The Prettiots Are Not a Girl Band

It’s almost 6 p.m. in New York, but Kay Kasparhauser and Lulu Prat of The Prettiots aren’t quite sure which time zone they’re in. They’ve just returned from a show-heavy two weeks in the U.K., and their luggage is still lost somewhere between Oslo Airport and JFK. They have less than 48 hours before going full force on the U.S. leg of their tour, with the first stop in Detroit and a show scheduled for Lost Lake Lounge in Denver on Monday, March 14.

For those who have yet to find themselves on Spotify listening to the Prettiots’ debut LP Funs Cool, the post-punk duo has been described as the “antichrist version of Zooey Deschanel” by Paste Magazine, with their ukulele-centric pop, and the two musicians describe their band as “female-driven.”

“We’re not a girl band, because that’s not a genre, but we’re an all-girl band,” says Kasparhauser, the band’s singer and ukulele player. “We’re an all-girl indie-pop band that just likes to talk about female issues. It’s very much just how we speak, and my experiences. These songs are basically just a diary of my real life.”


The Prettiots’ songwriting walks a fine line between funny and dark, and Kasparhauser says it can sometimes take a “very specific person” to see the type of humor that they indulge in. The girls use “Suicide Hotline” to refer to Sylvia Plath and The Bell Jar, have an entire song dedicated to Christopher Meloni, aka Detective Elliot Stabler of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Kasparhauser calls out her ex-boyfriends by name in “Boys (That I Dated in High School).”

“To a certain degree, people can relate really well to these songs, and I think they cling to them,” says bassist Prat, referring to lyrics like, “Ew, why aren’t you using GrubHub?” She adds, "It’s a source of comfort that they might not be getting a lot of the time in pop-related music.”
Prat goes on to say that their music can sometimes be “pretty intimate and intimidating,” and hopes that fans of the Prettiots can see the honesty behind their lyricism. Audiences may be put off by lyrics like, “On a scale of one to Plath I’m like a four/My head’s not in the oven but I can’t get off the floor” or “He wouldn’t dump his girlfriend/He said she gave such good head.”

“We’re not trying to push people out of their comfort zones,” Kasparhauser says. “We’re just doing what we’re doing, and if you’ve heard of us, then you’re probably like us.”

Catch the Prettiots singing about boys, Kombucha and hopefully Queen’s "Fat Bottomed Girls" next Monday, March 14, at Lost Lake Lounge. The show starts at 9 p.m., and tickets are $10 at the door. Visit theprettiots.com for more information on the duo.