On the Rise
TTSSFU

The twenty-one-year old’s infectious giggle contradicts the moody, elusive aura of her TTSSFU persona. “I don’t come from a musical family, but they’re very into music. My family aren’t really the type of people who’d be like ‘we believe in you!’” she shares in a mock cheerleader tone, “They’re more like ‘you need to go and do this and figure it out, ‘cos if you can’t, then what are you going to do?’”

Fortunately, the Wigan-born and Manchester-based songwriter did manage to navigate this uncertain territory. In just a few short years under the TTSSFU name, Stephens has racked up an impressive list of live performance accolades; sharing stages with Kim Deal, Jon Maus, English Teacher, Mannequin Pussy and Soccer Mommy, as well as slots at Green Man, The Great Escape, All Points East and a slot at Best Fit’s Five Day Forecast showcase earlier this year.

For Stephens, being in a band was and is the only goal. “It’s sort of always been like that,” she recalls. In the past, she remembers feeling disappointed if her bandmates didn’t seem as committed to this ambition. “Everyone had to be as delusional as me,” she jokes, but it’s this self-professed delusion that’s been the driving force of her success.

Before TTSSFU, she played in a punk band called Duvet with her best friend Grace, which they formed after meeting at a festival as teenagers. They played their first gig aged 18 – which you can still watch on YouTube – and while the pandemic affected the band’s momentum, Stephens says that Duvet are technically still together. It was shortly after Covid that she began performing on around Manchester as TTSSFU, where she caught the eye of Partisan Records. She signed to them in 2024 and released her debut EP, Me, Jed and Andy, that same year.

Loosely inspired by her love of American visual artist and film director Andy Warhol and his tempestuous relationship with his partner Jed Johnson, across seven tracks Stephens delivers a grungey, reverb-soaked rumination on heartbreak, dissatisfaction, spite and hedonism. The brutally named opener “I Hope You Die” is still one of her most-streamed tracks to date, full of the artist’s trademark hazy vocals and brooding riffs. Now, she’s gearing up to release her follow-up EP, Blown, due out at the end of August.

“That word means a lot to me,’” Stephens muses on the onomatopoeic title. “It’s the shortened version of ‘Mindblown’. At one point I was gonna write a book called Blown, because to me it’s just a crazy word. I’ve used it throughout my life to explain moments where I’ve just dug myself into a really big hole. I was really cautious about making sure that every song [on the EP] matched up to that word somehow emotionally. I didn’t want to waste it. I’ve tried to make sure that everything that’s on there, I’m proud of.”

Stephens remembers having her mind blown in her early childhood when she first listened to The Beatles. Whilst The Fab Four have no bearing on her sound now, the impact of her adolescent infatuation with Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain and the ‘90s grunge scene is undeniable. “I think Kurt Cobain was definitely one of the first to make me think ‘I wanna do this. I wanna make music’,” she shares. “I knew from a very young age that it was a great way of expressing yourself. I thought ‘this is what I need to do.’ I think I might have manifested it in my head [then].”

Discovering The Cure was another formative music experience for Stephens: “My sister’s four years older than me, so she was a proper goth,” Stephens smiles. She used to watch videos of the iconic British goth rockers talking about how they became successful, analysing every word that they said and learning how to be in a band herself.

Years of manifestation, musical idolatry and a yearning desire to be seen and express oneself have also shaped Stephens’ aesthetic and live performance. Adorned in silky slip dresses, heavy eyeliner and often sporting a crucifix around her neck; Stephens embodies a raucous, unpredictable, yet sultry energy; reminiscent at points of Hole’s formidable front woman Courtney Love. When I last saw her play – at a Brighton show – she introduced her song “Cat Piss Junkie” by deadpanning the crowd and stating “this is about the time I drank cat piss.” When asked if there’s any truth to this statement, Stephens emits another infectious laugh.

“I mean, that definitely didn’t happen,” she shares. “I feel like my songs are quite serious and I’m scared of being taken too seriously sometimes, because it’s not really who I am. So I try to just say something odd at least once during the set and that was the one that came out that time.” Her wicked sense of humour serves a more practical purpose too. “I find it funny to make people uncomfortable,” she continues. “It stops your nerves if you can embarrass yourself a little bit or act a little bit weird. It’s like an extended version of yourself that you’re doing and then you can walk away from - that kind of thing.”

Stephens has learned over time to lean into her silliness, admitting that she spent a lot of time when she was younger being unnecessarily concerned with who or what was considered “cool”. “As soon as I let all of that go and started really pushing myself, it didn’t feel like I had anything to be worried about any more,” she reveals. “I’m just trying to be as honest as I possibly can and to be present. I think that’s very important to me. It’s very obvious to me when people aren’t authentic. I think it really rings out.”

If Stephens is ever feeling unsure about herself when she’s on stage, she simply acknowledges the absurdity of the situation she’s in. “I’m just like ‘there’s ten men just staring at me right now’ which is quite funny, so I try and play off that instead.” She’ll often break the fourth wall during her live performances, passing through the crowd with rock star conviction and laying on the floor in the middle of a venue if the mood strikes her.

Stephens’ movements are also informed by hard earned caution though. Whilst cutting her teeth playing live in her the predominantly female Duvet as a teenager, she was confronted with the unsettling reality of the entitlement of some older male audience members in gig spaces. Now, as TTSSFU, she is directly in the spotlight, backed solely by her male bandmates. The male gaze of the older fans in the front row can often be intense, which is why Stephens enjoys moving amongst the crowd and creating her own space.

“It’s an odd one,” she reflects. “You don’t want to put everyone in a box. Everybody can enjoy music, I think that’s important. But I also think people need to understand personal space and boundaries. It’s hard as a woman, because I feel like if you’re too nice to someone, it could be a dangerous situation, and if you’re not nice - you’re just a bitch,” that last comment is followed by another laugh. “I definitely believe that when I’m doing those kinds of things in the crowd, that there’s a wall all the way around me. If you have that in your head, you sort of give people that feeling to not fucking come near you.” Another mischievous laugh punctuates Stephens’ last comment.

Clearly, the songwriter is currently in a place where she feels able to rise to the challenges she’s presented with, and this extends to the sphere of the studio too. When she was recording Blown, Stephens reached a point where she says was agonising over production and driving herself mad. “Now I’ve signed with Partisan, I want people to know that I’m working hard and I want to show people that I’m trying to up my game a little bit,” she shares. This led to her seeking the aid of a producer, and it was Ross Cullen from Belfast experimental band Chalk who put the name of Chris Ryan on Stephens’ radar. On first contact, Ryan seemed to instantly empathise and understand how Stephens wanted to bring her tracks to life in the way that she admits she'd struggled to do on previous recordings.

Having gone through a period of personal uncertainty whilst she was writing the songs for Blown, collaborating with Ryan allowed Stephens to overcome her doubts and create something that she says she is truly proud of. Two tracks in particular resonate deeply with her, including “Everything”. Originally a “throwaway track” from her side project Desperate Pervert - which induces a wry smirk - when Stephens added drums to it on a whim, she serendipitously created exactly what she had always wanted to.

“I’m really sentimental with all of my work, even if I think it’s crap,” she laughs. “I like documenting everything that I do. I like learning from stuff. I thought 'Everything' was overly simple at the time, but I knew that it had something to it. I think it achieves what a lot of my favourite artists do.” When asked to elaborate, she shares that she admires artists like Alex G: “Anything that’s emotional, it keeps me focused on it,” she reflects. “It’s so painful, but that’s what I count as being good.”

This is especially true of “Being Young”, the closing track on Blown. “Lyrically, I think that’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” Stephens divulges. “The EP always had to end on that song, because that sort of rounds up everything I was going through at that point in my life.” Stephens humbly shares that she feels like what she went through was “nothing new,” simplifying her experiences as the same as what “a lot of people go through when they’re my age.” Sonically, this track is different too. There’s no reverb on the songwriter’s vocal - something she admits she “hides” behind sometimes - which makes the track stand out as “raw” and emotional for her.

“I’m quite excited to put it out,” she smiles. “A few years ago, that would’ve made me really uncomfortable. I don’t even like listening to that song, it’s just not nice,” she laughs, confessing that the lyrics are really “fucking horrible”. But for Stephens, this song is the embodiment of growth and she’s ready to find a way of including it in her live sets. “I feel like I got everything out of my system. I’m sort of like, ‘I’m just going to leave that there now’,” she offers, catharsis incarnate and ready for whatever comes her way next.