow realization that music had been waiting for her the entire time. "I always wanted to make music," she says. "I always had this dream of doing it," even during the years when anxiety made that dream feel far away.

She describes her upbringing as a place that gave her space to imagine and, at times, made that imagination feel boxed in. Music was always a constant for her and her family. Her brother played emo bands like Hawthorne Heights, her sister leaned toward Radiohead and Bon Iver, and her mother, a classical cellist, added another texture to the atmosphere.

"A bunch of different influences have come together and made me who I am," she says, tracing the line between those early sounds and the genre-blurring work she makes today.

From Restlessness to Release

Before music became the center, SIIICKBRAIN moved through other versions of herself with curiosity and momentum. She studied makeup artistry in New York. She pursued marketing in Los Angeles. She modeled, worked in nightlife, and absorbed the energy of creative scenes that kept pulling her closer to the life she wanted.

"One thing just went into the next," she says. Still, each chapter left her wanting more. "I never felt like I reached my end goal," she explains. "Being a musician is my favorite thing in the world."

That push sharpened in 2020. After the sudden loss of her best friend, grief changed the timeline. "Life is too short. I need to just do whatever the f**k I want," she says, remembering the turning point that sent her into the studio the following week. Her first foray into the studio catalyzed what would become a practice of survival and self-revelation. "It was a form of therapy," she says, a way to move through anxiety, loss, and everything she could no longer afford to leave unspoken.

For her, growth is a central tenet in a life that can be all too short. "I want to experience everything that I've ever wanted to do," she says. "It doesn't feel like a job," she says. "It's like breathing to me."

Finding the Fun Again

SIIICKBRAIN describes her project HOUNDSTOOTH as one shaped by freedom and instinct. "This music that I've been making is literally, like, I was having fun in the process," she says.

The album surges with intense emotional honesty and a sonic palette pulsing with synthy club textures, thumping basslines, industrial influences, and the thrill of change. "I want to continue to evolve," she says. "It would be so boring not to evolve."

In a time when the outside world can feel relentless, she wants the music to offer a sense of joy amid tumultuous times, as evident in tracks like CONTROL, which laments the state of society over high-energy production. "We've got to keep the morale up," she says. "We have got to have fun."

For the songstress, that doesn't mean smoothing over difficult experiences. It means carrying them differently, letting hard truths sit inside tracks built to hit with impact. "There are ways to talk about things, but not so on the nose," she says. "The lyrics are honest and truthful," even when they arrive in a form designed to move a room.”

That tension is especially present in "MURKY WATER," SIIICKBRAIN has said the record "finally feels like I have found the sound I've been searching for since I started making music," and described its high-energy production as part of "finding the fun again" through life's challenges. The song pushes into painful territory while refusing to surrender its power. She describes it as rooted in repeated experiences with abusive men and the larger pattern those experiences reveal. "It's a pattern," she says. "We have to not let it tear us down."

The singer-songwriter also speaks about autonomy with the same conviction that runs through the song and its visual world. "I am celebrating women's bodies and our autonomy and trying to regain that power. I just want them to have fun," she says. "And I also want it to speak to those who need to hear some s**t like this."



Listen to HOUNDSTOOTH now.

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This story was originally published June 11, 2026 at 12:04 PM.