Bridie Monds-Watson is only 18 years old, but already this Irish musician has gotten kicked out of music school, toured with Chvrches, and released not one, but two stellar EPs under her alter-ego SOAK. “After my regular school I went to a special music school,” she remembers over the phone, “But it was around the time when I just started to do a lot of shows in other places, and it became hard for the teachers to make sure I was getting stuff done… so they asked me to leave.”Not that it really matters, though. Having picked up the guitar just a few years earlier, she was already working on whittling down her sound: comprised of dreamy melodies, heartwrenching lyrics, and a stripped-down, mesmerizing vibe. Drenched in melancholia and sharp-witted wisdom, it sounds a bit like if Lykke Li, Cat Power, and Kate Bush went back to high school. Or at the very least, having a warm wave crash all over you.The singer and songwriter (who grew up in the northern city of Derry) released her first EP Trains in March 2012, followed by Sea Creatures later that year. But despite getting callouts in publications like The Guardian, she somehow remained an under-the-radar tip. At least, until Chvrches discovered a cover the teenager did of their hit “The Mother We Share” and promptly signed her to their label, Goodbye Records.She joined the Glasgow band on tour this year, an experience she says was “weird but awesome” because of their different fan bases and disparate musical genres. Nowadays she’s headlining her own tour, where fans chant along to her singles “Blud” and “B a NoBody,” and simultaneously recording her debut album for Rough Trade Records. In the meantime, we’ve got a first look at her gorgeous new video for “B a NoBody” below.Starring her real-life friends and directed by Charlie Rotberg, the clip revolves around the track’s main themes of teenage existentialism. “It’s sort of a help song,” Monds-Watson explains. She wrote it when many of her friends had left for college and they were all going through that “What the hell am I doing with my life?” phase. “The video is about life, earning your stripes, figuring out your purpose,” she says. “Even though everyone lets their balloons go at the end of the video, they can’t really let them go—because just like the strings, you’re eventually brought back to reality.”Sound deep? It is, and it’s only a taste of what’s coming up next from the emerging star. Just don’t ask her specifics: “I don’t like thinking too much about the future or stuff like that, because it’s like, ‘Wait, I only started playing how long ago?!’ It’s strange.”
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