Montreal new-age punk outfit NOBRO’s debut full-length record Set Your Pussy Free is a caustic, celebratory, glorious party-punk firework show. It was shortlisted for POLARIS Music Prize in 2024 and nominated for Rock album of the Year for JUNOs 2025. It’s a record about the ecstatic pursuit of personal escape and liberation even as the walls are closing in, a 21st century power-punk analog of Born To Run that rages against modern life’s restrictive pressures and dares them to a game of chicken. If a hurricane is bearing down on NOBRO, they’re spitting into it, arm-in-arm, with middle fingers raised.
NOBRO is the space where members Kathryn McCaughey and Karolane Carbonneau get to take those risks and chances. It’s a place for cultivating power and happiness in a hard, mean world. That means the stakes are high. “Music is where we lift each other up,” says McCaughey. “ We just want this fucking thing to work. But we’re all gonna succeed together, or we’re all gonna fail together.”