10 essential sad girl indie albums
The late 2010s birthed a new kind of indie led by women with guitars and stories to tell. Lovingly dubbed ‘sad girl indie’ by online communities, the subgenre has recently been popularised by the likes of Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Mitski. Often featuring soft guitars, vulnerable lyricism, and themes of girlhood, the genre has quickly garnered a devoted following.
Sad girl indie often sees women empty their emotions, struggles, and knowledge into their songs. Providing a simultaneously personal and universal insight into some of the core elements of being a woman, artists’ willingness to be so open has endeared them to a community of other women who have had similar experiences. Fans treasure the opportunity to see their own lives reflected in music, finding catharsis in the subgenre’s sonic swells and vulnerable lyrics.
This movement has also increased the prevalence of women in indie, a genre historically dominated by men. After years of indie music charting men’s feelings and experiences surrounding love, drugs, and partying, it’s refreshing to see the genre pivot towards the experiences of women in all of their own messy, chaotic glory.
We’ve collated ten essential sad girl indie albums, from the early, fuzzy dream pop of Hope Sandoval’s Mazzy Star to FKA Twigs’ experimental heartbreak to sad girl indie darling Julia Jacklin. Check out our full list below.
10 essential sad girl indie albums:
10. Japanese Breakfast – Soft Sounds from Another Planet
Before Japanese Breakfast’s most recent release, Jubilee saw her move into, fittingly, more jubilant territory, she was firmly in the sad girl indie pop camp. Soft Sounds from Another Planet, her second studio album, sounds just as its name would imply. Pairing whirring, spacey synths with strained vocals, vocalist Michelle Zauner sings of love and loss.
Zauner told Stereogum, “There’s a loose science fiction concept that threads itself throughout about feeling like an alien that doesn’t belong”. The second single from the album, ‘Boyish’, is one of the album’s most intimate moments, which features this absence of belonging. Zauner laments, “I want you, and you want something more beautiful”, over swirling soundscapes and subtle percussion.
9. Adrienne Lenker – Songs
Big Thief vocalist Adrienne Lenker’s fourth solo album, Songs, is similarly sugary sweet in sound but actually sees her dealing with a life-altering heartbreak. Lenker told Hot Press, “It feels like the most personal thing that I’ve ever made, so I feel extra vulnerable about it.” This personal element can be felt throughout her lyrics, which sing of the mundane so intimately.
On ‘Anything’, she sings, “I wanna listen to the sound of you blinking, wanna listen to your hands soothe, listen to your heart beating, listen to the way you move”. ‘Not A Lot, Just Forever’ is another highlight, juxtaposing the soft with the harsh in lines like, “And I wanna be your wife, so I hold you to my knife”. Accompanying her lyrics with soothing folk-inspired guitar riffs, Songs is a gorgeous and painfully honest collection of songs.
8. Mage Tears – Cats In The Cold
Cats In The Cold by Mage Tears is a cute collection of comforting bedroom indie. Subdued acoustic guitar and whirring, extraterrestrial synths come together to form a soft blanket of sound for Nicole’s youthful vocals to float above. Recorded entirely on Garageband on an iPad, it’s enchantingly lo-fi and authentic.
Her lyrics are simultaneously simplistic and existential – on ‘Looming’, she wonders, “Where will I go after this class if I don’t have love or a dream job?” The title track is another highlight, with particularly peculiar synths and tender, melancholic lyricism – she sings, “I feel alone even at home, rather be outside, a cat in the cold.” Like so much of the sad girl indie subgenre, the whole record is characterised by honesty and vulnerability, from its lo-fi production to its lyricism.
7. Soccer Mommy – Collection
Soccer Mommy, also known as Sophia Regina Allison, sits firmly in the sad girl indie rock category, with her songs often driven by prominent indie rock guitar strums. Collection is one of her earliest releases, a compilation of bedroom pop recordings from Bandcamp. Though it finds Soccer Mommy in the infancy of her career, its lo-fi production makes it one of her most intimate releases.
The opening track and single ‘Allison’ features a repeated riff and soft hums, almost taking on a lullaby-like quality. In her lyrics, she addresses Allison, herself, encouraging her to put down her sword and give up what she’s fighting for. ‘3AM at a Party’ is another highlight and hugely illustrative of the genre. Featuring just Allison’s vulnerable vocals and a guitar, she laments, “I wish you didn’t make out in your friend’s bedroom, cause she won’t ever love you like the way I do”. It’s endearingly youthful, charting the seemingly huge emotions of your teen years with care and honesty.
6. Mazzy Star – So Tonight That I Might See
Predating the current movement of sad girl indie music by almost three decades, Mazzy Star provided the ultimate anthem for the subgenre way back in 1993. ‘Fade Into You’, crafted in just one day, has become a dream-pop anthem, a fuzzy musing on an all-consuming love accompanied by soft strums and steady tambourine. The song has since been widely featured across film and television, in everything from Desperate Housewives to The Crown.
But ‘Fade Into You’ is just one highlight of Mazzy Star’s discography. Their 1993 album So Tonight That I Might See is full of similarly hazy, nostalgic soundscapes. As Hope Sandoval’s soft tones sing lyrics like, “And on my easel I drew, while I was thinking of you”, it’s easy to see her influence on the gloomy, meditative feeling of today’s sad indie girls.
5. Mitski – Puberty 2
A conversation about sad girl indie would be incomplete without mentioning Mitski. A record full of yearning and longing, with whimsical dream pop atmospherics and indie guitars, Puberty 2 embodies everything it is to be a sad girl in indie music. The album features ‘I Bet On Losing Dogs’, one of Mitski’s most celebrated tracks, which features a sustained metaphor of her failed relationships as losing dogs.
The candid ‘Your Best American Girl’ is a devastating look at a relationship bringing together two people from two different backgrounds. Though melancholic, it’s simultaneously full of self-acceptance, as the song concludes, “Your mother wouldn’t approve of how my mother raised me, but I do, I think I do”. The whole album is pervaded by this uncompromising vulnerability and healing, with cosy, synthy soundscapes that bring us even closer to Mitski’s emotional journey.
4. FKA Twigs – Magdalene
Magdalene is one of the most iconic heartbreak albums in recent memory. Inspired by FKA Twigs’ breakup with Robert Pattinson and the life of Mary Magdalene, who gives her last name to the record’s title, it’s a mix of heartbreaking lyricism, experimentation with arty electronica, striking imagery and Twigs’ soaring vocals. Twigs charts all of the essential sad girl themes, from heartbreak to self-doubt to sexuality and the body.
It’s an album that’s a little more experimental and eerie than the others on this list, but it’s all the more daring and interesting because of it. In anguished tones, Twigs bares her feelings to the world, asking, “Did you ever see me? No, not this time. Were you ever sure? No, no, no, not with me”. Combining polished eclectic soundscapes with vulnerable lyrics, Twigs created one of the most tragically beautiful sad girl albums ever.
3. Pom Pom Squad – Ow
Pom Pom Squad, headed by Mia Berrin, is perhaps one of the coolest artists to make the list, blending her cheerleader aesthetic with the sounds of indie rock, grunge, and pop punk. Before she released her sprawling debut album Death of a Cheerleader (which featured a cover of fellow sad girl FKA Twigs’ ‘Cellophane’), she put out an EP titled Ow.
A seven-song EP which only just pushes over 20 minutes, Ow features miserable, swelling synths, defiant guitar riffs, and half-angry, half-sad lyrics. ‘Heavy Heavy’ opens with Berrin’s imagery of Berrin emptying out her brain into the shower drain. Her voice is unrelenting, building to a strained yell for the chorus. Berrin’s music takes sad girl indie in a harsher direction, featuring screams and expletives over dense, distorted instrumentals.
2. Stella Donnelly – Beware of the Dogs
Sonically, Stella Donnelly’s debut album Beware of the Dogs veers into more upbeat, kitschy indie pop than many other entries on the list. Melancholy often takes a backseat to quirky layered vocals and playful percussion and synths. With track names like ‘Lunch’ and ‘Watching Telly’, it might seem that her themes follow suit, and sometimes they do – on ‘Lunch’ she offhandedly sings of the every day, “I’m not here to taste all your cheese and wine.”
But really, Donnelly’s seemingly saccharine vocals deal with huge topics like sexual assault and misogyny. On the introductory track ‘Old Man’, Donnelly daringly sings, “Have a chat to your friends ’cause it’s our words that’ll keep our daughters safe.” Under sweet vocals and instrumentals, Beware of the Dogs makes a biting statement against men who mistreat women.
1. Julia Jacklin – Crushing
Australian singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin released her second album Crushing in 2019, arguably at the height of the sad girl indie movement. Covering themes of modern dating, grief, and the pressure to party, it’s a big sisterly guide for young women on how to survive their 20s.
Often, Jacklin’s writing is so intimate that it can feel like we’re imposing on her, like reading her diary without her permission. The musical accompaniment only enhances this feeling, always contained and warm. In the opening track ‘Body’, she defeatedly sings, “I guess it’s just my life and it’s just my body”, over a steady beat and reflective keys. Crushing is a milestone not only in the subgenre but in wider music – it’s one of the best albums of the last decade.
