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Photo by Samantha Monendo

Who doesn’t love a pumping kick drum that feels like your heart beat, along with a chantable lyric that’s so cathartic you need to chant it to feel it to its fullest effect? I know I do, and after checking out Tender Misfit’s new single "Sell Your Soul" and the rest of her catalog, it's clear Tender Misfit has spent the past few years sharpening a sound that's as much about catharsis as it is about hooks. 

The 2025 singles run of "Midnight in Hollywood," "Tell Your Girlfriend," "Cherry Girl," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Sundress," and "I Just Can't Remember" reads like a mood board for restless and neon-lit heartbreak, like getting your heart broken by your latest situationship during a night out with your friends. Each one leaned into a different corner of her range, from the sugar-rush pop of "Cherry Girl" to the more brooding, string-out-your-feelings ache of "Sundress," and together they set the stage for what came next.

2026 has been her biggest year yet, and she's approached it like someone who finally knows exactly what she wants to say. She opened with "I Touch Myself" and "Does She Know?," two tracks that lean hard into her sneering, confrontational side, then released "An Act of God" alongside a Sluggo remix that gave the song a second life on dancefloors. Then, on April 17, she dropped her EP Stargirl, seven tracks and twenty minutes that distill everything Tender Misfit does best: the sneer, the synths, the guitars that hit like a confession. It's a tight, no-filler record, the kind that doesn't ask you to sit through padding to get to the good stuff, because there isn't any padding to begin with. Songs like the title track and "Kiss the Crown" show a songwriter confident enough to slow down and let a melody breathe, while "I'd Say Anything (To Make You Want Me)" and "Blue Dreams" prove she can still turn heartbreak into something you want to dance to.

She followed the EP up in June with an acoustic take on "Every Time We Kiss," stripping the track down to something more vulnerable – just voice, guitar, and space; proof that the songs hold up even without the wall of sound behind them. It's a smart move for an artist whose whole appeal has been built on bombast: showing you can strip it all away and the emotional core still lands.

Part of what makes Tender Misfit stick is that the project has never just been about the music. There's a whole aesthetic world built around it: the smeared eyeliner, the leather, the unapologetic theater-kid energy that shows up in her visuals and merch as much as it does onstage. It's a look that borrows from '80s rock iconography without feeling like costume; it feels like an extension of the persona she's built since rebranding from Ariel Beesley, one where vulnerability and swagger aren't opposites but two sides of the same coin. That's part of why the live shows work as well as they do – she's not performing a character so much as turning the volume up on herself.

She's also arriving at an interesting moment for this kind of sound. Pop-rock and New Wave-indebted pop have been having a real moment again, with a wave of artists pulling from the same well of synths, sneer, and stadium-sized hooks. What separates Tender Misfit from a lot of that pack is how unfussy the songwriting is. She's not chasing nostalgia for its own sake, she's using it as a vocabulary to say very simple, very universal things about wanting someone, hating someone, missing someone, and not being embarrassed about any of it. That simplicity is exactly what makes the choruses so easy to shout back, whether you're hearing them for the first time in a crowded room or blasting them alone in your car.

Through it all, her partnership with David Katz and Sluggo has stayed a constant, a creative pairing that's clearly found its groove, and Two Sevens Records has given her the room to keep evolving – from Ariel Beesley's early singles to the fully-formed, supernova-confident Tender Misfit era we're in now. If "Sell Your Soul" is any indication, and Stargirl backs it up, she's not just chasing an '80s throwback sound; she's using it as a launchpad to build something that feels genuinely hers, messy parts and all. Wherever Tender Misfit goes next, the next single, the next tour stop, the next sold-out room full of people chanting her lyrics back at her, it's safe to say people will be there for it.

Listen to "Sell Your Soul" below: