The Mojo of Music featuring Bryn Battani
Texas-raised and Twin Cities-based singer-songwriter Bryn Battani isn’t just a musician, but a storyteller who uses every medium at her disposal, including her bold and eclectic sense of style. Bryn has quickly earned a reputation for arresting intimate performances and her strong doses of wit and self-awareness in her writing. From Bryn’s vibrant stage presence to her carefully curated outfits, there is a distinct mojo that entwines everything together, both serving as outlets for her creativity and as tools for connection for her fans.
If you’ve had the opportunity to see a Bryn Battani show, you’re well aware of those first few moments when she takes the stage. Bryn fully understands what she wears is an integral part of the show. She acknowledges that audiences form initial impressions based on that appearance before she even plays a note. Although Bryn doesn’t care what that first impression is, the true artist within her is there to subvert those expectations. If she’s wearing cowboy boots, people may think she’s a country artist. If they imagine her as a pop artist, she’s going to do weird things that aren’t normal mainstream actions.
Her goal? To make deliberate choices that intrigue her audiences and prepare them for a dynamic, unpredictable performance. The result of this is an anticipation of what’s about to unfold and seeing how Bryn will use storytelling tools like clothes and props to present her songs. Bryn’s relationship with fashion started early, shaped by her awareness of being "different" in middle school. She began to witness how others were perceiving her, and as an undiagnosed ADHD kid, she felt she needed to react and be extreme in how she looked. This instinct to stand apart and embrace the extreme has remained a core part of her identity, both musically and stylistically. Bryn takes pleasure in being a little radical and having shock value in her art.
“When other kids wore shorts of a certain length, I decided I wasn’t going to wear those shorts. I cut my hair into a bob because no one else did. I very much felt the need to reject anything that other people around me were doing, which is kind of the opposite of what kids in middle school usually do.”
-Bryn Battani
Raised in Austin, Texas, a city known for its casual yet creative vibe, Bryn found inspiration in bold vintage aesthetics, particularly the late '60s and early '70s. Growing up in a sleek, modern ranch style house with a lot of windows and a lot of white feels like an abstract opposite of her place filled with warm colors, textures, patterns, and crazy decor. Her mother, a visual artist with a minimalist Scandinavian style, provided an early contrast to Bryn’s maximalist tendencies, teaching her the importance of having strong opinions about design. This interplay of influences laid the foundation for Bryn’s own vibrant, pattern-filled style.
The public school that Bryn went to was a haven of athleisure for girls, which she didn’t abide by. Instead people thought she was a substitute teacher. High school is when she started making bold choices that were embedded with some sort of aesthetic interest behind it. There was a pin-up mid-century phase for a while, which isn’t entirely gone- she just doesn’t put that much effort into doing her hair up in a Victory Roll every morning now. What high school did was instill intention behind wearing very specific outfits that would encapsulate the full day, which could include theater rehearsals.
Bryn’s move to Minnesota has increased her appreciation for comfortable clothing and layering, especially since she lives in a space with poor insulation. She’s noticed many Midwesterners lean more toward practicality and comfort more than bold style choices. That contrast has made her own enthusiasm for clothing stand out more.
One of her favorite fashion-related experiences at Carleton College was an impromptu campus-wide trend that started as a simple challenge among friends. It began when one student wondered if her friend group would even notice if she dressed in monochrome for the entire month of November. Soon, more people joined in, and before long, the entire campus seemed to be participating in dressing in monochrome. With Carleton being such a tight-knit community, a large portion of the student body ended up in a GroupMe chat, where participants shared daily outfit photos and logged their looks in a spreadsheet. Those who completed the challenge until Thanksgiving were invited to a special candlelit dinner. Naturally, Bryn took part, and in the process, she realized just how extensive her wardrobe had become—much of it sourced from thrift stores and unique finds.
That commitment to the bit originates from Bryn’s theater background. We’ve seen Bryn book a Birthday Bash show and literally bash a guitar onstage at the Green Room. The IceHouse witnessed her being possessed by David Bowie for a Halloween show, complete with the legendary lightning bolt face paint, dyed hair, and glam one-piece unitard. There’s been Princess Leia buns to recording reels laying on the floor to promote the release of “Dicey (The Floor Song)”, to even transforming a box of keys into merch. All designed to jolt you awake.
“People don’t always share my creative values in the context of music. More than any other art form, the music we consume on a daily basis is expected to be pleasant, like a nice thing in the background while we’re shopping for groceries. It’s supposed to be palatable. But I’m consistently drawn to music that actually forces you to pay attention in some way, or subverts an expectation. So I try to do that with performance choices, too—just really demand an audience’s attention, which I don’t think all artists feel comfortable doing.”
-Bryn Battani
Bryn admits that her songs are highly autobiographical and expressions of the most intimate and ugly parts of herself at times. It makes sense to stay true to herself and wear the things that she gravitates towards, like items that have a theatrical or western flair to them. Those items have aligned with her songs.
This philosophy extends to her evolving musical identity. While her sound incorporates acoustic textures and folk influences, she’s experimenting with grittier, heavier elements that contrast with her previous work. Similarly, her wardrobe is shifting. Once rooted in western-inspired looks—cowboy boots and Americana vibes—she’s now exploring flashier, theatrical styles. Her recent choice of an '80s vintage flame-patterned leotard symbolizes themes of destruction and resilience, echoing her anxiety about personal and global crises.
In anticipation of tonight’s performance at 7th Street Entry, Bryn incorporated multiple evolutions of her stage outfit, both footed with the tall lace-up red boots. Her song “Everything Emergency” discusses the cultural phenomenon of how we’re all constantly panicking about needing things ASAP. Ironically, she participated in the same trend by quickly grabbing the red boots off of Amazon. Her detective coat was snagged for two dollars in a fundraiser at Carleton College. The coat adds a layer of mystery and enables Bryn to pack the pockets with special props, like a magnifying glass and PBR beer can.
The flaming leotard was a leftover backup from the David Bowie show, found on Etsy. It was someone’s vintage 80’s wrestling outfit. Bryn layered it with a turtleneck sweater found thrifting, adding that she’s a big fan of turtlenecks for how they frame the face so well. The vintage apron was found on Etsy. It shows a weird gender domesticity of a man walking into the kitchen in total disarray, with the words “Don’t Kiss Me, I’m Busy.”
Bryn also brought along her Letterman jacket, from lettering in choir in Westlake High School. The jacket had a more prominent role in her Guest Room EP, as the symbolism behind the jacket leans into romanticizing the past and comparing how cool you were to others. The Guest Room EP had a lot of songs about rejection and being on the outside of things. The jacket is a way for her to reclaim the cool kid culture and fantasize of what it would be like to be normal and included. The ingenious ‘pom pom’ earrings were found at the Cedar Riverside Fest and help tie in the high school spirit.
As you can see, Bryn’s fashion is far more than just clothing—it’s a visual extension of her music. Her outfits often reflect the themes of her songs, adding layers of meaning to her performances. At her single release show for ‘The Thing’, she wore a Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) shirt to tie in with the poster design and the song’s themes of disposability and emotional rejection. "The PBR logo represented this temporary fix to our problems," she explained. The PBR brand has continued to be a keen easter egg addition to most of her shows moving forward.
“I started posting stuff wearing that PBR shirt and PBR earrings, and someone on the internet was like, ‘Hey, I know you have this PBR thing going on, thought you should know there’s a really cool vintage 80’s PBR jacket down the street at Leisure World.’ It fit me perfectly, so now I have that too!”
-Bryn Battani
Her Bowie-inspired Halloween performance marked a turning point in how Bryn began to think about fashion’s role in music. Diving into David Bowie’s fearless, shape-shifting approach to style taught her the power of using clothes to provoke, inspire, and keep both herself and her audience engaged.
She recently came across an interview where the interviewer was ridiculously grilling Bowie about him being bisexual. There were questions obviously intended to provoke and shame him in a certain way. Bowie was wearing huge platform shoes and was then asked what gender his shoes are. Bowie shut down that agenda, smirked, and said they were “shoe shoes silly”. The audience went wild and in turn made the interviewer look absurd. That ethos has been a really strong influence in the next evolution of her music.
"Bowie’s philosophy of wearing outlandish clothes to prevent himself from ‘becoming humdrum’ really stuck with me. The next phase of my songwriting involves themes of global and personal anxiety—I feel stuck participating in this massive inescapable process of destroying everything around me, which mirrors the way I compulsively cause harm to my own body with various bad habits. Yeah, I'm smoking and destroying my lungs, and yeah, the world's on fire, and everyone's feeling a lot of anxiety going into 2025. But I have to avoid becoming numb to any of it. More than ever, we need forms of expression that keep us on our toes,” states Bryn.
Her set at 7th Street Entry solidified our conversation as she expertly weaved in the magnifying glass, an Aldi cart and PBR can during “Everything Emergency” and wore the Letterman jacket for a song. In this collage of clothes and props, musically it matched. There were horns that added a jazzy touch to songs, while a flute emerged for “Shuggie”, a Foxygen cover. “Dicey (The Floor Song)” carries a country swing to it. Then there are softer moments where the emotional weight of the song could sweep through the audience. Her set encapsulated all these dynamics and gave us an odyssey we could all take together.
Looking ahead, Bryn is eager to expand the visual identity of her project to include her bandmates, transforming her solo vision into a collective aesthetic. But no matter where her music and style take her, one thing is certain: Bryn Battani will continue to make bold choices, both sonically and visually, captivating audiences with her fearless creativity. In an era where fashion and music are increasingly intertwined, Bryn stands out as an artist who bridges the two effortlessly. For her, every outfit tells a story, every stage look sets the tone, and every choice—whether in sound or style—demands to be noticed.
Check out the links below for ways to follow Bryn Battani and all the things we discussed above.
Bryn Battani Website - Instagram - Bandcamp - Carleton College - Leisure World Vintage - Victory Rolls - Bowie Interview - PBR
