When Bria Salmena tells Loverboy, ‘I just love singing’, she’s not lying. She’s prolific. From fronting Canadian indie rock band Frigs, to touring in Orville Peck’s live band, releasing her own Cuntry Covers EPs and then finding time for her electronic alias God’s Mom, Bria brings that vocal versatility to every project she’s part of. Intentionally experimenting and utilising every colour of her voice, she makes it her mission to always keep things different.

Now today Bria steps out with Big Dog, her debut album under her own name via Sub Pop. Pulling influences from Industrial, Post-Punk, Shoe-Gaze and more, the rawness is evident as she sings about the end of a relationship and her journey of self-exploration. First single, ‘Stretch the Struggle‘ has already found itself onto our Most Played while the video for current single ‘Rags‘ is exactly the kind of energy we need more of in 2025 and we hope to see on her UK tour in May.

Loverboy sat down to talk with Bria in her home in L.A. to talk about the power of community, being obsessed with Brody Dalle and just how badly the Spice Girls’ debut is underrated…

Bria, first things first, I have a feeling I saw you play my adoptive city of Barcelona back in 2019 as part of Orville Peck’s band?
Oh, did you have to go down some stairs to get to that place? Yes! We were there that night. There were some really funny backstage photos from that show actually.

My friend and I were definitely like, ‘OK but who is Orville’s vocalist because she is amazing.’ And now here we are six years later with the arrival of your solo debut album. What moment made you decide the time was right to release Big Dog into the wild?
Full tea, it was supposed to come out last year. But in hindsight I am glad it got pushed because it feels like we really had time to ruminate on the intention of it. Now we can commit ourselves fully to putting it out and touring the album which was why Duncan (Hay Jennings – producer and longtime collaborator) and I decided we needed to stop touring with Orville in the first place.

Did pushing it back mean you were tinkering with it even longer?
There was quite a bit of back and forth about the mixing post-recording but at some point you have to wash your hands of it.

I hear the title was originally Kittycat Butterfly which I cannot imagine somehow.
Yes. I was so fucking dead set on that being the title. I remember being in the studio and saying ‘What the fuck are we going to call this record?’ It’s a really vulnerable album and my brain was saying, ‘I want the title to be as far as possible from what it’s really about.’ Just something silly. Then I got a text from my niece’s Mum of my niece with her face painted. She had said she wanted to be a kittycat butterfly.

Cute. You’ve said the record is about realising you are never really alone…
Yes, as I was going through these experiences I was writing about the ups and downs. The one thing I realised when constantly digging myself out was that I had my closest and dearest people near me. I’m very lucky that that is the case and also that I get to make music with them. So in some ways it felt as if they were experiencing all this bullshit with me. I wanted that to be a throughline of the process.
This record is wholly rooted in collaboration with Duncan. Then we wanted to bring other people in because when it’s a smaller project it can become very insular and it’s hard to get out of that. We both wanted different ears, different eyes on everything. Existing in a collaborative community is something Duncan and I feel very strongly about.

I had two fantasy lands I mentally escaped to as a closeted angsty teen in the mid-late 90s. Raving at the Hacienda during peak UK clubland was one and then seeing all my favourite female singer/songwriters at Lilith Fair was the other. Big Dog’s first single was ‘Stretch The Struggle’ transports me directly to Lilith Fair in the best way. I imagine that’s what it would sound like in 2025.
You know what? That is fucking cool. In Canada we had CD compilations called Women & Songs. It was apparently what birthed Lilith Fair. Maybe this is too Canadian but they featured artists like Jann Arden, Alanis Morrissette, Paula Cole…it was all this music from the late 90s/early 00s. Those were some of my first CDs. When I listen to it all now on a playlist, it’s very nostalgic for me. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t permeate somehow into me growing up as a singer. You hear that shit and you imitate it in your own way. So I respect that.

I love your vocals on that track so much, well across the album, but you really push your voice and use different parts of it in different songs. Was that intentional to really use your full range or is that just how you feel comfortable?
I definitely wanted to challenge myself on this record. A song like ‘Stretch the Struggle’ is very comfortable for me. I’ve been singing like that screamy, belty shit with Frigs for years. I do it with God’s Mom. But a song like ‘Bending Over Backwards’ which is actually not on the record is a really challenging song for me to sing because I’m switching between my chest voice and my falsetto a lot. It’s difficult to sing live. I think with this record Duncan and I wanted to explore the colours of my voice and put me in uncomfortable vocal situations and push my boundaries.
When I wrote ‘Hammer’ I was staying in a different apartment and was nervous that people could hear me, my neighbours, my roommate or whatever. So I was writing and singing in really low keys. So ‘Hammer’ is fucking low. Now we’re playing it live, we’re like, ‘Should we just step it up a bit?’ That lived experience informed the delivery of that song.

I read that you’ve said, ‘I identify as a singer.’ But I wondered where the writing fitted into it for you…
I love playing guitar, I love playing piano. I played drums the other day for like the seventh time in my life, jamming with some friends and that was fun. But my preferred way to express myself sonically is through my voice. The songwriting, yes, but I just love singing so much. Growing up it’s not very cool to be like, ‘I love to sing. I just want to sing.’ But I do!

I also love all the layering of backing vocals across the album. Which backing vocal are you most proud of for the detail that has gone into it?
That’s a great question, I love harmony singing. We had a lot of fun with the bridge on ‘Back of Birds’ because there is a lot of vocal manipulation in there. There are so many vocal tracks on ‘Twilight’ that we’ve just warped and shit. Most sounds that you think are very ambient and atmospheric that sound synthy, that’s just me singing. I don’t know if there is one that I am most happy about, I think they are all kind of crazy.

Next single is ‘Rags.’ Tell me about it.
‘Rags’ was a later addition. Truthfully I was sitting in that apartment that I used to live in and feeling very nostalgic. Thinking back to when I was 13 or 14, in my bedroom just emulating Courtney Love and Brody Dalle. That was such a pivotal time for me because I was discovering music, this form of expression I hadn’t before. I was hormonal too. I’ll never experience hearing music like that for the first time again. So I was thinking about that a lot and feeling disillusioned with a type of LA culture that I really don’t feel I identify with. So ‘Rags’ came from this very adolescent, ragey part of me.

Some of Frigs work was recorded in a haunted church…
Oh my God! That was so long ago. That was like 2013. But yes, we did.

I wanted to know if the recording location was important for Big Dog?
We recorded Cuntry Covers at home which was so important to us for the concept. So for this album Duncan and I were really excited to go to a studio where it didn’t feel like our insular world. Everybody who works there is very much part of the community of Toronto so it felt like a good neutral space to bring in all of these people, have them come in, feel comfortable and all contribute in a really productive way.

Now the other day you posted ‘Naked’ by the Spice Girls on your Insta…
Fuck, I love how detailed this is. I was listening to that record, cooking dinner the other night and I was like, ‘Yeah this whole record slapped.’ I love UK music from that time, like that sound. It’s so specific. From a North American perspective that album is not as associated with UK music from that time as it should be. I was like, ‘Damn these are all so fucking dancey!’ Then I was thinking I should sample some things. I was definitely having a moment with that album. It’s such a good record.

Our last question is always Mariah-coded and last time we spoke you said your favourite Mariah track was the Music Box European Bonus Track ‘Everything Fades Away’ which is one of my favourites. Amazing choice. Bravo. I wondered what your favourite was today…
There was a fucking Mariah Carey song that popped up in my algorithm the other day. It was a real classic – ‘Honey’. So my answer this time will just be really generic. I hadn’t actively listened to that song in a long time. Absolute fucking filth in the lyrics and I am here for it.

Big Dog is out now via Sub Pop
Bria plays the UK this May. For more info see www.briasalmena.com