New York, New York, USA -- Riot grrrl band Cat Crash of New York, with roots in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, India, and China, is back once again to knock your socks off. This time, I got to sit down with bassist and lead vocalist Cecil, and hyperpop artist briar patch to discuss their latest collaboration: You Lie To Yr Therapist, a power pop single released May 1st 2026 on the first day of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
This release marks the first time both Cecil and Briar are main vocalists, but it’s far from their first time working together. Briar has been producing songs for Cat Crash since 2024, on songs such as You Probably Never Will and Saints for Girls. She briefly served as Cat Crash’s drummer from February to August of 2025, during which time Cecil and Briar wrote songs together, combining their lyrics together after writing about a shared subject. Cecil and Briar met in 2023 in a summer film class and have been collaborators ever since in multiple spheres, including music, art, and film. Both East Asian transgender artists, Cecil is transmasc and Briar is transfemme. This song sees them facing the same struggle of being hidden by your loved ones because you are queer.
You’ve mentioned that this latest release will be featured on Cat Crash’s upcoming album “I Love You, But I’ve Chosen Music.” First of all, I’m obsessed with that title. Is there a story behind the name?
Cecil: So actually, the album title, like, came from a shirt I was making. I just like put that onto a shirt for no reason, and then I was like wait, this is actually a really cool statement that I kind of think should be a bigger thing. I was like guys, could we make it the album title? And this was back with the old lineup too… “I Love You, But I’ve Chosen Music” is kind of like a theme throughout my life where I’m trying to choose between success and also having a normal life. It’s kind of about trying to say that you don’t have to choose between one or the other, the people that you love that love you back will make room for it.
Briar: I feel like the You Lie To Yr Therapist also really fits into that message. The song is about feeling like you have to choose between covering up your queerness and living a so-called normal life, trying to be with someone who is applying all this external pressure to hide who you are. And a large part of what we are coming to realize in the song is that what we want to do, choosing music and putting ourselves out there as trans artists, is incompatible with the hiding aspect of it. We’re always going to be Queer. We’re always going to be Trans. At the end of the day, choosing between one or the other is kind of a false dichotomy, because we can find people that will accept both sides of that.
With an audience full of trans, queer, and neurodivergent youth, the message is nothing short of relatable. How do you think this song will be received?
“This is a song about falling in love with someone who can’t tell anyone about you because you’ll look too gay,” says Briar. “I think that anyone, any queer person who’s ever felt like they need to hide some part of themselves in order to appease someone they care about will be able to connect with this, and I think that’s the vast majority of queer people out there. That alone is immediately something very relatable about the song.”
Continuing the trend from You Probably Never Will, ‘You Lie To Yr Therapist’ takes a power pop direction, combining pop punk, queercore, and Cat Crash’s signature heavy-in-your-face bass lines. “In the context of our other songs, it’s pretty different,” Cecil says. “But I actually think there’s a pretty logical progression from a song like You Probably Never Will, for example. I think it’s something that’s very universal where a lot of queer people definitely connect to that.”
Briar's production shines, especially in the climax of the song, an expression of frustration and yearning that finally explodes until the final acoustic, subdued chorus. “Briar put so much work into this,” Cecil interjects. “Like, her production is incredible.” Briar’s voice alone with soft guitar strums along with Cecil providing breathy, quiet backing vocals serves as a stark contrast to the electric guitar and strong vocals of the rest of the song.
Briar’s production journey started at age 11, when she was listening to copyright-free music and Alan Walker. “I was too shy to make friends, and too scared to learn how to sing and play guitar, even though I really wanted to.” She says. “EDM music will always have a special place in my heart, because I was like, wow, a genre of music where I don’t need to sing and play guitar? Sign me up! So, I got FL Studio, and I was playing around with computer music for a long time.”
“So, on one hand, yes, You Lie To Yr Therapist is 100% for trans people, for the queer community, and it’s a very specific story we can all relate to.” Briar says. “But I also think that it’s something where the underlying emotions are speaking to something that’s very real for a lot of people in general. I feel like the song is very encompassing of the queer experience, while the non-queer person can perhaps relate to this song as well.”
With the political state of the United States right now and the rise of conservatism globally, how does your music help you connect to marginalized communities despite the adversity?
Cecil: Cecil: You know, right before we play our last song, which is always You Sound Nothing Like Nirvana, I make sure to be like, free Palestine, fuck Trump, and then the last thing I say is trans rights forever. I think that’s been a big part of our band since the beginning. It's always been an all-trans band and a band that prides itself on being queer and very loud about it. It’s important to me that the message of the song starts off in the subjective narrative.
Like you said, it's very unsafe across a lot of this country right now to present as trans. I grew up in an area which is a lot less keen on trans people than where I live now, which is New York, so I’ve seen both sides of that equation. At the end of the day, a lot of queerness and transness is inevitable. Just because someone needs you to be cis doesn’t make you cis. We have a lot of pressure coming from the government right now that says you can’t be trans, trans doesn’t exist, and this song is about the active realization that that’s not true. Coming to the realization that you can no longer hide who you are, at least from yourself…I feel like I can hear it musically progress throughout the song.
Does this latest release feel like a musical homecoming, or a testament to your evolution?
Cecil: For sure, I think that the both of us have very different musical backgrounds. There’s very little overlap of what we like to listen to. But learning to work with each other musically again has been a process since our earliest collaborations like Connecticut or The Monarch.
Briar: I think it’s coming to a head where we’re trading off verses and harmonizing with one another. It really shows how much we’ve grown into each other’s styles and are able to bounce off each other. Taking Cecil’s idea for an album and thinking, how can I write something of my own style within that? And then handing it back to Cecil and having these wonderful, gut-wrenching lyrics already written that they just effortlessly applied. When they first got on the mic and sang that bridge, about not being able to tell the therapist that this person is gay, my mind, like, exploded, even while we were recording. It’s definitely that homecoming feeling you were talking about.
Listen to Cat Crash and briar patch’s new single, You Lie To Yr Therapist, and hear the collaborative process for yourself! You can find briar patch on Instagram and Bandcamp for all music and updates.
After 3 years of organizing, Cat Crash will be opening for Asian Fronted Power Punk Band Pinkshift this August 1st at Maker Park in New York City.
If you can’t make it to the Pinkshift show, you can see Cat Crash live on the first leg of the Cat Crash’s Not Dead tour all throughout August in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois. You can also celebrate Cat Crash’s 4-year anniversary at BubbleTeaGrunge’s second-annual Riot Grrrl’s Not Dead Fest in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on August 29th, where 50% of ticket sale proceeds go towards LGBTQ organizations such as the New Haven Pride Center and Trans Lifeline.
- 8/20 - Philadelphia, PA
- 8/21 - Pittsburg, PA
- 8/22 - Kalamazoo, MI
- 8/23 - Chicago, IL
- 8/24 - Minneapolis, MN
- 8/29 - Riot Grrrl’s Not Dead Fest, Bridgeport, CT
Trans rights forever, seriously!