“A little grunge, a little dreamy, a little kitschy.” 

This is the description of the sound that Claire Martine, Milwaukee native-turned New York transplant, has been cultivating and creating for herself. 

“With leaning into the grunge side of things, with having the shoegaze-y grunge distorted guitars but I also do really love having digital glitchiness or digital distortion,” Martine says. “Can we make it sound like it’s someone’s toy telephone that you’ve had for 18 years, and you press the button and you go ‘oh, that sounds so tinny and glitched out’?” 

Claire Martine grew up playing violin, in a very music-based and creative-oriented family and household. She made the leap to New York City for theater, but right at the end of college decided to make a change. She decided to pivot into making her own music and songwriting based on her own feelings and how strongly she felt about pursuing them. Guitar for Martine started as a COVID hobby, but that hobby helped bring some confidence into beginning to write. 

“It felt like I opened the door and went, ‘Yes! This is my door!’” Martine said. 

Throughout her journey of finding her sound and her vibe, Martine listed a varied array of inspirations from Clairo and Charley Bliss, to HACHI and Jane Remover. Martine started releasing songs in 2024, and her early music helped her figure her vibe out. 

“The point of those ones was to learn, ‘how would I produce these?’” Martine said. “I wanted to know what goes into a bass line, or what about the background vocals or pads or synths…there was a lot that I needed to learn how to make, or even how to say what I want if someone else was helping me. Those [songs] were great to learn more about production, and it was a great way to explore what my production sounded like.” 

Claire Martine’s upcoming EP, Better Safe Than Sorry (June 23rd), has helped her to solidify her sound and vibe of what she’s striving for in her music. Martine has allowed herself to become vulnerable in her music and has found her self-confidence through this production. 

“Like, this isn’t me feeling like I got a good grade, and I had a good presentation, and I got good feedback and now I’ll be liked. It’s like, I made this thing myself, and not even completely myself- I made it with people who wanted to help me make it, and now I can put it out there and I can either stand by it and talk about it or I can let it be out there and be a representation of me,” Martine said. 

Claire Martine’s upcoming EP includes her newest single, also the title of the EP, ‘Better Safe Than Sorry’ which tells the story in a diary-entry way about misunderstanding, regret, and holding yourself back out of feeling safe. 

“It’s about feeling misunderstood or miscommunication, which is a big vibe for the whole EP, where I say something or didn’t quite say it right and now things are weird and I’m upset, or ‘this is the rant I should have given to you and I didn’t,’” Martine said. “With ‘Better Safe Than Sorry’, it’s really about me feeling like there’s times where, instead of taking some big risk and expressing my feelings or letting someone in and being vulnerable in any sort of way, I say ‘no we’re gonna chop that off, it’s safer to keep some things to myself than to go into any detail about anything and the regret that comes with that.’”

“This song, the whole EP, and really what I’m trying to do of playing live more, and reach out to people to talk to about my music, and make new friends, and find more of a community online and offline with my music. It feels like I am taking the risk of putting myself out there” 

One of the scariest questions anyone can be asked is: what’s next? What’s in the works, or what are some dreams that you want to aspire to and manifest for yourself for the future? Martine took this question in stride. 

“I’m really wanting to play live way more,” she said. “I love doing shows and I’ve gotten to play some things that have been so cool and I’d love to do more of that.” 

“I’d really love to be opening for bands that I love, I really love the shoegaze vibe and I’m really wanting to go further into that,” she also said. “I want to keep pushing myself further for myself.”  

Claire Martine’s new single Got It Wrong comes out April 28th.