Monica Richards on Faith and the Muse, the Divine Feminine, and Fearlessly Finding Her Voice
From the punk trenches of D.C. to the sacred gothic halls of darkwave, Monica Richards has forged a singular path defined by rebellion, ritual, and reinvention.
Emerging from the early D.C. hardcore punk scene — where she fronted bands including Hate From Ignorance and Madhouse — Richards broke barriers not only as a woman in a fiercely male-dominated space, but as a creative visionary unafraid to blend rage with ritual and intellect with instinct. In 1994, she achieved enduring goth cult status through her work with Faith and the Muse, a band that pushed genre boundaries with theatrical, richly layered albums that frequently drew on folklore, classical influences, and pagan spirituality.
As a solo artist and writer, Richards has consistently used her platform to advocate for ecological awareness, feminine empowerment, and spiritual reclamation, weaving archetypal storytelling and mythic symbolism into everything she touches. Throughout the decades, her visual art and spoken word pieces have even further underscored her dedication to honoring ancestral wisdom and the divine feminine by channeling symbolic language, invoking elemental imagery, and crafting deeply personal forms of myth-making.
With a career marked by fearless reinvention and deep philosophical inquiry, Monica Richards has become a lodestar in alternative culture — a visionary whose legacy lies not only in what she created, but in the doors that she opened for others to explore art as ritual, rebellion, and transformation.
KP: I’d like to start back in DC, where you ruled much of the punk scene, forming Madhouse in 1983, followed by Strange Boutique in 1987.
MR: I never ruled it! [Laughs]. It was very male-dominated — or should I say boy-dominated — but I appreciate the idea that being one of the only female singers at the time may have illustrated something like that.
KP: Oh, you were very influential! You’re being far too modest. [Laughs].
But in speaking of your time there, you were told by bandmates that in order to be successful, you had to “sing like a man.” You said, “I was really upset when I was told that. ‘Sing like a girl’ meant to sing high, ‘sing like a boy’ meant to shout it hard.”
Can you share more about how that moment shaped your understanding of gender expectations in music? How did it affect the way you approached your voice — not just technically, but emotionally? And looking back, how do you feel those early experiences informed your lifelong exploration of feminine power, identity, and artistic authenticity?
MR: The first band that I sang for later formed No Trend. We never had a band name or played out; we just made songs together for a few months. Back then, they thought the idea of a “girl singer” would be radical, so they gave me lyrics, and I tried a song. They stopped playing, and one of them went up to the mic. They replayed the song with him belting the lyrics out hard. "Sing like a guy," was what they said. I had no idea how to sing at all, but that hit me hard. I'm unsure if I can put into words how I truly felt.
Let me back up to give a bigger picture of the time. The punk rock scene was where I found my people — my tribe. I was a weird kid, an outsider. I never felt that I belonged with those that were my age. I lived inside my head, in my own world, so when I found other kids like myself, it was everything. We created our own aesthetic, went to shows where our friends played in bands, and felt like we truly belonged to something new and underground. So here I am, a punk rock girl. I cut my hair down to a crewcut, wore all kinds of odd thrift store finds, big boots, and tons of makeup. I'd carry all of it with me in a bag, change into it before school, then change out of it before getting home. I was hanging out with punk rock boys and felt like I could hold my own around them. I was "one of the guys," accepted and part of the tribe. Other girls joined, and I was both respected and known in our scene.
But when I decided to try and sing for a band, something changed with the "she's one of the guys" attitude that they initially had. Being told how I ought to sing pissed me off. I felt that they were now defining me as a “girl,” and I realized how much I hated that. I always wanted people to see me for who I was as a person — as an individual — before noticing my gender. I felt betrayed in a sense. Later, I recall being interviewed about it all, probably around 1987 or so, when I was very vocal about how male-dominated the scene was. Why were we, as girls, trying to look just like the boys? But then we were all kids just figuring things out...
When I joined Hate from Ignorance, they gave me songs and the lyrics from their last singer, who had been male. They started playing, and I belted out the lyrics like I had learned from my last endeavor. They stopped playing. They wanted a girl singer, but one that sounded like a girl. What does that mean? "Sing like a girl” was what they said. So I sang high.
But being told how I ought to sing... I didn't have any control, which was something I didn't know that I should have, being so young. Does that make sense?
KP: Of course! I understand that fully.
MR: I reacted emotionally, but it was a start, and I continued onward. Here is how my relationship with my voice began to actually develop...
Madhouse was when I decided that I would start a new band from the ground up. But as soon as we started to play out, the Siouxsie comparisons began. Oh my god, I can't even begin to tell you how hard it was to be compared to her — even before I knew about the band. I had a basic teen girl voice, but we had similarities. So I went blonde. I started to growl, shriek, and do things that would give me something more unique and my own. I was experimenting and trying out all kinds of things. Then, in 1986, I lost my voice completely. We were supposed to open for Foetus at the 930 Club, and they cancelled. I was very sick at the time, and we had to do two sets to cover the night. By the end of the second set, I sounded like a bullfrog, and that was it. My voice was ruined.
This was the turning point. I went for two months without speaking in order to rest my vocal cords and have the nodes that had formed get smaller. Then I went into voice therapy and training. Voice therapy was fascinating; I had some older professors at George Washington University take me in for that. All of this was my own personal journey with my voice, without any outside influence of “You should do this, you shouldn't do that...”
So, on one end, it began with me trying to conform, then I did everything not to conform, and finally I just learned how to be myself and find my own voice.
KP: That’s quite the journey, but I think we’re all very grateful that you ended up where you eventually did.
On the topic of Madhouse, Strange Boutique, and your eventual formation of Faith and the Muse — your incredible career has crossed so many genres, yet it feels indisputably connected by a common thread of progression, radicality, and a refusal to stay confined within any one sound or scene.
How intentional was that evolution for you? Were you consciously seeking to break boundaries, or did that spirit of transformation emerge more organically as you followed your creative instincts?
MR: Absolutely organically. It was just a natural progression of finding my own voice and means of expression. Ever since I was a child, I loved dress-up and transformation. I created stories and personas, and this continued especially later in Strange Boutique and fully in Faith and the Muse. While being in F&TM, after a few years of establishing the band, I felt trapped by the goth look that I had created. Being immersed in an underground scene can do that. You're no longer doing things for yourself — you find that you’re doing them through fans' expectations. So then came The Burning Season, where we dropped the classic Goth look and dealt with a great deal of backlash from that. Now I love to be free to dress however I feel for a show or photoshoot at hand.
KP: And I believe that’s the highest form of self-expression.
To go back to your experience of being a female lead, in what ways did being a woman in predominantly male-dominated alternative music scenes shape your experience of belonging?
MR: As a girl singer, I didn't get much support at all from the punk scene itself. My experiences as a woman in Madhouse were mainly being completely disrespected. If we played at punk shows with other bands, I had punks and skins yelling things like, "Take off your shirt!" Shows by ourselves were sparsely attended. There were times that I wanted to quit, but after the loss of my voice and learning how to sing within my range, I had newfound confidence. And with Strange Boutique in the late '80's, there was a change in the audience. Strange Boutique was a band of misfits that somehow connected in a completely new way. We were attracting new fans that were thrilled to come to our shows — they knew the songs and sang along with the lyrics. Some kids were dressing with more makeup and costumes, others were still punks, and some were into alternative rock, metal, or hip-hop. This was when I finally felt that I belonged in a new post-punk scene, that I was acknowledged for being my arty self, and I felt — for once — understood.
KP: My belief has always been that we are all multi-dimensional, regardless of how monolithic we may look. It’s great that you could find such a diverse home.
To speak about your work at large, you have often invoked images of the wild woman, the outsider, the witch, and the exile. Do you feel a kinship with these figures, and what do they represent to you personally?
MR: They are all aspects of a whole. I've felt all of these personas at different periods in my life. As I learned more and more about the history of "women" — and it was my father who truly taught me profound things about that, which blew my mind, of the change from Matriarchal societies to Patriarchy — I felt the need to express this hidden history in music. I have felt like an outsider ever since I was a small child — I preferred to be by myself in a forest, with Nature and my imagination. I didn't really like or trust people, and I imagined myself to be living in the jungle with only the animals. To be Queen of the Animals with wordless communication and all of the powers of Nature within my fingers — this was my childhood dream persona. To grow up and be true to this child-perception through music and transformation, to create these types of personas, and for that hour or so on stage — to Become — it's amazing.
KP: How compelling. I think that’s the coolest thing.
In Faith and the Muse, your lyrics often channel powerful, autonomous female figures. Were these characters mirrors for your own journey or aspirations for the kind of womanhood that you sought to embody?
MR: These powerful female figures are aspects of aspiration, transcending the harshness of life's challenges — my way to channel the Wise Mind, when Emotional and Rational Minds meet in perfect harmony… My projection of Peace, Strength, Wisdom and Timelessness, though in reality, I was working two jobs and dealing with the high stress of balancing life, music, and art. I've always called music my expensive hobby — I've worked all my life in order to afford to record, tour, and do what I need to do.
KP: I hope you feel a great sense of fulfillment, because that was all worth it.
Similarly to the concept of autonomous female figures, how has your relationship with the idea of “feminine power” evolved from your early days in the punk and goth scenes to now? In those early spaces — where defiance and nonconformity were voraciously celebrated — did you feel empowered as a woman, or did you encounter challenges in expressing feminine strength on your own terms?
“Art and music are the true basis of humanity; they’re what make us so different from other creatures. I love to be able to connect heart to heart, because I know and understand deeply what it means to be the outsider.”
MR: I always encountered challenges and attacks in “normal life” back then, such as jocks at the university shouting at me as I walked to class with chopped pink hair, or older women walking into my work and calling me names as they stared at my odd hair and thick makeup. It wasn't until I released my first solo album, Infrawarrior, that I was able to feel and express that. But interestingly, I did a talk at SXSW with a few punks from DC in 2010, men who — as kids — had judged and disrespected me back in the day. We actually talked about it there, and I was able to tell them how I felt. They told me that they felt awful, that they were dumb boys dealing with this upstart girl that intimidated them. They said that they respected me back then but didn't know how to deal with the whole thing! So I suppose I was expressing "feminine power" the whole time by just being me. And it has given me some closure on my struggles back then.
Now I am facing what it is to be an older woman in this current society, and it has a whole new mountain of challenges. Does one strive to maintain the youthful perfection demanded by social media or allow oneself to age gracefully? I’m striving for something in between, I think, while I deal with this…
KP: Well — and I hesitate to say this because I’m not even sure this is a compliment that we should give anymore — but you do look incredible. So whatever it is, keep doing it! [Laughs].
Your work — with Faith and the Muse, Strange Boutique, and Madhouse alike — has given a home to many who never found belonging. What role do you think that art and music — particularly in these genres — play in offering sanctuary or identity to those who feel like outsiders?
MR: Art and music are the true basis of humanity; they’re what make us so different from other creatures. I love to be able to connect heart to heart, because I know and understand deeply what it means to be the outsider. I think that finding one's own personal view and singing about how they feel can speak to the listener who may be feeling the same thing but now has a new way to express it, to understand it, and hopefully to deal with it better.
KP: I relate to that incredibly deeply as well. You keep the world spinning!
You have written extensively on the divine feminine. What is it that draws you to examine its existence? What do you hope that modern audiences can take from those explorations?
MR: I will say that the Matriarchal has had an immensely profound impact on me, and it all stems from losing my mother at the age of 5. My few memories of her were when she was very ill, so I had a mythological feminine aspect wrap around me like rings on a tree as I grew up without her. The search, the need, and the reasons to express myself about it definitely originate from this event. I'm unsure how audiences will view my own path — possibly it is personal, but at the same time very global...
KP: I think a lot of your work takes on a different meaning for me now, in the best way. That’s quite profound.
Alongside the divine feminine, many of your lyrics evoke Celtic, Norse, and various other ancient traditions. What first drew you to these spiritual systems? Was it a personal search for meaning, a fascination with history and myth, or something else entirely — and how have these traditions continued to shape your worldview and creative work over time?
MR: The search for my mother led me to search for Her, the Divine Goddess, which is how I found the hidden history of the worldwide Matriarchy. This is revealed in all mythological stories, but because my own Welsh family background was of interest to me personally, I researched the Celtic histories, the Welsh-Celtic especially, which could be defined, to those who don't know, as the origins of King Arthur and the related mythologies that came hundreds of years before that. This all culminated in The Book of Annwyn, which I put together in 1998. When you are studying this particular mythology, you find yourself reading lyrical works. The Welsh Bard was a later version of Druid. To remember their history, they put it into cryptic verse. So, on one level, I am just continuing a tradition with song and lyric. My new album — which I'm just getting started on — is called Hiraeth. It's a Welsh word that means a deeply layered nostalgia, a profound yearning. There seems to be no word for it in English, as it’s far more conceptual than a single word can convey. For me, “Hiraeth” means that deep calling within each of us that we might have been ignoring all of our lives. A childhood yearning, possibly — a place where you truly feel at peace. I have felt it when I lived in cities and wanted to be far away in the forests, the mountains… Back within Nature. So I continue on...
KP: You designed much of Faith and the Muse’s album artwork and related visuals, as well as various iconic punk flyers across the DC scene. My understanding is that you started very early on as a designer, which — as an ex-print and now digital publisher — I really love.
What is your personal history with design? What was it that first drew you to it, and do you have a favorite project or piece that you’ve ever worked on?
MR: Music and art were all around me. My mother was a pianist and soprano, my father played guitar and sang baritone — he both wrote and spoke the words on “Gaia” off the Infrawarrior album — and my oldest sister is and was an artist. The very first thing I drew was the Pink Panther, a cat face. I must have been about 4 or so... I was always drawing and writing stories for as long as I can remember.
In the punk scene, flyers were necessary, so I made flyers for bands by redrawing old woodcuts from clip art books. Then I made flyers for my bands, plus the logos, and then the album covers. It was all a natural progression. I forgot that I did other bands' art until I saw a Black Market Baby album and recognized my handwriting on the back titles! Hilarious.
I took graphic design and art in college — at the time, everything was done by hand. I cut Rubylith, shot scans through a giant camera, and worked at a pre-press house for years in DC. We used a silkscreen method of creating dry transfers and color comps for designers. In fact, when computers took over this, I was very upset as I was forced to learn it... But then I realized how much easier it was!
I think some of my favorite pieces were the Annwyn cover and booklet designs — my first real jump into Photoshop and creating digital imaging, the Vera Causa painting for Faith and the Muse, the Infrawarrior cover and booklet — where I did all kinds of female personas, the Charm mermaid for Strange Boutique, and the whole art book for Naiades, which was mainly working with an amazing group of famous artists, and me just doing the design.
KP: Your work is so distinct, both visually and sonically. I love that you’ve been able to delve into the graphic world as much as you have.
To go back to Faith and the Muse, I generally have a “no covers” rule when it comes to nearly perfect songs, but I have to say, one of my favorite covers of all time is your take on “Running Up That Hill.” That’s one of my few exceptions — it is truly stunning and brings an entirely different emotional texture to Kate Bush’s supernova.
That said, I simply can’t resist asking — what led you to choose that track in particular? When did you decide to reinterpret it, and how did you approach honoring the original while making it entirely your own?
MR: Thank you! I adore Kate Bush. She has always done her own thing, and it's all so unique and unconventional. I did a live vocal version of "Sat in Your Lap" in the 1990s, which was really a blast because it was completely different from her song, but if you knew it, you'd start to realize the lyrics and recognize the song. I do believe it was William [Faith] who wanted to do “Running Up That Hill,” and we both knew that doing the main hook with his style of guitar would give it a very different sound. At the same time, we did our best to honor her version.
KP: Well, you pulled it off in spades.
I always love asking artists with expensive discographies this question — do you have a favorite track of yours that you feel was undeservedly overlooked by audiences? If so, which is it and why?
MR: Faith and the Muse’s "The Silver Circle." I always thought that one was not given its due. It had so much meaning, but the song itself is a swirling blast — and a bit of a wake-up call!
I would have also said Strange Boutique’s "Drown," but that went viral in the most amazing way!
My own songs: "Death is the Ultimate Woman," "EndBegin," and "Lureinlay.” Those are a few of my favorites that many people seem to skip over.
KP: If you could tell your younger self one thing, what would you tell her?
MR: Don't let others hinder or dictate your creativity. I worked hard to do my thing even while being criticized or put down. It made it much harder and caused me to second-guess myself.
KP: What advice would you lend women in life, work, or love?
MR: We are all imperfect beings, but given social media demands on top of life as it is, I would say… Do your best with the addiction to social media, and cut yourself loose when you can. Be true to yourself, take time for yourself, find ways to be with Nature, and find balance. Read old books. Honor your word. Strive to excel at things you love. Be a good human. If you start a project, see it through. In a relationship, find patience and let go of resentment, but if you are feeling that you're losing who you are in the relationship, it may be time to find a new way to communicate — or move on.
KP: What do you feel makes a provocative woman?
MR: The most provocative women I know these days run ranches by themselves and rescue animals! There is a whole subculture of rescue women who go out on the frontlines of animal welfare, and I admire them for their courage and heart when faced with some seriously rough situations.
But, for me, I'm not sure... I think of myself as more eclectic or eccentric. Our current Human culture is suffering from the loss of meaning and purpose, and anger is replacing everything. The genuine connection to the inner heart is slipping from a deep online influence to conform to some kind of hive mind ideal of beauty, politics, and how one should behave or feel. There is a deep unhappiness that many have come to consider as “normal,” but it isn’t. We are all connected; we are all on this journey of life. If I can get people to learn or remember this with my music, I'll be happy.
Photography (in order of appearance): Clovis IV, Ellie Moran, Clovis IV, Ellie Moran, SIN
