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1. Altar Girl
Sounds like: The coven screaming in your face, followed by a consensual hug to make sure you’re good.
The four members of the band Altar Girl might hate church, but their vibes are immaculate.
They hug each other hello at the Best New Bands photo shoot. Their looks are coordinated, with everyone wearing fishnets somewhere on their body and three of the four wearing winged liquid eyeliner. At the shoot, they’re clearly having a blast, laughing and asking to see how the photos are turning out and offering to slither on the hood of a 2005 Honda Civic, Whitesnake video style. And when asked who here has religious trauma, they answer in sync:
“All of us.”
The post-punk, all-femme quartet Altar Girl, WW’s Best New Band of 2026, describes a variety of ways church messed them up, and it comes through in their music, too. Altar Girl is named for the service position that bassist Sam Mahon couldn’t have, not that she would have wanted it. Guitarist Mara Vosien got sent to Jesus Camp every summer. Drummer Ariel Chamberlin went to a Christian school in Alaska.
“That fucked me up, especially being a transmasc person who was very much a tomboy,” they say. Church leaders told them that dressing and acting masculine went against God’s wishes for women, plus that they were going to hell for being gay. “That takes years of therapy and screaming loud music later in life.”
Chamberlin is getting a lot of opportunities to scream loud music and wail on their drums in Altar Girl, a post-punk, goth-adjacent rock band that exists at the intersection of Philadelphia punk band Mannequin Pussy and influential ’70s British rockers Siouxsie and the Banshees. (Hat tip to the fan who gave the band that compliment after a Bremerton, Wash., show.) The rage is there, but never at the expense of melody.
A good example is the band’s 2025 single “Chapel Perilous,” which begins with lead vocalist Kay Morrisette asking, “What happens when you find divinity in rejecting the divine?” in a low register, tension building through Mahon’s bassline and tight drumming with shimmery flourishes from Chamberlin, a roller coaster ticking up an incline. Then, Morrisette unleashes into the catchy chorus, asking more hard questions of the church, yes, but also nailing those notes: “Was all of this coincidence?/Or can it be explained?/Forced to my knees in chapel perilous/I pray.”
Altar Girl formed about three years ago, a partnership between lead singer Morrisette and guitarist and lyricist Mara Vosien. The band was originally named Rotten Holes Bible Club, but fans kept mishearing or forgetting it. When the group chat finally landed on Altar Girl after months of deliberation, they all immediately knew it was right. (A remnant of the former name lives on in their matching “RHBC” tattoos that they got backstage at a show in Seattle last month.)
The band works hard, sticking to a weekly practice schedule and playing shows on the weekends. They pack into a white Dodge van and tour all over the West. Vosien is always writing lyrics for new songs and sends them to Morrisette, who records audio files of herself humming back melodies over a chord progression. They’re locking in with their stage presence, even getting in the crowd occasionally, which is new.
It’s like the more they’re putting into Altar Girl, the more they’re getting back, including being named Best New Band. The group describes the honor as “crazy” and “humbling,” though Chamberlin pauses before saying it’s a blessing. “How about a ‘sacrilegious blessing’?”
Long term, the band hopes to keep pushing themselves musically and take Altar Girl as far as the project will go, while maintaining fun as the primary goal. It goes a lot deeper, though. In addition to writing about breaking free from the church, their songs delve into climate change (“Anthropocene”), gender dysphoria (“Simple Pleasures”), and having to step away from family members because of politics (“Jagged Natures”). Chamberlin says it’s a way to process the anti-immigrant, anti-trans political wave in the country right now.
“This gives me purpose to, like, wake up. Because what can I fucking do?” they say. “I just want to keep writing music that either wakes people up or makes people feel like they’re not alone.”
