Modern Woman - Dashboard Mary

New Music 2026 Q1 W03

Modern Woman – Dashboard Mary

London art-rock band Modern Woman share “Dashboard Mary,” the lead single from their debut album “Johnny’s Dreamworld,” out May 1 via One Little Independent Records. The track builds like a film, moving from sparse organ chords and Sophie Harris’s expressive vocals into a full-band crescendo that ends with distorted guitars and the climactic cry of “I’m Not Coming Home.”

Harris started Modern Woman as a solo songwriting project before expanding to a four-piece with violinist David Denyer, bassist and saxophonist Juan Brint-Gutiérrez, and drummer Adam Blackhurst. The band worked with producer Joel Burton to capture their volatile live energy, blending post-punk grit with experimental textures and folk lyricism.

“This is a song that I wanted to write like a film,” Harris explains. “I wanted to confront the feeling of the ‘morning after’ and the decisions made during that time of exhilaration the night before.” The slow-burning track captures that comedown feeling perfectly, gradually unfolding its narrative before exploding into cathartic release.

Harris, a literature graduate, writes with a novelist’s precision. “I find it interesting to explore the rawer side of femininity that is often hidden; girlhood relationships and the complexities of female fixation and obsession,” she says. That approach runs through “Johnny’s Dreamworld,” which Harris describes as exploring conflicting things: “the tender/harsh, loud/quiet and scrappy/polished.”

The band directed a 16mm film for “Dashboard Mary,” shot across Iceland, London’s Barbican, and the UK’s south coast. “It is essentially a dream sequence, waking up in different locations and falling back asleep to wake up elsewhere,” Harris says. “I liked the idea of something following the main character around in her subconscious.”