Q&A: Kid Sistr Rewrite Queer Love Stories on “American Teenage Prophecy”
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
Photo Credit: Tanner Deutsch
REIMAGINING QUEER ROMANCE WITHOUT LIMITS — In an industry that still too often filters queer love through tragedy, spectacle, or the male gaze, LA-based indie rock trio Kid Sistr are choosing something softer. Their newest single, “American Teenage Prophecy,” is a reimagining and a reclamation that insists queer romance deserves the same innocence and cinematic sweep long reserved for heterosexual storylines.
Kid Sistr describes it as imagining “a world where queer love is as natural as breathing.” They add, “‘American Teenage Prophecy’ feels like a flower blooming and inside it, there is an acoustic guitar and three gay girls.” It’s organic, unguarded and alive. The bloom isn’t just romantic, it’s also deeply political.
The spark came from a late-night viewing of the 2010 biopic The Runaways, the film chronicling the rise of the pioneering teenage rock band fronted by Joan Jett and Cherie Currie. Kid Sistr focused on the possibility of what if Joan Jett and Cherie Currie were in a romantic relationship? What if their story, often framed through scandal or male fantasy, had been allowed to unfold on its own terms?
Their prophecy is one where queer stories sit at the forefront, not as token representation or subtext, but as the default. The male gaze doesn’t mediate desire. There is no audience to appease, no voyeuristic framing. Just girls with guitars, falling in love.
“The song is meant to imagine a world where queer romance flourishes in all the ways straight romance is allowed to: first kisses in treehouses, passing notes in study hall, high school prom, dorm room romance, in every decade, every state, every country,” the band shares. “What are the love stories we could have if there was nothing standing in our way?”
Photo Credit: Tanner Deutsch
LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what inspires the atmosphere or sonic world you aim to create for your listeners?
SABEL: I feel our friendship is the source of inspiration. We're very close friends. We've known each other for a very long time, so I feel like it's hard to put one specific answer, because our jokes are all over the place and we just like to make each other laugh. Having people enter that world is our objective, just being ourselves and what makes each other laugh is what we want people to see.
LUNA: Your newest single “American Teenage Prophecy” centers queer romance and reimages queer love flourishing in all spaces. What inspired the track and what emotional or thematic ground did you set out to explore?
SARA: The track was initially inspired by The Runaways biopic from 2010 with Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning. I had just watched it and was thinking about Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie, and they have a romance in some way. It's sexual. They're also friends and in a band, but they have this special relationship in the movie that they allude to happening in real life. There are interviews that they’re hooking up. It was just imagining what it was like for them to be in that relationship, and if they had been allowed to be in it, and not been swallowed up by the music industry and the male gaze.
LUNA: How did The Runaways biopic influence the musical and lyrical choices for this track? Were there particular moments in the film that stuck with you creatively?
SARA: When they kiss. Kristen Stewart's so hot and sexy and she's so badass.
SABEL: Basically, Sara started the song and it sat as a voice memo and then our producer picked out a bunch of songs that we had sent and loved that song and was so excited to work on it. Sara immediately finished it and it didn't need anything else. Happy to have let her fly on that one. I was such a Twilight fan and such a Kristen Stewart fan, and I do remember when she decided to actually cut her hair for that movie and it was such a huge deal and she wasn’t out at the time.
SARA: It was her soft launch.
LUNA: “American Teenage Prophecy” is accompanied by a music video which adds more depth to the song’s themes. What inspired the video and how was your experience filming it?
SABEL: It's always hard to go back and remember how an idea started, because it's usually the three of us just blasting a ton of ideas into our group chat or in person.
SARA: Our first idea for it was to do a throuple marriage. Becca was like, what if it was American vignettes. It started an idea of the throuple marriage and then we were looking on Pinterest and watching different video references like Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild.” It was a bunch of different weird images and vignettes, and then it went down so many different paths trying to portray the possibility of queerness in these different American time periods that are conservative on the face. Whenever you see the 1776 Revolutionary War imagery, it's because some conservative person has the MAGA diva makeup on and a 1776 necklace. We wanted to take the Revolutionary War references and also the nuclear family imagery, which on the face, are conservative, and just replace them with gay girls. The 70s are not necessarily as quintessentially conservative in image, but we just also wanted to pay homage to the inspiration.
SABEL: At one point, I was gravitating towards recreating a bunch of different American paintings and photographs and have it be all girls which I think started us on the let's have it be a reimagination of only girls. We put the American Gothic in, but it just takes on a ton of different paths and aesthetics. We were like, what if we just do a nuclear family and we picked who was going to be the dad and the baby and the mom.
It's an emotional song. We haven't really done a music video for a slow, emotional song. It's easier to come up with really dumb ideas for fun, upbeat songs. Sara thought it should still be funny. We hopefully found the right balance of funny, but also makes you think and is emotional when you think about it hard.
SARA: We also couldn't have done it without our amazing director, Grace Stromatt. She put together an entire crew of just all women. The whole day was awesome. She was like, I didn't even do this on purpose. It was just the right people for the job. It really was amazing to make this project and know that everyone who made it was a woman, and there were so many queer women on set. It was so awesome because of her. Our amazing editor Fernanda Vega, the two of them really popped off.
LUNA: How do you hope listeners — especially your femme and queer audiences — can connect with or find power in this new era of music from you? What emotions or messages do you want to leave with them?
SABEL: More behind the scenes on these new songs that we're releasing. It's our first time releasing a selected amount of songs with the same producer. In the past, when we had just moved here, we had worked with a bunch of different producers trying to see who we liked, released a bunch of different songs to test the waters and we love all those songs, but it didn't really feel like it was a cohesive work of ours. With these songs, we spent a really, really long time, over a year for sure, narrowing down 40 songs that we had, and picking which ones we felt most connected to, and really reworking them with our producer, who’s also a girl. We picked these songs to reintroduce ourselves to people that have been with us, or to new people. I think they're a good group of fun, emotional, intimate, lovey songs. We're just trying to reintroduce ourselves as who we are now.
LUNA: Say if someone hasn’t heard of your music yet. Which song would you show them that best captures your artistic maturity and style?
SARA: I would say “Shitshow.”
SABEL: My go to song isn’t released yet. I would say the whole EP.
SARA: I think if you're looking to get into it and just really understand exactly what it is, watch the Shitshow music video, because it encapsulates the whole vibe and the range. “American Teenage Prophecy” is amazing, but it's a very specific moment for the band, like a ballad moment. If you watch the “Shitshow” music video, you will understand what it's like to be a Kid Sistr fan. We'll indoctrinate you.
SABEL: It's also a very scrappy music video, which has been our vibe for the past five years in LA and “American” was a more elevated storytelling experience. “Shitshow” is what we can do with no budget and just friends.
LUNA: What is the best environment to listen to your music in?
SARA: At one of our shows.
SABEL: We are going on tour.
SARA: We're going on tour in April. I think at one of our shows is the best way, and then at any time of day, thinking about going to another one of our shows — imagining, remembering, reimagining and then buying your tickets to the next one.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like that you would like to share with Luna?
SABEL: I'm feeling good. We just woke up to our first 100,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, which is exciting. It feels good that we've worked on this for so long, and people are listening to it. I'm just excited to see whatever happens and what comes next. I'm just eerily awaiting.
SARA: We are so happy to connect with the readers and we hope that some of the art that we're making right now can be impactful for your readers and we hope to see them at some shows.
