“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 said. “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 household. She made the leap to New York City for theater, but right at the end of college, she decided to make a change: writing her own music. Guitar for Martine started as a COVID hobby, but that hobby helped bring some confidence in beginning to write. 

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

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 out her vibe. 

“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.” 

Martine’s upcoming EP, Better Safe Than Sorry, to be released on June 23, 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. 

Better Safe Than Sorry includes her newest single, also the title of the EP, “Better Safe Than Sorry,” which tells a 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 explained. “With ‘Better Safe Than Sorry’, it’s really about me feeling like there are 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.”

Martine continued, “This song, the whole EP, and really what I’m trying to do is play 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.”  

Photos courtesy of Claire Martine | Interviewed on April 9, 2026