Interview by Ella Hardie | Photo Courtesy of Gren Bee 4/20/2025 at Empty Bottle.

The first time I saw MaryMary! perform live was in 2023 at a short-lived DIY venue in Avondale called “The Rabbit Hole,” with her nest of wires, synthesizers, and pedals set up on a couple of folding tables. This was among the first house shows I’d attended in Chicago, the very first electronic show I’d ever seen, and one of the first times I’d seen Mary, my coworker at the time, outside of work, though this wasn’t Mary’s show—it was MaryMary!’s show. Her backdrop could’ve just been the basement’s paint-chipped walls sparsely adorned with band stickers, sharpie’d declarations of love, and duct-taped fliers from shows past, but she turned the space into a spectacle: on her left, neon green lasers swirled on the wall and live camcorder footage of herself was projected on her right. These visuals and an epic cover of Big Thief’s then-unreleased “Vampire Empire” made for a night to remember (and be forever immortalized via blog).

A lot’s changed since: Mary and I haven’t worked together in a hot minute, she released two singles in October, and she just headlined Empty Bottle for the second time this year. MaryMary! is a Chicago-based experimental synth-pop artist, though using the term “experimental synth-pop” for her work feels a bit limiting. There are a lot of words you could use to describe MaryMary!’s music: intricate, delicate, heavy, staticky, glitchy, bubbly, jangly, industrial, innovative, super fucking awesome, etc. It’s hard not to cast a wide net when trying to pin down an artist whose personal mantra is “I CAN DO ANYTHING.” Maybe it’s better not to pin her down at all… In the years since that basement show, MaryMary! has cemented herself as a fervent advocate of DIY culture and a fixture of Chicago’s prolific electronic music scene. With her knack for elaborate, meticulously planned live shows, her inimitable stage presence, and a repertoire of covers ranging from Big Thief to Ween to obscure 1970s alt-disco artists who don’t even have Wikipedia pages, MaryMary! is a force to be reckoned with.

10/26/2025: Celebrity DUI, WOOF, & MaryMary! @ Empty Bottle @ 8:30 pm.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Mary finds me by the bar wearing a Celebrity DUI sweatshirt over her stage outfit with an Old Style in her hand. We scurry upstairs to Empty Bottle’s green room, which has less of a punk-rock vibe and more of a cozy millennial office vibe than I was expecting. Her friends and fellow performers—one of which is dressed up as a nun—sit on the couch while Mary and I take over the end of a large wooden table, sitting in swivel chairs. We chat for a few minutes before the “formal” interview begins, but we’re in a bit of a time crunch because the first act is on in a little over half an hour. 

Overlapping chatter in the background. I move my phone on the table closer to Mary and start recording:

E: So… tonight is a big night…

M: It’s the MaryMary! Rock Show here at Empty Bottle! I’m very excited.

E: How long have you been sitting on this and planning this night?

M: This show in particular has been kind of a vague sketch of an idea for a few months, and only over the past few days has it fully materialized… I dunno, this is my second headlining show here at Empty Bottle, and the first one was a HUGE spectacle that I put, like, everything I had into—well, I’m certainly throwin’ a lot of myself into this one too—but that first one I did, pretty much every single detail was planned in advance. I had a lot of stage design and costume design and choreography and a five-piece band… Now there’s gonna be three of us onstage, it’s a little bit less going on… I took the remnants of the things I thought worked for that show and stripped it down a bit so it didn’t have to be a thing that took over my life for months. But it still has a degree of spectacle beyond just, like, a show that I just get thrown on, y’know? 

[In classic Mary fashion, this show still had giant tentacled inflatables, flashing light sequences, and multiple tv screens onstage.]

E: Did you also put the bill together?

Mary nods and smiles. 

E: Is it friends… or…?

M: Some friends… WOOF, who play before me, I don’t know them super well personally, but I saw them play at a friend’s house party a while ago and was really into them. I thought that they’d make for a great vibe. And then Celebrity DUI, who play before them, are dear friends of mine. Morrigan, who’s the singer and guitar player, played in my band back in April. All good people, great performers. 

E: I’m curious about the “Rock Show” part specifically tonight, what’s different about this show? Is it the partial band aspect? The general vibe?

M: Partial band aspect, partial vibe… We’re really leaning into our more punk arrangements, just very grunge-y in vibes. We’re playing a lot of covers tonight, re-vamping a lot of songs, still with the “Mary Flair” —

E: With the Classic Mary Flair, of course—

M: Exactly. This is kinda my excuse to pick a lot of, like, rock songs that I’ve always thought I would love to either hear live or play live, and just do it, y’know? And those will be interspersed with some of my favorites of mine that are more guitar-centric. 

E: Can you tell me what any of the covers are…? Or you could leave it a surprise, it’s up to you…

M: Yeah, I’ll do artists! I’m covering a song by Ween—

E: OH MY GOD, what song?

M: “Doctor Rock?” From “The Pod!”

E: YES! YES! I’ve gotten really into Ween in the past, like, month and a half—

M: They’re the best, they fuckin’ rock. All in on Ween. 

E: You don’t even have to say any more, I’m sat—

[More chatting about Ween that I have to cut for time.]

M: Yeah, we’re opening the show with our Ween cover, we’re playing some Harry Nilsson, we’re covering this great song by Ingrid Mansfield Allman, who’s a great alt-disco artist of the 70s and 80s; she also just went by “Ingrid,” and she played in Ian Drury’s band, The Blockheads. There’s a song of hers I’ve been playing for a year at this point, pretty much at every one of my shows. It’s a cover—y’know, because I didn’t write it—but I kinda rearranged it from the ground up. It’s called “Stop Wasting Your Time, You Could be Wasting Mine,” and I dunno, it’s just one of my favorite songs. The original is more of a disco-funk, alternative synth-pop kind of thing and the way I arranged it is a more grunge-y, feedback-y, more post-punk-y situation.

E: Oh hell yeah. How do you pick a song to cover? 

M: I’d say, more often than not, it’s a song that I hear and I think, “Oh, I think I could have a fun handle on this.”

E: More people need to think about covers that way…

M: 100%! The Harry Nilsson cover tonight [“Jump into the Fire”] is the first time I’ve ever approached a cover being like, “I just wanna play this straight.” I just want to play it how the song sounds, ‘cuz it’s a song I’ve seen LCD Soundsystem play a cover of before and that rocked my shit. They just kinda played it as it’s recorded on Nilsson Schmilsson, so I may as well just carry on that tradition. 

E: Yeah, sometimes it’s more of a “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” situation.

M: Exactly, exactly. But then, I’m also playing a cover of one of my favorite songs, “The City,” by Dismemberment Plan, and that’s a song that I’ve been playing a cover of since… God, what year is it…? I’ve been playing that song for four years at this point… It was one of the first songs that I arranged when I first got into step-sequencers and drum machines. That song is a math-y emo song from the late 90s, and I rearranged it as a synthesizer-based dance pop song. That’s like, the closest I get to purely pop music tonight, but y’know, I figured I’m covering a grunge-y emo band, so I might as well loop it in there.

[I had no idea this song was a cover… I’ve been under the impression that “The City” was an unreleased MaryMary! original for years… ]

E: Are you planning to play either of your two newest singles?

M: Yes! I’m gonna be playing the B-Side to the single I just put out, “Self Love in the Time of HRT,” which is one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written. The song that’s the A-Side, “Never Ever Ever (kms)” is a song that I have a lot of fondness for, and I kinda put this show together thinking, like, “Well, I’m putting out these two singles, I’ll find a way to work them both into the set,” and then… I just didn’t really find a way to work in the A-Side…but I’m very excited to play “Self Love.”

E: Mary, that song is so beautiful! It starts so slow and lulls you into… I dunno if it’s necessarily a “false sense of security,” but the complete vibe-shift in the middle is SO disarming and awesome, I was just talking to Aphra about it today—

M: Yes! Aphra Jane, who is the best in the world and who, for the reader at home, masters my stuff. She’s a fucking creative genius—

[We spend the next couple minutes gushing over Aphra Jane and her work. I also have to cut this for time but WE LOVE HER.]

E: I want to talk more about those two recent releases, which are very timely in a number of ways, and this is a super general question—perhaps a bit of a loaded one—that you can take however you want to, but: What’s the story behind these songs?

M: “Self Love,” the song I’ll be playing tonight, has a little bit more of a longer history… That was a riff I was playing on the acoustic guitar for years before I worked it into a whole thing. I think this last November, especially post-election, I had a Crisis of Self where I was like, “What am I doing if I’m not making art about the fear that I feel in this moment, but also about the affirmations I need to give myself?” And “Never Ever Ever” is kind of an escalation of that. I wrote that over the course of, like, one day in February where the news was just getting worse and worse, specifically in regards to trans rights, and I was spiraling really hard. I kinda wrote that song as an affirmation of, “Well, they can fight as much as they want, I’m gonna stay alive, I’m gonna keep doing my thing and do a really good job at it.” And then I sat on it for a while and didn’t release it until earlier this month. I still have a lot of love for that song, but I feel the immediacy kinda left? When I wrote it in February and played it live for the first time the week after I wrote it, that was the best I’ll ever play that song. It was so fresh and I think the energy in the room was just really feeling it. While I definitely think it’s a song that I need and a song that will do good by people, I also think nothing will top the first week after having written it and playing it live. I released them as a dual-single ‘cuz they both celebrate similar—well, not “celebrate,” but they both explore similar themes while varying pretty greatly in tone and sonic style. “Never Ever” is more electronic pop-country—we’ve got a pedal-steel solo and the primary instrument’s the acoustic guitar on that one—while “Self Love” is more creepy synths and acoustic guitar that explode into a grunge thing…

She trails off to find the words:

M: It’s hard to explain that one, but, y’know…

E: Everyone should probably just go listen to it—

M: Yeah, it’s more acoustic… into grunge… with an electronic backbone. But I feel like the two songs are split sides of the same coin—

E: Spiritual sisters, if I may….
M: Yeah, definitely. I think “Self Love” is going to end up on my LP that I’m working on finishing right now, which I’m very excited for. I’m not sure about “Never Ever” yet, I’m still debating…

E: You touched on this a little bit earlier, but in response to the fucking shit show that’s going on right now, you’re someone whose social media presence—and just in general, knowing you as a person—is so community-oriented and always boosting other people’s stuff. I feel like half the time you’re on Instagram like, “I’m doing this cool thing!” and the other half is, “Look at this cool thing my friend is doing!” Which I think is super awesome and you’ve put me onto a lot of things I never would’ve found on my own. To you, what’s the value of creative communities, going to live shows, and generally turning to art in the face of all the… awfulness, I guess, for lack of a better term? 

M: I feel a lot of conflict with that. There are times where I kinda feel guilt and shame throwing so much energy into art while there’s so much targeting my community and so many other groups. Chicago as a whole is… kind of a mess right now, but being able to platform other queer people or trans people, or just anyone being targeted by this horrible administration, just feels very… It feels very great to know that we’re going to continue doing this and making this, and by doing so establishing that we’re all here for each other. The connections keep growing and the love keeps growing. I also sometimes worry that it’s a distraction, to an extent, and a big thing I’m trying to grapple with is how to be a little more politically minded about how I do this. I love elevating my fellow artists, but also I need to make sure that I’m not just, like, doing the plot of Cabaret, y’know?

This last line gets me good. Mary pauses while I chuckle.

M: Which is a thing that I think a fucking lot about, like, art spaces are very important in times like this, but also I can’t let this serve as a distraction of what’s going on outside of those art spaces. 

E: That’s so true. Of course, there’s so much to be said about art being a grounding thing in these moments, but it’s only one part of a bigger thing that needs to happen and is happening—

M: Oh, absolutely! I don’t think we should all put away our instruments or whatever, I’m still putting on these shows, but I guess it’s more about refusing to ignore reality. Like, right now in Chicago, ICE is sweeping people off the streets—I almost said “indiscriminately,” but actually very discriminately… They’re doing nothing but selecting people based off the color of their skin to detain, kidnap, whatever verb you wanna use, and it’s hard not to feel extremely bogged down and scared every second of the day watching this happen—

Mary gets interrupted by A HUGE (obviously unrelated) wave of laughter rippling over the musicians sitting on the couch across the room. We all lose our trains of thought. 

A beat.

M: I dunno… I don’t know where I’m going with that, but shit’s horrible right now and I just don’t want to forget the reality of what’s going on, even if I know there’s importance to making art at this time. 

E: It’s a hard line to walk and, like, no one is doing it perfectly, and I think even the fact that you’re thinking about it this much and talking about it during an interview about yourself says a lot.

Mary sighs.

M: Well, thank you. 

E: Thank you. And not to be super corny, but at the end of the day…we all have each other!

M: We’ve all got each other. So I guess another part of putting shows like this on is just being intentional about who I book and making sure it’s folks I can stand by. Not only their politics, but knowing I’m not taking the easy way out with who I platform. Like, I have a lot of friends who I could put on the stage with me and I want to make sure I’m venturing outside of who I hang out with on a daily basis. 

E: That’s actually a perfect segue into my last question… Back in the day at the ol’ Trader Joe’s—

M: Yes, when we worked together at Trader Joe’s—

[2022-2023]

E: Yes, the things we bonded over immediately were, like, Big Thief and Adrianne Lenker, Talking Heads, a bunch of different movies, all those things. One of your tags on Letterboxd—which has a ton of movies on it, by the way—is your “dope and inspiring” tag…

Mary beams.

M: YES!

E: I just love that. And I associate that phrase with you so much—

M: That means the world to me! I love art that is dope and inspiring!

E: It’s just such a quintessential Mary phrase, and any time I’m stumped on what movie to watch I’m like, “lemme see what Mary liked…” I seriously reference that list all the time—

M: Ugh, that’s a dream, that makes me so happy to hear—

Now we’re both beaming.

E: So the question with that is, and I’m sure you can guess where this is going: Who are some artists you find dope and inspiring? It doesn’t have to just be Chicago, but—

M: I can stick to Chicago people! Some of the most dope and inspiring artists out there are, well, everyone on the bill with me tonight—not to play the politician—but WOOF and Celebrity DUI for sure. My dear friends Future Nest and Anne Helen Wells are incredible… Sulffffffur and her group Anti-Soul Organization…Sulffffffur spelled with six F’s, by the way—

E: Yes, yes, I remember her set from that show you played in [____]’s basement!

M: Yeah! Oh my God, wow…

E: That was a while ago—

M: But her work and her group’s work in particular is some of the most forward-thinking electronic music I’ve ever heard, like, fucking incredible stuff. It’s so felt, it’s so organic, but also it’s so well intentioned and articulated, stuff I could only dream of making. Bloodhype’s a great local duo who make very fun, dope and inspiring music… Let’s see…oh my gosh, so many people that I’m probably forgetting… Ishtar Sr! She’s not a Chicago person, she’s based in Philly, but her record, wifef*cker ultra, is some of the coolest shit in the fucking world. I bought it on a flashdrive when she came here on tour. Um… Yeah… And I also want to shout out the films of Edward Yang! He died years ago, but I’m not gonna stop shouting out A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi, some of the most dope and inspiring shit I’ve ever seen!

E: Hell yeah! Any last closing remarks…?

M: Fuck ICE, Free Palestine, and listen to music by trans people.

You can find MaryMary! anywhere you listen to music.