Minneapolis indie pop band she’s green came to DC9 on October 9th in fine form, touring for their first album, swallowtail (via Photo Finish Records). This was also their first US and Canada headlining tour.
They received quite the warm welcome from DC denizens both in energy and in selling out DC9. It was popular enough that we had to wait in line on the rooftop before getting in. Happy to see it, that was only the second time it has happened to me at DC9 (across dozens of shows), the first being Chrissy Costanza. This was also the second time I’ve witnessed them live (also at DC9 in 2025, opening for Glixen), and had made a mental note to see them again whenever they returned.
They kicked off their one hour, 12-song set with one from the album, “locket”, that had a quiet and lush intro. The song speaks to keeping emotions hidden and secret, not acknowledging how you really feel in a relationship.
Next came “keeper”, an atmospheric ode to remembering and reflecting on what a past relationship actually meant, as these lyrics attest, ‘I’m picking apart what you meant to me’. Four of the first five songs came from swallowtail, and they performed six of the seven songs from the album in total.
she’s green began playing in 2022, and consists of vocalist Zofia Smith, guitarists Liam Armstrong and Raines Lucas, bassist Teddy Nordvold, and drummer Kevin Seebeck. They focus heavily on shoegaze and dream pop, self-describing their esthetic as ‘moss music’. It has fuzzy and soft sounds that dig into the loam of nature and discovery, where even getting lost in a dense forest is an honest outcome. Guitarist Liam Armstrong described it in a press release as, “I always think about this experience I had as a kid, seeing a stump that was filled with moss. It gave me the feeling that there are smaller worlds.” In the forest my grandparents owned, I can picture just such a place – a towering stump, covered in moss and the burnt sienna of decomposition, the top full of sprouting trees reaching towards the sky.
The lone song in that first five not from the album was “purple”, probably my favorite song they performed that evening. It is from their 2023 EP Wisteria. Of course the lights that circulated into the dense DC crowd were purple, while the band jammed around the stage and gazed yearningly at their shoes. The song speaks to your partner making a mess of a relationship and while it is far too late to make amends, still in the cold deep recesses of your own heart it still beats for them.
Occasionally Sophia put a tambourine to good work like in their single, “smile again” (also among their best songs). Another single not on any album or EP that I enjoyed was “graze”, about bad memories that keep knocking on your window and following you as you try to forget and move on to something new. The guitars, with a later jam, and Sophia’s voice, with a lilting finish, takes you deep into their mossy world, and if faces of those around you are a measure, zero people wanted to escape.
Before “mandy”, also from Wisteria, one of the band members shouted ‘Free Palestine! And fuck ICE!’ to raucous cheers from the crowd. Sophia shared, ‘This song is about taking care of each other’, and for nearly the whole song people swayed with the lights of their phone, illuminating faces that were enjoying the love of the moment. The band got together and took a selfie with the crowd, while Sophia tickled our egos with, ‘This is really beautiful from a stage perspective.’ Obviously. Only beauty and love had been allowed in the entrance doors. The song’s verses and chorus, almost indistinguishable as an overgrown wall of sound, twirled and coalesced into an odyssey of internal discovery, like walking through a forest. It builds towards a crescendo in the finale as if the blue sky suddenly emerged amongst the tree canopy.
They ended the set with the closing song of swallowtail, “close your eyes”. I did close my eyes for a time, and it brought me back to Liam’s comment and to my childhood, standing before the stump and wondering if it was strong enough to climb. We never tried, but some things are there to admire and ponder. Like the song, which Sophia described in interviews as about a mysterious figure that reoccurs in her dreams, yet they lived a full life in this world of dreams.
Then the crowd had to open our eyes and realize the set was over and slowly stream to the merch table or the exit. For those in withdrawal, take these mitigation strategies to heart. First, buy swallowtail or stream it repeatedly. Second, find your stump. Third, take off your shoes, and feel the forest floor. Lastly, dream.
Until next time.
Setlist
- locket
- keeper
- purple
- paper thin
- empty house
- smile again
- graze
- willow
- bleed
- mettle
- mandy
- close your eyes
