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Writing has always been an outlet for Stella Bridie and she’s not exactly sure how that writing turned into songs. Her sound has been described as indie rock with pop impulses, and names like Julia Jacklin, boygenius, Ethel Cain, Stella Donnelly and even Olivia Rodrigo have been mentioned in connection with her name. This past year has been a big one for the young musician from Melbourne: she’s released her first EP, played SXSW, supported Lime Cordiale on a month-long tour in Australia and had barely finished that before she was off to shows in the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium. We caught up with her in-between sets at The Great Escape – one of Europe’s biggest festivals for new music – for a chat about her creative process, all the live experience she is gaining right now and what is in the cards for the rest of 2025.

OnesToWatch: If you had to describe your music to someone who’s never heard it, what would you say?

Stella Bridie: The byline I always use is “songs for the long walk home from the party”. There’s a catharsis and melancholy and confessional vibe to it. 

So how did it all start for you?

I was always writing - and songwriting before I knew that that was actually what I was doing - and then at 18 or 19 I created this song just using vocals and a drum beat and really low-level production techniques, pretty much non-existent. Kind of when kids don’t know that they can’t do something but just charge ahead - it was that energy. I entered it in a songwriting competition - and I won. I used the resources that came with that award to record a song called “Dog Bite” (2019) and put it out with no experience or team or knowledge of how to do any of it. But it organically grew through people putting it on their playlists and stuff like that and had a bit of a moment. Over the next couple of years I released a couple of more songs but it never really felt cohesive. But then I met my friend Gab Strum (Japanese Wallpaper, ed.) and we started working on an EP. Through writing and developing those songs and starting to play them live, it really started to feel like an actual, cohesive project like it hadn’t before.  

What’s your songwriting process like now, then?

Yeah, that’s interesting, I can’t remember how I was writing back then but these last couple of years it’s been… I start with the lyrics, always. It’s normally in the notes app on my phone, maybe it starts when I’m on a long walk or I put in noise-cancelling headphones and just lock-in and type something. These days I’m also writing on planes a lot. I normally have the idea of the vocal melody in my head and I might hum it as quietly as I can into my voice memos and try not to get too many weird looks from people. Normally, I won’t start playing it with an instrument or bring it to a producer before the lyrics are fully written. I’ll probably record a version of it on guitar first and then it can transform from there. The production sessions are usually not so much about bringing the song into existence but about exploring which directions it can take. 

Yeah, so you create the core of the song on your own and then develop it with your producer?

Yeah, it’s very insular, not because I don’t want to co-write, it’s just the way that I know and have learnt to do it. And for most songwriters, you write because you can’t say it any other way. So when it’s in incubation I couldn’t explain it to someone else, the writing is what I’m using to figure it out. So until it’s done, I don’t necessarily know what I’m saying.

That makes total sense. How about all the live experience you’ve been getting lately. Has that influenced the way you ‘approach’ your music? 

Absolutely. Sometimes you just discover what is fun to play live or what you can do with a song on stage and maybe it’s just as simple as that. But even more than that though, it’s also that what you are doing every day seeps into the lyrics. There are experiences that happened live - it’s such a vulnerable but also very cool thing connecting with people in this huge way and then maybe never seeing them again. And because I’m writing so much in a relational way - friendships, people, relationships - I think I’m writing more about the relationship to the audience as I go so that’s probably the main way that it has influenced the music so far.  

So looking back at this past year, I feel like a lot of things have happened for you.

Yeah, it’s been pretty crazy!

It might be too big of a question but what’s that been like? Are there highlights? Ups and downs?

Totally - the ups and downs are every single day. I was talking to my band who are also my really good friends (Stella Farnan and Soren Maryasin, ed.) and we love to do a little reflective circle about what’s going on in our heads and hearts… This whole thing has been hectic in a way where you don’t really reflect after something - like after I did SXSW in Austin in March and then pretty much immediately came home and got into doing a run of regional shows supporting another artist (Lime Cordiale, ed.) in Australia for a full month. Literally the last show I did with them was on a Saturday, I flew home Sunday, worked on Monday and then flew to London on Tuesday. So you really have to carve out opportunities to reflect. I think that I’m maybe learning to see it more as enjoying all the parts of the experience - even the arduous ones - because it gives it all texture and it becomes something to write about and think about. And ultimately you’ll be doing something really hard and you’ll be exhausted but you’ll still be like ‘I love this and I want to do it for as long as I can’. Which is good because I hadn’t really toured like this before this last year and I kind of had a fear about not liking it or not being good at it. It’s a really specific skill set. So to do it and feel like this is where I want to be is really good. 

That must be a kind of catharsis as well. To get that reassurance. 

Absolutely. And there have been lots of highlights. SXSW was really great. Doing US shows and meeting people who had come a really long way to see the shows was so nice. And putting the songs out last year. I felt good about them at a level where if they had come out and nothing had happened, I would still feel good. So everything that has come after has felt like a bonus. And playing shows has been so good because you have to be really present and remember that that’s the point of what you are doing. When you’re doing social media or talking to publications or doing all the admin you sometimes forget what it is in service of. But then you play a show and it all makes sense.

You’ve just touched upon it a little bit but you released your first EP, Speaking Terms, in November. What else can you tell me about it?

What’s been really cool about it is that sometimes there’s so much over-saturation in the market and music - especially with an EP that doesn’t have the same release plan as an album - so for it to still live and still be doing shows off the back of it is so cool. It’s been out for about six months and it feels like a lot longer than that, to me. I still feel really proud of it and a lot of the thesis of the project is in those songs. All the people who made it with me, I’m still working with - some were already close friends, some I became really close with over the course of making it - so I know I’m going to remember that experience. I feel proud of it and there’s nothing I would change thus far. Maybe ask me again in a couple of years.

That must be such a relief. Or that might not be the right word, but when you release these songs you need to still love them - at least if you want to enjoy performing them. I’ve been part of a few book projects and I’m always so scared to look at them after they’ve been printed - because I can’t change anything if I find a mistake. So it must be really nice to have that feeling. And then to also give the songs a different kind of life playing them live.

Totally. And part of that also comes from the fact that once this is out, I’m giving it over to people and they will interpret it this or that way. It’s not my job to tell them what it means or what it’s supposed to feel like. It’s my job to let them be the caretakers of it now. So I can almost kind of enjoy it as though it is not mine. It belongs to other people or is somehow separate from me.

Yeah, I was going to ask if there is something you want people to take away from your music?  

I want people to feel catharsis. And I guess I want them to… A lot of the songs on Speaking Terms are about conversations that you didn’t get to have or things I wish I had said or things I did say and now reflect on as a moment of courage or stupidity or both. And sometimes it is not until you hear someone else say something that you realize that you needed to say it or hear it. I hope people have that experience.

“He Didn’t Mean it” in particular is a song where I’m waiting for a day that I play it and it doesn’t feel directly related to my life - and that hasn’t happened yet. And the conversations I’ve had with people who connect with that song, also “6 Foot Drop”, and them feeling a power in themselves that they didn’t know was there. or feeling a sense of injustice for themselves or experiences they’ve had, that they maybe didn’t feel justified to but now they do. I would love it if people felt that way. And also people who might feel targeted by the lyrics - I hope they can engage with them in an open-minded way and consider what I’m actually expressing and saying.

Makes sense. So what’s next?

I’ll be back in Europe in November for Pitchfork Paris and RollingStone Beach in Germany, so that’s really cool. We’ve got a heap of unreleased songs that will start coming out. So it’s pretty much all about that: keep playing, keep putting stuff out. Keep writing - all of the time. I feel a really good momentum. I am excited to have a couple of quiet moments when I get home to really get down a lot of the ideas that I’ve been writing on tour. But I’m also really excited to keep going.     

Are you writing an album or just seeing where the songs take you?

Umm. I think we’re maybe halfway through what I would say is an album, most likely. But it’s impossible to say because things change all the time. But it has felt like an album while we’ve been making it. So I’m writing for that but also just trying to write unrestrictedly. Things will pop into the right release when it’s their moment.

Who are your OnesToWatch?

Oh, good question. Our friends in Gut Health who are also from Melbourne. Miss Kannina who’s also playing this festival (The Great Escape, ed.) is absolutely incredible, she’s smashing it. We’re so lucky that she makes music. Armlock are playing here as well. They have been our tour playlist to be honest. Also, Chitra from Melbourne - I guarantee you’ll be seeing her these next couple of years doing all these showcases. She’s an incredible artist and just released the song “Big Shot” that everybody should listen to.