On Debut Album Wild Love, Nina Winder-Lind Sings and Shreds for All the Women Who Came Before Her
Updated: Aug 12
By : Josh Kitchen / August 11, 2026
These lyrics are how Nina Winder-Lind begins a final tribute to all of the women who came before her on “Foremothers,” the explosive and transcendent closer of her debut album, Wild Love, out on Friday. In a thunderous crash of electric guitar solos, Winder-Lind puts a final mark on the themes she has been singing about throughout a record about the ways in which we, as human beings, owe everything not only to our own mothers and grandmothers, but to every woman and steward who continued to live and persevere in a world hell-bent on their very destruction. And this record isn’t only for the women who lived so that we can live; it’s a prayer for the women who didn’t. “Some of you died in childbirth / yet you passed on your sons and daughters / I salute you, you brave warriors!” Winder-Lind screams over the final crescendo, a whirlwind of guitar nirvana.
The use of guitar throughout the album is crucial. On opening track “Street Hassle,” Winder-Lind sings, “Now give me an electric guitar and I’ll play it,” an opening thesis for how she uses the electric guitar as a tool of liberation, and how its place in music—for men and women alike—has long been one of revolution, abolitionism and baptism. She continues the theme on “Girls,” a treatise on how women and girls are so much more than the choices the patriarchy tries to make for them: “Girls want to go to balls and break everything / Girls want to play guitar and dance and sing.”
This feeling of freedom from the violence of society’s gender roles is at the core of who Winder-Lind is as a songwriter, and it was prevalent on last year’s The New Eve Is Rising, the excellent debut album from Winder-Lind’s band, The New Eves. But above all, Wild Love is about being human—just another beast in the natural world. Winder-Lind tells me she almost called the record *Animal Music*, making *Wild Love* an even more apt title because of the reverence and liberating devotion Winder-Lind has for her subject matter.
I spoke with Winder-Lind about Wild Love, the electric guitar as a tool of liberation, the women who came before her, being a human animal, and finding freedom in making a righteous noise.
I hear so much rebellion and freedom in your voice. On Wild Love’s first single, “Girls,” you sound like you’re singing about these grand histories, but also so many feelings that are deeply in your heart. When I hear the whole record, it feels like you’re singing not only for yourself, but for the voices of so many women who came before you. I’m hoping you can talk a little bit about that feeling, and what it means to finally put this record out into the world.
Nina:
Well, thank you. It's such a crazy thing to hear. I've never met you before, and you've listened to this record and you're having these emotions. That's magical. That makes me really happy. Thank you. That's the most I could hope for with this album.
On the album's opening track, "Street Hassle," There's a lyric that jumps out at me, that I think is the heart of this record - "Cause if I’m not a little girl/I’m no madonna and no whore/How can I fit into this world" I think that hits at something so intense and grand—a choice that so many young women and girls are given from the very beginning: you can only be one or the other. Anything in between, so many voices will tell you, "What are you doing? That's not what you're supposed to be." Then you end the record with "Foremothers," which is like this rock and roll nirvana—it's just this epic, grand refusal to forget those who've come before you and who you owe everything to.
Nina:
I think "Street Hassle" was always the first song, partly because it's one of the earliest ones that I wrote. I was really quite young, and I really was in that conundrum of, okay, I'm growing up here, and I'm female—I identify as female—but I don't know how I fit in. There are so many different expectations and people judging you whichever way you go. You're kind of told there are these two options, but there's so much more, surely.
I was thinking a lot about that and battling those things. Then, later on in the song, it's like, "Give me an electric guitar and I'll play it." This was before I really played music with other people. I didn't have a band. I didn't really play electric guitar. But I just had this feeling like, that's how it's going to come out. So I wanted that as an introduction to the record, like, okay - and this is what happened next. This is how amazing it felt when I got to express all these things in music and with the right people.
Then on "Foremothers," it kind of culminates there in a way, but on the other side of it. Like, okay, I am here. I'm actually doing all right now, but I want to acknowledge all these people who made that happen for me. Literally, I exist because they existed and they brought life forward. There's so much that they didn't get to do that I get to do. You can feel like you almost owe it to someone. Like, okay, I'm going to live my life, and I'm going to do my thing, but I want you to know that I don't take that for granted.
Early on in the album, you talk about the guitar as this symbol of liberation and freedom. For so many people, that's exactly what it is. But so many women at the forefront of popular music 75, 80, 90 years ago have been forgotten. We talk about Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins as these mythical originators of rock and roll—and they were revolutionary—but they weren't the only ones. I think about people like Elizabeth Cotten, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Odetta. I love that you reclaim the guitar as this physical source of liberation.
Nina:
It really is a very physical feeling for me to play the electric guitar. It's like, wow, I get to make this noise, and it's kind of so much grander than me. It can be really in your face, and it can be really beautiful, and it can be all these things. It's literally electricity, which is the life energy. I don't know. There's just something so powerful about it. And I don't know what I'm doing on the guitar.
That makes it more exciting, right? Great guitar solos are organic and symbiotic and biological - it comes out of your fingers. One of the most beautiful lyrics on the album is on "Girls," where you sing, "Girls can walk on pure starlight." It's like that - cosmic.
Nina:
Yeah. It's like catharsis. A big, ultimate relief somehow.
I think we’ve come to a place where there’s a lot of great, heavy, female-driven punk and hard rock, like Mannequin Pussy and Die Spitz. But I still think listeners and critics describe female acts differently than male acts. I love Geese, for example, but I wonder if a female band making that kind of music would be talked about the same way. There’s this temptation to use words like “feral” or “animalistic” for women, and I wonder if we’d use those same words for men.
Nina:
I feel like people are figuring this out at the moment—how to talk. Obviously, with the New Eves, a lot of the time it's like, "Oh, you're a girl band." And it's like, well, we're a band. You don't say to all bands that are boys that they're a boy band. With football, it's like, why is it "female footballer"? So, in a way, it can really take away your power when you just get defined by your sex.
But I understand that for a lot of people, like the riot grrrl movement and stuff like that, it can be really empowering. It's like, look, we're girls and we're doing this. I think it's kind of not up to anyone else to say how you want to do it.
That’s why I think this record is so important. It doesn’t fit neatly into any box—it goes in so many different directions, just like what it means to be human. There are little moments, huge moments and everything in between. That goes back to this cathartic, natural feeling running through the record, like it’s an extension of your living body. There’s a song where you literally talk about being a body, being flesh—I can’t remember which one—
Nina: “You’re Not an Angel.”
Yes! God, I love that song. To me, that feels like the heart of the record.
Nina:
That's really great to hear because, for me, that's really crucial as well to the whole record and to everything that I do. The other title, actually, that I had was going to be Animal Music. It's like we're human animals and we have these bodies and we have these feelings, and we are in this landscape, and we're not separated from each other and the land. We're animals as well. So, yeah, there are some lines in "You're Not an Angel" that are very important to the whole album, I think.
I want to talk about “This Is Our Life.” Musically, this record sounds like a New York record to me—I hear the Velvet Underground and Lou Reed. I see Patti Smith behind you on your wall. I know asking about influences can feel like a basic question, but I love hearing artists talk about the music they love because listeners are going to hear those things, too. When I hear “This Is Our Life,” I hear a song by somebody who loves music like I love music. What were you listening to or drawing from when you made it?
Nina:
Yeah. I had a few—I don't want to go into this too much—but recently, a few people were being mean on Instagram, saying "derivative." And I had to ask my partner. I was like, "What does that mean? I don't know that word." And it's like, "Oh, when it derives from something." And I was like, "Well, yeah, it does derive from something." There's a rock and roll tradition here. Do you guys understand that? Everyone is learning from each other. From Odetta and then Bob Dylan and so on.
I want to honor that. I don't want to be like, "Oh, I'm not going to tell you what I listen to, and everything I do is really new," because that's this kind of myth that we have right now, that you have to come up with something completely new. This music is good for a reason. Like you said, I love music, and that music is in my music. For me, that's a beautiful thing.
What song are you most excited for people to hear that they haven't heard yet?
Nina:
I think maybe "Grandma & Robert De Niro." We rehearsed it the other day, and I was like, "Shit, I forgot about this song. This is a really weird, good song."
It is a weird, good song. The title itself jars you, disarms you. Were you very close with your grandmother?
Nina:
Yeah, she's actually still alive. I saw her last week.
And then there's Bob De Niro!
Nina:
Yeah, that was random, but that song came from a dream. They were both in the dream, and the song was in the dream, so that's why it's called that.
Singing about someone so close to you feels like such a literal expression of so many of the ideas on this record. What do you hope young girls or young women feel when they hear it? But I think it’s bigger than that. I think it’s important that everybody hears this record, especially young men. It’s obviously a record about femininity and being a woman, but it’s also so much more than that. It’s about life and love and anyone’s place in the world. What do you hope people hear in it when they listen with an open heart?
Nina:
Yeah, it's kind of more about me being human.
You even said the original title of the album was Animal Music.
Nina:
Animal Music, yeah. It's like, okay, this is an album about being a human animal, or about life and this crazy energy that keeps us going, whatever that is. I hope that people can hear it, and if they don't have an open heart, I hope that their heart will open. I hope that people will feel things and connect with themselves or other people or a landscape. That's something that music can do. It's so evocative, and if I can do that with this album, I'm very happy - really happy.
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