As Glitterfox Disbands, Singer Solange Paape-Igoa Goes Solo

Solange Paape-Igoa’s last solo show was three presidential administrations ago. At that time, the Glitterfox frontperson was 18 and living in Long Beach, Calif. They had recently transplanted from inland Bakersfield and found a job at a roller-skating shop. “I would just roller-skate around town with my guitar on my back,” Paape-Igoa says. The shows mostly involved busking for tips on Long Beach’s bustling Second Street strip.

The 13 years since have included a marriage, a move to Portland, and the formation of an increasingly beloved indie-rock band. Glitterfox released their second full-length album, Decoder, last year, just weeks after a buzzy Pickathon performance that seemed to confirm the group had hit their stride. With Paape-Igoa’s husky, perfumed vocals at the center, the songs on Decoder strode out of the speakers with the sophisticated confidence of Tango in the Night–era Fleetwood Mac—a far cry from the scrappy origins of the band in the SoCal open-mic scene.

But on the heels of a divorce, as the band slowly dissolved, Paape-Igoa began taking the stage once again under their own name this spring. Following a low-key set opening for local singer-songwriter Linoy’s EP release at Atlantis Lounge in May, Paape-Igoa is slated to headline Mississippi Studios on Thursday, Aug. 20.

“It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a really long time,” the 35-year-old says, “just seeing a lot of other friends who have multiple projects.”

At Mississippi Studios, Glitterfox bassist Eric Stalker and drummer Blaine Heinonen are backing the singer-songwriter; Northern California troubadour Nat Lefkoff opens the evening.

Paape-Igoa will also be selling a limited run of CDs featuring five stripped-down new songs that place their voice in a mournful landscape of soft synth pads and drum machines. Whether this material will see a wider release is still up in the air, but they say they’re working on a full-length album. The setlist will also feature some Glitterfox reinterpretations and selections from Boo: The Musical, a stage show Paape-Igoa is in the process of writing about an intergenerational haunting.

“It’s set in the late ’90s, early 2000s; the grunge era,” Paape-Igoa says. “The lead character, who’s alive, is this very grunge Kurt Cobain–style dude. And the main ghost is this 1950s housewife—kind of a hopeless romantic character. It’s about worlds colliding.”

Paape-Igoa was born into a musical family of French Basque heritage. Their mom had a karaoke business and their dad played in a traditional Basque band in which Solange would occasionally sing.

“There’s a specific timbre I’ve heard in a lot of Basque singers, specifically a lot of women singers, where they have kind of a smoky quality to their voice,” Paape-Igoa says. “When I sing in Basque, it’s when my voice feels the most right.”

Paape-Igoa met Andrea Walker at an open-mic night in Long Beach in the summer of 2012. The two quickly struck up a personal and working relationship, performing on the local cafe circuit before founding Glitterfox in 2015. After a couple of years living out of a van and traveling around the West Coast, the two moved to Portland in 2018 and married in 2019.

“We did the van life for a couple years,” Paape-Igoa says. “I used to like moving a lot, and now I couldn’t imagine ever moving again.”

After Paape-Igoa and Walker touched down in Portland, Glitterfox started to seriously ramp up. Their wedding reception doubled as the first-ever Glitterfest, and they’ve hosted the festival annually since, developing a reputation as incubators for the local scene.

Their self-released debut album, Fringe, came out in March 2020, just before lockdown; the mini-album Night came out in 2022 (the same year they were one of WW’s Best New Bands), followed by a 2024 single on the vaunted Northwest punk label Kill Rock Stars and the release of Decoder in 2025 on Jealous Butcher.

Glitterfox provided Paape-Igoa with both a musical outlet and an opportunity to flex their multimedia skills, designing the band’s stickers, T-shirts and even their hair.

“The last couple Halloween shows with Glitterfox, I did really elaborate wigs,” they say. “I did a Marie Antoinette–style wig one year, and I did Bride of Frankenstein last year at the Aladdin [Theater]. I just like making stuff.”

However, Paape-Igoa says their world-building swallowed their songwriting time, leading to a creative imbalance with Walker, who contributed the bulk of the songs while Paape-Igoa served as lead vocalist.

“On a lot of the albums, it’d be like 8 to 2 [of my songs to theirs],” Paape-Igoa says. “I don’t write as much, but I’ve always had a certain level of shyness, and something I’ve been working on over the last couple years is being more comfortable sharing my music with people.”

Paape-Igoa and Walker ended their romantic partnership in 2024 and divorced not long thereafter. While the two continued to collaborate on music and enjoyed many of their dizziest highs as a band while separated, Paape-Igoa says “Glitterfox LLC” is currently in the process of dissolving. “We’ve tried really hard to figure it out,” Paape-Igoa says. “I don’t know how much I can say about it.”

Paape-Igoa is open to the possibility of more Glitterfox shows in the future, but the slower rhythms and creative freedom of a solo project suit them just fine for now. “It’s nice to be really emotional,” Paape-Igoa says, “and also kind of silly, too.”

HEAR: Solange Paape-Igoa at Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895, mississippistudios.com. 9 pm Thursday, Aug. 20. $19.27. 21+.