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Photo by Reese Layton

It’s been three years since Sabrina Teitelbaum donned the Blondshell identity, and in that time she’s gone from a promising new name in indie rock to one of the genre’s most trusted voices. She’s the kind of songwriter that makes critics and writers like us reach for words like “supernova” to describe. Her 2023 debut and 2025’s If You Asked for a Picture skyrocketed her into the levels of acclaim she knows today for her ferocious lyricism, biting guitar lines, and brick wall of a rhythm section that sorts through the wreckage of a bad relationship. On Violins, her third record, she proves she really still is that girl. 

Violins is bigger and messier than anything that’s ever been called a Blondshell record, and it really feels like an illustrious reconciliation with violence, faith, being inside of your body, and growing up. She’s said she wrote this one trusting her listeners more, and needing to explain herself less. On Violins, Blondshell doesn’t just tell you a story, the story comes flying off the pages into real life, favoring image over narration without dulling the hooks we know her for best. The title track on the record opens with a strangely patient note, building its chorus out of an offhand line of conversation to make a point about how real healing never arrives on anyone else’s schedule. It’s a bold way to start a rock record, but Blondshell has always shown us she’s bold if nothing else. 

Towards the middle of the record, the more patient tracks pay off, “Lucky” is early standout territory. It’s a sun-bleached, slightly delirious feeling song that turns forced gratitude into a vehicle for real grief. “Heart Has to Work So Hard,” a stand-out, swings itself towards anthem territory, chronicling a friendship strained by someone else’s struggle to hold on, while “New Shape” pulls the same subject into a quieter, more acoustic focus. Elsewhere throughout this tracklisting, Blondshell returns to the body as material with “Two Fried” and “New Age Trojan Horse” handling examining the body with more ease and less armor than her earlier work. The record was produced alongside longtime collaborator Yves Rothman with a confidence that comes from three albums of trust. “Sea Left,” is the record’s cleanest left turn, trading those typical rock instincts for something hushed and closer to devotional and less about religion than about which everyday things actually deserve reverence.

By the time “Fur Elise” closes things out, built around the deliberately wrong idea of walking down the aisle to a piece of music nobody would pick for a wedding, Violins has made its case: this is Blondshell in the process of growing up in public, choosing imagery over confession without losing the nerve that got her here. It’s a less immediate record than If You Asked for a Picture, but that’s because growing up never follows a pattern, so why should she?

Listen to Violins below: