Hello reader,
How are you today? Ready to discover more great music?
Today, we’re excited to share a prolific artist we think you’ll really enjoy – eclectic Toronto-based band U.S. Girls. The group was formed in 2007 by singer-songwriter, producer, film composer, and author Meghan Remy, an Illinois native. She has been the main constant, as over the years, her backing band has featured a rotating cast of musicians.
Between 2008 and 2023, the band released eight albums, Introducing… (2008), Go Grey (2010), U.S. Girls on KRAAK (2011), Gem (2012), Half Free (2015), In a Poem Unlimited (2018), Heavy Light (2020), Bless This Mess (2023) and three EPs Kankakee Memories (2008), U.S. Girls/Dirty Beaches Split EP (2011), and Free Advice Column (2013). They also released a live album, Lives, in 2023. Exploring their discography further, you’ll find Polaris Prize shortlisted and Juno-nominated albums on the 4AD record label: Half Free (2015), In A Poem Unlimited (2018), Heavy Light (2020), Bless This Mess (2023), and Lives (2023).
According to a press release, “as a platform and persona, U.S. Girls operates on a uniquely out-of-time wavelength, alternately wronged and rueful, classic but contemporary, bruised vignettes of poetic Americana through a feminist lens.”
Remy has been very prolific outside the group as well. She exhibited her college work and directed several music videos and other video artworks, including her short film Woman’s Advocate (2014). She published her memoir, Begin By Telling, in 2021 and is working on a follow-up. Earlier this year, Remy showed off her skills as a film composer, scoring Grace Glowicki’s horror comedy Dead Lover, which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. And lastly, she’s produced a number of albums, including Bria Salmena’s Big Dog (2025) on Sub Pop.
On June 20, Remy and U.S. Girls will return to add to that prolific output, with the new album Scratch It. Over ten days, Remy and her Nashville-based backing band – Dillon Watson on guitar, Jack Lawrence (The Dead Weather, The Raconteurs, Loretta Lynn) on bass, Domo Donoho on drums, and both Jo Schornikow and Tina Norwood on keys, as well as harmonica legend Charlie McCoy (Elvis, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison) – recorded the album live in the room with minimal overdubs and mixed to tape.
The album features Remy and the band decidedly moving away from the computer-based production of past albums in favor of the richness of sound that comes with recording on two-inch tape. That decision adds vibrancy to the collection’s diverse tapestry of sounds, with the group bouncing between genres such as country, gospel, garage rock, soul, disco, and folk balladry. It’s a sound that Remy describes as “in progress,” though she’s hopeful it has all the ingredients for the album to be nominated for a GRAMMY.
“I enjoy that not being genre-bound really means there are no rules,” says Remy. “Therefore, anything can be thrown in the pot.”
In SWT’s opinion, the album’s opening single, “Like James Said,” and its moody, electrifying atmosphere are a great introduction to the group and album. We’re stoked to highlight the song for our Singles Spotlight series.
The song was co-written with longtime collaborator Rich Morel and joins other co-writes such “Rosebud” and “4 American Dollars”. She shared production duties on the song with Andrija Tokic, Watson, Schornikow, and Slim Twig.
Below is the music video for the song, a single-shot dance performance that was directed by and starring comedian Tom Henry:
If you’re a fan of late-night, irresistibly danceable smooth rock and soul grooves and artists such as Electric Light Orchestra, Bootsy Collins, and James Brown, we think you’ll dig the track. For us, the thing that really distinguishes it from the rest is Remy’s commanding presence as a vocalist and songwriter.
Over the course of the song’s three-and-a-half-minute runtime, Remy sings about the healing power of dancing alone. Her impassioned delivery leaves no doubt that she means what she’s singing about. The song is what she considers her lyrical response to Brown’s “Get Up Offa That Thing.”
“When you are having a transcendent time dancing alone, your eyes are closed, and then all the sudden, you feel something on your leg,” says Remy. “You open your eyes and a human you don’t know is grinding on you and you think, ‘I hate dancing in public’.”
The song opens with Remy singing, “James said, ‘You gotta dance til you feel better’/That’s the medicine I need/To cure myself of you/Just give me space/I’m doing my own thang/I don’t owe you anything/You may not advance, may not advance/You know I’ll never teach you this dance.”
The track features Remy providing some great dark comedy curveball lyrics, including the elongated pause in the line, “I’m the queen of exercising […] pain.” Her lyrics stanzas are broken up by a deeper voice repeating “Stretch, move/Pose, groove” that pulses along with the melody.
The group recorded the song and album in Nashville at the “notorious” Bomb Shelter Studios with “equally notorious musicians such as Charlie McCoy (Bob Dylan, Elvis, Roy Orbison) and Jack Lawrence (The Raconteurs).”
“During tracking, Charlie McCoy told me that I make the weirdest music he has ever heard,” says Remy. “Best review I have ever had. Career highlight!”
“Like James Said” follows the release of the sprawling and equally sublime 12-minute lead single “Bookends,” which pays tribute to Remy’s late friend and former Power Trip frontman Riley Gale. The song features Remy quoting John Carey’s Eyewitness To History, a historical collection of 300-plus eyewitness accounts of notable world events spanning twenty-four centuries.
We think the album’s singles create a one-two punch that have us eager to hear the rest of the album when it drops later this month.
Here is the tracklist for Scratch It:
- Like James Said
- Dear Patti
- Firefly on the 4th of July
- The Clearing
- Walking Song
- Bookends
- Emptying the Jimador
- Pay Streak
- No Fruit
Here’s where you can catch U.S. Girls on tour this summer and fall:
You can follow and listen to U.S. Girls at the below links:
- Facebook: @yousgirls
- Instagram: @usgirls.and.remy
- Bandcamp: usgirls.bandcamp.com/
- Spotify: U.S. Girls on Spotify
- YouTube: @USGirlsMusic
- Apple Music: music.apple.com/us/artist/u-s-girls/346049270
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
