Modern Woman - Neptune Girl

W09 New Music 2026 Q1

Modern Woman – Neptune Girl

Modern Woman are building momentum ahead of their debut album ‘Johnny’s Dreamworld’, out May 1. We covered lead single “Dashboard Mary” back in W03 — a slow-burning track that builds from sparse organ chords into a full-band crescendo. “Neptune Girl” is a different gear entirely — more immediate, more kinetic, built around propulsive drums, fractured guitar lines, and a heavy danceable beat that keeps escalating through the middle of the song.

Sophie Harris leads the band and wrote the track from a specific memory. “This was built off an image of growing up in England, playing in the roads and fields with a friend who later went up to heaven. Heaven is, I imagine, somewhere near Neptune”, she says. Lyrically it sits in that uncomfortable adolescent space — examining what good and bad mean before those words have any real weight. The video, made entirely by animator Joseph Brett in claymation, matches the song’s tone well. Harris on Brett: “He captured the song so beautifully — from the facial expressions to the set design, to Modern Woman made out of clay at the beginning. He is a talent beyond measure”.

The band is Harris on vocals and guitar, David Denyer on violin and composition, Juan Brint-Gutiérrez on bass and saxophone, and Adam Blackhurst on drums. ‘Johnny’s Dreamworld’ was produced by Joel Burton, who’s worked with Naima Bock, Katy J Pearson, and Vanishing Twin. Harris is a literature graduate and it shows in the writing — there’s a novelist’s precision to the lyrics, even when the arrangements are pulling in multiple directions at once. The band have played End of the Road, Latitude, The Great Escape, and Green Man, and their live reputation is part of why this is landing with some force ahead of the album.

‘Johnny’s Dreamworld’ is out May 1 on One Little Independent Records.