Snocaps by Snocaps

My love for all things Waxahatchee and MJ Lenderman knows no bounds. Snocaps is the name of a side project “supergroup” betweenn Katie Crutchfield (aka Waxahatchee), her twin sister Alison, and guitarist du jour MJ Lenderman. The three of them got together in 2025 and then surprise-released their self-titled debut on halloween. For me it was love at first listen.

The Crutchfield twins have a long history of performing together, starting when they were only 15 years old with their band The Ackleys. Three years later, in 2007, they formed a pop punk band, the feminist-centric P.S. Eliot, that caught some farther-ranging attention before disbanding in 2011. They had separate but equal musical drives, and needed to each find their own path to greatness.

Katie went on to become Bacon Review fave Waxahatchee, which you may remember hearing (and extensively read) at #2 in 2024 and #1 in 2020. Alison’s band, Swearin’, hasn’t hit my radar, but that may be because that band hasn’t released any music since 2018, before I really even started listening to either twin. Snocaps marks the first time the two have recorded music written by each of them together since P.S. Eliot broke up 15 years ago.¹

MJ Lenderman, whose own album was #9 in 2024, and who also featured prominently on the #2 album from Waxahatchee that year, is seemingly everywhere today. A fantastic guitarist, his work with Snocaps is no different. Although, when I saw the band perform these great songs together in December in LA, Lenderman chose to play the drums for all but one song in the set, letting the Crutchfield twins and others take over duties on the stringed instruments (watch them perform “Hide” live in LA on Dec 5).

The album is split down the middle, with each Crutchfield twin writing and singing lead on half the songs. Their voices and the tone of the band shifts between the two sister’s proclivities, with the Allison-led songs having a more upbeat, indie-rock, Rilo Kiley-esque vibe, and the Katie-led songs trending naturally towards the slower, twangier, alt-country Waxahatchee side. “Coast” (featured in the video above), is my favorite Alison-penned song from the album. The only other video the band has released from the album is for the Katie-penned song “I Don’t Want To.” It’s a great song, but not my favorite of hers on the album. That distinction goes to “Hide,” (watch my own handheld video of that song, linked at the end of the previous paragraph), a slow dirge of a song about openly questioning the love and dedication of a partner. The song reminds me so much of the 1988 song “Tugboat” by Galaxie 500, I often find myself playing one after the other on repeat.

The future of Snocaps is completely unknown. Supergroups like this (see boygenius, at #1 in 2023, for another example) are often one-offs. They capture an exciting moment in time, but with the alt-universe itch scratched, the superstars inevitably move back into their usual groove.

This album came out so quickly and surprisingly, the record industry was caught off guard (the vinyl for Snocaps isn’t even going to be ready to deliver until April, six months after the album was released digitally). Maybe that release will be the impetus of another, more wide-ranging tour for Snocaps later this summer. Lenderman and Waxahatchee are going on a 17-date co-headlining tour in April, but it’s not billed as a Snocaps tour. Surely we’ll hear some of these songs then? No idea if Alison will make an appearance, but here’s to hoping.

Given the familial relations of the twins, and the currently-close ties between Katie and Lenderman, I would be very surprised if this is the last we hear from the three of them together. But, if nothing else comes from Snocaps, we’ll have this phenomenal record to remember them by.

^{1. Allison and other Swearin’ band members have performed on some various Waxahatchee songs in the interim.↩}