Paris Paloma: 2025

This  FUV Live session is also available as a podcast, "FUV Live Sessions." We're elevating WFUV's long history of live sessions and interviews via a podcast that you can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

Britain's Paris Paloma dropped a modern-day feminist anthem with 2023's "Labour." This dark folk-pop song (which has now gone platinum) resonated as empowering and cathartic. Scores of people created their own videos for "Labour," which quickly became a viral sensation. At Paloma's shows — including her June set at the Glastonbury Festival — her fans thunderously sing along to the song's chorus: "All day, every day, therapist, mother, maid/Nymph, then a virgin, nurse, then a servant/Just an appendage, live to attend him."

Paloma's debut album, Cacophony, is as richly layered as "Labour," a collection of songs that mirror short stories, including "Hunter" and "As Good a Reason," which she played with her bandmates — guitarist and bassist George Cowley and drummer James Molyneux — for this FUV Live session.  There's a gothic, romantic sensibility to Cacophony, and Paloma's melodies curl like smoke around evocative, unflinching lyrics. 

I chatted with Paloma about the rallying cry of "Labour" and the "hard work" of love, and the wonderful new community — and activism —  that has come together through her music.

"It's hard to write about women's mental health and not talk about the patriarchy," says Paloma. "It's like a tear in a map of life that crinkles everything."

[Recorded: 2/26/25; Engineered by Jim O'Hara with Erin Merriman, Matthew Ellersick, and Emerald Ragan. Produced by Meghan Suma. Videographers: Louisa Schramm, Adithi Vimalanathan, Olivia Iannaccone, Cate Dalton, Gina Slavin, and Vee Venning.]