OUTBREAK 2025 Ones to Watch – LIDO Weekend 2
15 June 2025
Prima Queen have taken the UK music scene by storm over the past year, playing main-stage festival slots and touring with the likes of The Big Moon, Wet Leg and Dream Wife. Fronted by cross-atlantic duo, Louise Macphail and Kristin McFadden, the bands’ music combines angelic vocals with vulnerable sentiments.After stumbling across them at The Sunflower Lounge in Birmingham, and watching their sets at two festivals this summer, I can vouch that these guys have something special.
Their sound stands out amongst the rest: combining the wit of bands like Wet Leg with the poignant lyricism reminiscent of The Cranberries or Mazzy Star. With tender story-telling, this band is perfect for anyone who appreciates indie rock with a softer side. Anticipating the release of their debut album in 2024, and on a self-indulgent whim, I will be ranking my favourite tracks from the band. Expressing experiences of love, heartbreak, guilt and grief, Prima Queen has already won my heart, and I’m sure after giving these tracks a listen, they’ll win over yours too.
1.Eclipse
With a classic indie rock instrumentation, and cutting lyrics, Eclipse captures the guilt felt by our speaker over their feelings for their past lover. The opening verse sets up a romantic situation: “You said the sky looked like magic and we kissed in the half-light.” But this is interrupted by the realisation of an ex-love in the chorus: “I’m not over my last love; I think I told you about him once but maybe I played it off too much.”
Accompanying this narrative is a catchy melody with an anthemic chorus. The band typically end their live sets with this track, and it’s one that is sure to get the crowd going.
2.Back Row
Prima Queen captures the multitude of feelings associated with a past relationship in Back Row. The opening notion of mistaking a stranger for a former partner creates a haunting effect: “I chased a stranger down the street last night thinking that it was you.” Our speaker chases them down the street to discover they were never really there: “I guess you wouldn’t be around here but then again you’re known to reappear.”
Back Row has a succinct narrative that explores feelings of regret, longing, anger and confusion. At the band’s live shows, the crowd belts along to the angsty line: “I tried to tell you how much you meant to me, but you wouldn’t let me in, You said “what the fuck does that even mean?”
3.Hydroplane
Hydroplane is the final track on Prima Queen’s EP ‘Not The Baby’. It describes the relationship between two sisters by examining their transition from childhood into adulthood. Employing nostalgia and memory, the track describes the intimate connection between sisters, despite distance and difference in lives: “Now you’re the only advice I’d ever take […] I know you said my voice has changed, but I still say the same things you used to say.”
The verses are divided by an emotive guitar motif and complemented throughout the track by a violin which creates a theatrical sound, contrasting with the gentle vocal harmonies of Macphail and Mc Fadden.
4.Milk Teeth
If you’re a sentimental soul, this is the Prima Queen song for you. Milk Teeth uses anecdotes about the mundane and banal to describe the human-shaped hole left when a relationship ends. Opening with an anecdote about cold feet in bed, it looks at the subtle and silent parts of a partnership that no one else knows: “You’re the hand no one sees under the table on my knee.”
The lyrics explore the heartbreak of a former partner moving on. Suddenly these intimacies are no longer yours to know, but someone else’s: “Does she know the smell of the shampoo in your hair? Does she lie next to you in her matching underwear?” Sung on loop as the music crescendos, these lyrics create a heart-wrenching effect.
5.Invisible Hand
Invisible Hand is a cathartic track that highlights the debilitating effects of depression. Using the metaphor of an ‘invisible hand’ to describe mental health struggles, the track is a sincere expression of the artists’ own experience: “Sorry that I’m not here, I’m just being strangled by an invisible hand.”
The song’s bridge refers to remedies and throw-away comments given to those struggling with mental illness: “Tried to meditate and I watched what I ate but it didn’t make it go away.” These attempts feel futile because they don’t reach the root of someone’s struggles; unseen by onlookers is an intangible condition causing very real damage.
