Nasty Cherry Details

“I’ve always wanted to work with a girl band,” Charli XCX says. “Not a classically pop girl band, but a girl band who have a rock & roll-type energy.”

Enter Nasty Cherry, a four-piece outfit with members from both London and Southern California that’s released a series of hooky, atmospheric singles this year. Not an actual member, Charli instead played the role of old-school impresario.

“It was definitely a surprise,” says Nasty Cherry guitarist and Los Angeles native Chloe Chaidez. She first met Charli XCX when her other band Kitten opened for the pop star on tour.

“She had her birthday party in Palm Springs with about 50 people, then the next day we went out to a Mexican restaurant and she said, ‘I have this idea,’” Chaidez recalls. After a decade in the industry, the Kitten founder and vocalist had trouble believing the idea would actually pan out. “Everything falls through. The fact that this has gotten to where this has gotten is so amazing.”

Charli also recruited her own touring drummer of five years, Debbie Knox-Hewson. While she has years of road and session experience under her belt, Nasty Cherry is her first real creative outlet. “It’s really exciting to write music and have creative input,” Knox-Hewson says. “As fun as it is to help with someone else’s vision, it’s really nice to have my own now.”

The group’s bassist, Georgia Somary, was new to her instrument. Working in set designing and other visual endeavors, she’d always felt her role in music was to hype up her friends. “I loved music and performance, but it never felt like an option for me before,” she says.

When original singer Grace McKagen couldn’t balance Nasty Cherry with her other band, Charli reached out to Gabbriette Bechtel, a California-bred model and photographer, who she was “basically Instagram-stalking for visual references.”

Bechtel had never sung before but recorded herself and sent Charli a clip. “I was floored,” Charli says. “She has this gorgeous, sultry voice. It sounds so bruised and beautiful, and I was just like, ‘OK, Gabbriette’s the shit.’”