TTSSFU's Tasmin Stephens talks disguise, darkness, and latest EP 'Blown' for DIY's Class of 2026 • Neu • DIY Magazine

Did you ever crush so hard, you had to invent flaws to dissuade yourself? Tasmin Stephens has. “I’d literally be zooming into photos of them to try to find faults,” she chuckles, showcasing the self-deprecating streak that underpins her personality. Instead of burying the pain and quietly moving on - like most of us would - it’s an infatuation she digs into on ‘Upstairs’, her latest adventure as TTSSFU.

“I went upstairs to be alone with you / And by that, I mean a photo,” she sighs over smudged synth chords, bleary bass and sparse drum machine. Wistful and winningly lo-fi, the standalone single caps off what has been a stunning year for the singer, featuring live dates with Kim Deal, a string of festival appearances and the release of an acclaimed second EP, ‘Blown’. The only fly in the ointment has been the YouTube comments.

“Everyone keeps commenting, ‘I love this band!’ and I keep getting annoyed because it’s all me,” she laughs, currently slouched on the sofa of her parents’ house in Wigan. “They’re like, ‘it can’t be just you’, or ‘the guitarist is so good’, and I’m like, ‘hello?!’. So if you could help me dispel that, that would be great.”

“[The uniform] has helped me perform, because when I have the wig on I feel more like an extension of myself.”

Here goes: TTSSFU is very much a solo project. Having taught herself guitar as a child by figuring out Arctic Monkeys riffs, Tasmin has been self-producing songs on GarageBand since the age of 15, using additional know-how gleaned from a local music tech course. Her formative influences included Nirvana, Bikini Kill and Gorillaz, but it was later discoveries like Alex G and John Maus that truly lit a fire inside her, inspiring her woozy production style. In a lovely bit of circularity, she was later selected to support Maus in Manchester, having blagged her way backstage at Green Man to meet him, just months earlier.

Debut EP ‘Me, Jed and Andy’ arrived in February 2024, using Andy Warhol’s storied relationship with interior designer Jed Johnson as a prism through which to examine her own destructive behavioural patterns. Following support slots with English Teacher, Soccer Mommy and Mannequin Pussy, follow-up ‘Blown’ arrived in August of this year. But writing it wasn’t an easy undertaking.

“I felt this overwhelming sense of pressure that I hadn’t really felt before,” she recalls. “I was trying to write pop music and I couldn’t do it. Plus playing live had made my music a lot more intense, and I had to really figure out how to capture that.” She ultimately found a solution by seeking production support from Chris Ryan (NewDad, Gurriers), but a residual anxiety bleeds into the EP’s themes.

“It was just an absolutely chaotic time in my life. I’d gone from doing nothing and nobody caring about my music, to having to have conversations with every single person ever, while getting my head around how the music industry works. It made me feel insane, like my brain was going to explode.”

Combine that with having to navigate all the usual dramas of life in one’s early 20s (“weird friendships, boy troubles, trying to be an adult for the first time…”), as well as experiences with grief, and it’s no wonder ‘Blown’ bristles with discomfort. On the low-slung, rock’n’roll swagger of ‘Cat Piss Junkie’ she examines feelings of aimlessness, while the dazed acoustics of ‘Being Young’ host devastating reflections: “Some of my friends are dead / And I’m only 21 / Is this what it feels like to be young?” Elsewhere, an acerbic brand of shoegaze is riddled with references to evil across ‘Sick’, ratcheting up the tension in the second half with a wall of squalling guitar and grungey bass.

She describes much of her lyrical focus as “grim”, inspired by “people not treating other people like human beings, and the dark places that can take a person to.” She laughs, “I keep imagining someone I’m close to, like my mum or my dad, reading [my lyrics] like, ‘Tasmin, what the hell?!’” Nevertheless, she finds it liberating to have an outlet to explore those feelings and ideas. “I’ve always struggled to actually speak about my feelings in depth. Music acts like a mask to do that.”

“I’ve always struggled to actually speak about my feelings in depth. Music acts like a mask to do that.”

There’s a similar rationale behind the peroxide bob and shades that Tasmin has sported throughout promoting ‘Blown’. “I got to thinking that any successful artist has a distinctive look: Courtney Love, Sky Ferreira, The Dare… And I’d say [the uniform] has helped me perform, because when I have the wig on I feel more like an extension of myself.”

It’s not just pain and darkness that the disguise affords her access to - it helps her explore a more vulnerable side, as showcased in the swooning dream-pop of ‘Forever’. A celebration of friendship to rival Wolf Alice’s ‘Bros’, it features the kiss-off, “When my heart’s close to yours / I feel understood.”

Tasmin isn’t sure the wig will stick around into her next phase - which has already begun with ‘Upstairs’. Taken from a shelved album written in just two weeks and inspired by Maus, Cumgirl8 and Ariel Pink’s work pre-cancellation, she’s currently in a rich creative groove. Indeed, minutes before our interview, she posted on Instagram, “writing the saddest song ever rn.”

“I’m gonna be writing every day now, I think,” she confirms. “I’m trying to figure out how to write an album. I want to write something as good as ‘Titanic Rising’ [Weyes Blood’s 2019 album] - that’s my whole goal.” Her aims for 2026 are just as ambitious: “I want to play as many gigs as possible, tour and tour until I can’t anymore, and ultimately win over bigger audiences.” On the strength of her songwriting so far, you don’t doubt she’s capable of it.

‘Blown’ is out now via Partisan Records.

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