Wet Kiss Tease Upcoming Album With ‘Skirt’; Thus Spoke The Broken Chanteuse Out June 27 Via Dinosaur City

Naarm/Melbourne antic glam rock group Wet Kiss unveil ‘Skirt’, the second single from their sophomore album Thus Spoke the Broken Chanteuse, out Friday, June 27 via Dinosaur City. The single arrives ahead of their headline show at The Curtin on May 9 with Wrong Way Up and Boyfriend TV. 

‘Skirt’ deals with a disastrous, yet funny and formative, gig mishap abroad. It’s a 70s rock anthem by way of 90s PJ Harvey, serving as a retort to leering audience members but also poking fun at Wet Kiss frontwoman Brenna O's on-stage humiliation (“Girls get paid in fascination / even while the night gets wasted”). She had just moved to Berlin and was playing her first solo set, but the show didn’t pan out as planned. “I got really drunk on white wine and it was a disaster. I luckily saved it by bantering. I had my foot up on the amp the whole time, and after the set my friend was like, ‘Oh my God, everyone was trying to peer up your skirt.”

The accompanying music video was shot and edited (last night!) in two takes in collaboration with Sam Eidelson. Brenna O explains the creative vision: “We filmed the video in Chinatown, taping a pair of those diffraction rave glasses that turn light sources into love hearts to the camera lens. I styled myself to be my own image of Marylin Monroe in reference to the iconic manhole photograph. To create the effect that wind was blowing my skirt, up we had an assistant use a garden leaf blower. As a twist, I stitched fairy lights in my stockings so when Nathan cranked up the leaf blower, my vulnerable area was glowing!”

Thus Spoke the Broken Chanteuse is exactly what the title suggests. Our chanteuse here is the sensational jezebel Brenna O: Part Factory Girl, part Fassbinder heroine, all peroxide locks and shiny, skin-tight “$2 dresses”, sneering and growling across the stage, mixing greasy punk with cabaret excess. Or as she likes to put it: “the punk Bette Midler is here.” What is she saying? Well, a few things.

Produced by Andrew Huhtanen McEwan, Thus Spoke the Broken Chanteuse is about the grubby pleasures of hopping on the Melbourne-to-Berlin artist pipeline. It’s about “daddy at the abattoir,” slaughtering piggies. It’s about gloomy waits at the gender clinic so you can get your estrogen. It’s about dingy, crap clubs, desolate glamour, strutting down the street with your dignity in tatters, upskirting, indulgence and the glory of turning fantasy into reality. The album name is also something of a joke, melding a music journalist’s snide comment about the band (“broken chanteuse”) with a nod to Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

The story of Wet Kiss is the story of myth-turned-real. Brenna knew what she wanted — glam-rock mutated for the adderall age — she just needed to find the players. So she put out ads in local rock magazines and found them: Daniel Dog (guitar), Aldo Thomas (piano), Ben Sendy-Smithers (Bass), Ju Shung (Lead Guitar), Ruby Rabbit (drums) and Agnes Whalen (backing vocals). The band quickly moved in together, quickly put out their beguiling debut record She’s So Cool, and quickly built a live reputation. Their performances left crowds gobsmacked: there were floppy bunny ears and buckets of sweat; costume changes and clothes ripped to smithereens; ecstatic howls and hilarious antagonism.

Plenty of Thus Spoke the Broken Chanteuse is brimming with this tension — between the hedonistic triumph of inventing oneself, and the dreary texture of modern life. Brenna became well acquainted with this conflict during a long stint in Berlin. Much of the record was written there, and as such, many of the songs are slathered in a thick glob of Weimar decadence.

“I want to carry on that spirit of dirty street decadence, but also the great tradition of self-invention,” says Brenna about Thus Spoke the Broken Chanteuse.

Catapulting onto the live music scene with the release of their debut album She’s So Cool via Dero Arcade (cumgirl8, Divide & Dissolve) Wet Kiss have built a dedicated following through word-of-mouth and their righteous live shows. In between support stages with Amyl & the Sniffers, RVG, Bar Italia, HTRK and CIVIC, the group were selected for SXSW Sydney’s official 2024 showcase, made their debut on The ‘Sup for Golden Plains XVII last month, and have toured across Australia’s east coast, Europe and the UK.

Dunk yourself in Wet Kiss’ filthy, lavish depths when they perform a headline set at The Curtin on Friday, May 9, 2025 with Wrong Way Up and Boyfriend TV, return to Gadigal Land/Sydney for Nag Nag Nag on Friday, May 23 and support Floodlights at The Forum on May 24. Stay connected with Wet Kiss on Instagram for another festival announcement next month.

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