In Conversation with: Ribbon Skirt
On the night of January 23, I walked to Red Star, a well-known and somewhat “classy” pub on Edmonton’s Jasper Avenue. Inside, it was all polished wood, and dim lights that for all their brightness, may as well have been oil lamps. I was there to meet Ribbon Skirt, a recently successful band from Montreal. They play catchy, but haunting indie rock songs written by the band’s core members, Tashiina Buswa, and Billy Riley. I had seen them play in Edmonton the previous June, and was eager to speak with them when I learned they would be back for the Winterruption music festival.
When Tashiina and Billy sat down, they appeared weary, as though they had ridden in on horseback. They had just landed in Edmonton that afternoon, and only two nights before, opened for Shame at Montreal’s Club Soda. After letting them settle in, I made an unfunny joke about how I’m going to give them a rapid-fire round of questioning, they laughed politely, and we began.
We started with the basics: Tashiina was raised in a small town named Sioux Lookout in Northern Ontario, where she lived until moving to British Columbia for school. Later, she would move to Montreal because she felt that she needed a big change. Billy grew up just outside of London, England, before moving to Montreal in his early twenties, also feeling the need for a big change.
Ribbon Skirt live at Winterruption YEG 2026
“There’s a saying in Edmonton”, I start, “about how moving to Montreal won’t fill the void in your soul. How do you guys feel about the saying?” At first, they both admit that it’s true; Tashiina adds, “Nowhere fills the void”, which personally, I find disappointing. However, they express a lot of love for Montreal. “The cost of living is cheap, which is, I think key for a lot of things. Also like sometimes, it is nice to be a bit of an outsider.”, says Billy. Tashiina agrees and states, “There’s like an amount of energy to it.” The pair met each other in Montreal while attending school for journalism. When I ask what caused the switch from journalism to music, Tashiina says, “There was no switch. There was no switch to journalism either. We were just, I don't even know why we were in journalism school.” She laughs and says, “I don't know why you [Billy] were in journalism.”
We pause for a moment while a waitress asks if we want anything to drink. After a moment of looking at the menu, we all decide to order the same lager. When our drinks arrive, we clink our bottles together, take a hearty slug, and settle back down to work.
“When you go to different cities when you're on tour, like, what do you do to kind of feel out the city? Or do you just kind of blaze through or do you have like a kind of process or…?”
Billy responds first: “Uhh, depends where we are, like, on this tour, like I don't know. Usually we find a good place to swim. There are really nice places in Texas, and there are like hot springs in Idaho or Utah or somewhere. It was pretty amazing. But other than that, I just like food.” Tashiina jumps in, “I feel like the Korean we had in, you [Billy] weren’t there, but we had Korean in Boston that was so good.” “Mexican food in California is always good.”, says Billy, about the food he did eat. “But you have to go to the little like, mom and pop stands.”, says Tashiina, “Off the road where it’s like an old lady making burritos in the kitchen.”
Earlier this January, Ribbon Skirt had been touring with English rock band, Shame, on the east coast of Canada and the United States. “As you were seeing them [Shame] night after night, did you kind of learn anything from watching them play?”
“Yeah definitely.”, Billy says, “I think watching them play every night is that like, they’re performers and Charlie [frontman] especially is… he directs the crowd in like a really good way, and me and Chrissy [bass player for Ribbon Skirt] like picked up a lot of those cues and just kind of like how to direct a big crowd, kind of hype them up.”
Do they find a difference between playing in the states versus in Canada? “Yeah, I mean, it's like, definitely tense down there right now, for obvious reasons.”, says Tashiina, “And for us, we, we sort of made this, like, well, I made this effort every night to address that to the crowd and be like, hey, like, it's weird times, but it’s important that we still keep showing up in community and for the music and art and just sort of like thanking people for like doing that because it's like all we have left, really.” She continues: “I feel like that things are ramping up there, in a way, so I felt a bit more on edge. It's like, I flew into D.C, they [the rest of the band] drove down, and the first thing I saw when I touched down is like the whole, like, group of ICE agents, just like walking past me in the train station. So it was just like, you know, we’re not in Canada anymore.”
Ribbon Skirt are a recent phenomenon. They started gaining national attention in April 2025 when they released their debut record, Bite Down. Since then, they were nominated for the Polaris Prize, played at Massey Hall, and seemingly, have been touring non-stop. “It feels weird because it's it's not like one thing.”, Billy says about their rise to fame, “...or the way you’d think it would work is there would be like one thing and it happens and you're like, there, but it's more like steps. And the steps happen quite fast, but, you know, it's like you get like short list [referring to the Polaris Prize short/long list], sorry, you get like long list, ‘That's amazing.’ And then you’re short listed and you’re like, ‘Oh shit, that's amazing.’ Like you get like, the tour and you’re like, ‘Oh this is crazy.’ It's like compounded. So it doesn’t feel like just one thing has happened.” What do they feel it is about their chemistry that allows then to create such far-reaching music? “I think like the thing that it's like the ultimate glues is that we are very, like, the same taste.”, says Tashiina, “But also, I think our relationship, like… We have cultivated our relationship for, like, many years. Like, we've been friends for, like, nine, almost 10 years, which is crazy. For me, like, it takes a very, very special person to be able to be like, vulnerable enough to… he'll be like, just strumming some chords, and I'll like be singing over them, but just like, warbly, gargly bullshit. Like, I could never do that in front of anyone except Billy.”
Over the course of 2024, Tashiina and Billy recorded Bite Down, spending every other weekend in a studio in Montreal. During the recording of it, they said they only started to think of Bite Down as an album once they’d finished recording seven of its songs. Billy puts down his drink: “I think we got to seven and then we were like, okay, we could just like do two more. And then we like took like a week to lock in, just like we're like, we're gonna go and we're gonna come up with two songs no matter what happens. It kind of felt a bit insane at the end. ‘41’ and ‘Earth Eater’ were the last two.” Why did they feel those two tied the album together? “It seemed like with ‘Earth Eater’ at points…”, says Tashiina, “...like, when we recorded that, like that, that's, like the ending of the record.” Billy nods and says, “And then ‘41’ was like great because it just signaled like a bit of a departure and yeah pushing ourselves. Like I remember this thing where it was like, the last like song or two on the record always like points to the next thing.” Tashiina agrees, saying “Yeah. I think it does signal a shift, sonicically for, like, our sounds, like, our upcoming sounds, I guess. I don’t know, for the next record. I think there's a lot more… bit more experimental?”
Tashiina describes their next project as more “jaunty” and “dancy” than Bite Down, stating that they’ll be experimenting with more instrumentation, and somewhat departing from Bite Down’s grunginess. While a friend of theirs was in the process of moving out, the duo wrote parts of their next record in his empty home in Montreal. “He was moving from his house this summer to a different house…”, starts Tashiina, “...but the way he was moving, there was like a two week period where his old house was just like empty and like, no one was living there... And we were like, ‘Can we like come like write our next record in your house? In your empty house?’ We went there for like two weeks and it was just like us and like two like fold out chairs. There was nothing, like empty house, like no furniture, and like Billy's laptop and we were like able to… And it was so jaunty and weird and crazy and it was such a weird environment to like to write in but like, yeah, it was just very…” Billy chimes in, “Yeah, he kept being like, ‘You guys know it’s empty right?’ Yeah, like, and we were like expecting like, yeah, there'll be a couch or something, but it was like, it was like, it was so fucked.” They laugh. “We went in the cupboards and there was like an orange and a mug. It's very, like, it's like a 70’s vibe. Like, the living room has this, like this shag, orange carpet that's like super thick. There's this weird fake fireplace. Oh, it's like, so crazy.”
Ever since I saw Ribbon Skirt last June, I’ve been monitoring their growth from Instagram, beaming like a proud mother as they progress. After having a conversation with them, I was glad to find out they’re people worth cheering on. Tashiina and Billy were humble and warm, and between themselves and their band, share a passion for growing as artists that I find deeply admirable. Their songs are great, they’re good people, and above all, they’re artists; keep an eye on ‘em, because they’re moving fast.
