Bandmates Kathryn McCaughey (vocals/bass), Karolane Carbonneau (guitars), Lisandre Bourdages (keys/percussion), and Sarah Dion (drums) make clear that they aren’t interested in playing by whatever rules have been set around them. NOBRO were playing a show the day after the United States Supreme Court overturned the right to access an abortion in the country. The four women were shaken and furious, but that night McCaughey led a righteous toast against the decision: “This next song is dedicated to setting our vaginas free!”

It was a spur-of-the-moment response to the news, but the phrase stuck with McCaughey. It began to feel like something more than a throw-away slogan. It felt like something deeper, a defiant rallying cry to kick against the exhausting struggles of life. “As a musician or artist or even a woman, you have to throw off the weight of societal pressures and expectations, especially as you get older,” says McCaughey. “You have to take risks and chances.” NOBRO is the space where the quartet gets to take those risks and chances. It’s a place for cultivating power and happiness in a hard, mean world. That means the stakes are high. “Music is where we lift each other up,” McCaughey continues. “I wish it was more like a fairy tale. We just want this fucking thing to work. But we’re all gonna succeed together, or we’re all gonna fail together.”

Accumulating years of work, hundreds of shows, and thousands of miles since 2014, McCaughey, Carbonneau, Bourdage, and Dion have been building NOBRO into one of the most fierce and exciting bands in Canada, now riding the momentum from a string of blazing singles and EPs, capped with 2020’s Sick Hustle and 2022’s Live Your Truth Shred Some Gnar. Listeners big and small have been taking note: Iggy Pop played their track “Bye Bye Baby” on his BBC Radio 6 show, and a fictional band in the Netflix series The Imperfects covered their songs. Aside from taking their raucous live shows to every dive bar across Montreal, the band has also toured across North America and Europe with PUP, Alexisonfire, Billy Talent, Fidlar, and The OBGMs. In May 2023, they opened for Blink-182 at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena.

Bandmates Kathryn McCaughey (vocals/bass), Karolane Carbonneau (guitars), Lisandre Bourdages (keys/percussion), and Sarah Dion (drums) make clear that they aren’t interested in playing by whatever rules have been set around them. NOBRO were playing a show the day after the United States Supreme Court overturned the right to access an abortion in the country. The four women were shaken and furious, but that night McCaughey led a righteous toast against the decision: “This next song is dedicated to setting our vaginas free!”

It was a spur-of-the-moment response to the news, but the phrase stuck with McCaughey. It began to feel like something more than a throw-away slogan. It felt like something deeper, a defiant rallying cry to kick against the exhausting struggles of life. “As a musician or artist or even a woman, you have to throw off the weight of societal pressures and expectations, especially as you get older,” says McCaughey. “You have to take risks and chances.” NOBRO is the space where the quartet gets to take those risks and chances. It’s a place for cultivating power and happiness in a hard, mean world. That means the stakes are high. “Music is where we lift each other up,” McCaughey continues. “I wish it was more like a fairy tale. We just want this fucking thing to work. But we’re all gonna succeed together, or we’re all gonna fail together.”

Accumulating years of work, hundreds of shows, and thousands of miles since 2014, McCaughey, Carbonneau, Bourdage, and Dion have been building NOBRO into one of the most fierce and exciting bands in Canada, now riding the momentum from a string of blazing singles and EPs, capped with 2020’s Sick Hustle and 2022’s Live Your Truth Shred Some Gnar. Listeners big and small have been taking note: Iggy Pop played their track “Bye Bye Baby” on his BBC Radio 6 show, and a fictional band in the Netflix series The Imperfects covered their songs. Aside from taking their raucous live shows to every dive bar across Montreal, the band has also toured across North America and Europe with PUP, Alexisonfire, Billy Talent, Fidlar, and The OBGMs. In May 2023, they opened for Blink-182 at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena.