Alli Walls and Emma Welch on SKORTS, Plugging In, and Breaking Through
Bursting out of Brooklyn with equal parts fury, wit, and unapologetic charm, SKORTS is a band that refuses to be categorized.
At its heart are Alli Walls and Emma Welch, two musicians whose journeys could not be more different — or more complementary. Walls started as a “sweet girl with an acoustic guitar and little bird songs about plants,” she recalls, but life’s darker corners and a few reckless nights pushed her toward a louder, electric rebellion that found its ultimate expression in songwriting and performance. Welch, classically trained on viola and later mastering guitar and bass on her own terms, brings precision, curiosity, and an irrepressible love for the stage to every note. Together, they have forged a band that is as fierce as it is playful and as intimate as it is explosive.
Their debut album, Incompletement, was recorded in a patchwork of Brooklyn practice spaces — a DIY endeavor that perfectly mirrors the band’s ethos: make it happen, trust your instincts, and let the music speak for itself. Drawing on a wide spectrum of influences, from the raw emotionality of Angel Olsen to the art-rock spectacle of Talking Heads, the band creates a sound that is at once nostalgic and completely of the moment. And while they joke about the origins of their name — a nod to doing the splits without the flash — the real story lies in their music: versatile, unexpected, and built to move you.
More than anything, SKORTS is a band about transformation, courage, and the electric thrill of being fully, unapologetically alive on stage. Walls and Welch navigate the chaos of New York City, the pressures of the modern music industry, and the endless swirl of creative possibility with humor, honesty, and a shared vision: to make music that hits hard, feels real, and refuses to bend to anyone else’s rules.
KP: Alli, I definitely connected with a quote of yours that I read, where you said that you started as “a sweet girl with an acoustic guitar and little bird songs about plants. It was very innocent and childlike, my writing. A lot of different experiences made me angry, and I was thinking I needed an electric guitar to express more.”
I started out as a classically trained pianist from a very young age, but I switched over to guitar lessons when I was about six. I don’t think I was ever really a sweet little girl — there was always some bite in me — but my teacher insisted I start on acoustic before graduating to electric. [Laughs] I think I lasted maybe two months before I threatened to quit entirely unless we made the switch. The first song I learned on acoustic was “Here Comes the Sun,” and the first on electric was “All Along the Watchtower.” Much better — I was happy after that! [Laughs]
It’s such a common transition and kind of a metaphor in itself — guitar is one of the few instruments that offers both a soft, delicate side in acoustic and a fierce, defiant one in electric.
Can you talk more about that transformation — what moments or realizations made you feel the need to plug in and turn up the volume?
AW: One major transformation took place during my time in Richmond, Virginia. I was singing in a band called Hound Heart with the very talented guy, Issac Friend. At 22, I was testing my limits. I fucked around and found out how cruel the world could be alone in a hotel room with a dangerous stranger. It was a rude awakening, and it pushed me into the darker corners of my mind. It was getting louder on the inside, and I was coping with evil friends that just wanted in on a reckless night… I felt like I needed to express myself in a new way, or I was going to explode or ruin myself. With nothing but love, I stopped singing in Hound Heart. That's when I started playing my roommate's electric guitar, writing every morning till I had to stop to walk dogs in the afternoon. The noise that I was getting to come out of that shitty amp was pulling something entirely new from me. After about a month I had enough songs to start looking for bandmates at open mics. All that reckless energy turned into a band called Star Garbage. I loved that band.
KP: I love the name.
Your story of leaving Denver — selling the car, saying goodbye, driving straight through to a block party in Brooklyn — feels like a very cinematic rebirth. Looking back, what did that drive represent for you emotionally? Do you feel that it was a sense of escape? Reinvention?
AW: The drive represented how much road you could travel in 36 hours loaded with Adderall and a cat in tow.
KP: [Laughs] The hero’s journey.
Even as a native New Yorker who was born in Brooklyn, it’s never lost on me the huge risk that people take to try to make it here. It’s such a tough city to try to thrive in, but — as the saying goes, and it’s certainly true — if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
You’ve called New York “the place where you send it or you can’t pay rent.” When you first arrived, what did that first night in Brooklyn teach you about what it really means to survive and create in this city?
What advice would you lend to women who are hesitant about such a bold transition and taking such a leap of faith? I admire it greatly.
AW: If you're hesitant, then you shouldn’t come. You need to have absolute confidence that you have something to offer and this town will receive you. And this town will help a genuine, creative, hard-working spirit. Flirt with the city; have some tenacity for it.
EW: Everyone's first year in the city is hard. I watch all my friends go through their first years, and it’s a struggle no matter who you are. You have to really want to be here — to have a real need to be here and not somewhere else — to get past those initial shocks. There are lots of cool places — it doesn’t have to be New York, unless it does. I came here first for acting school. Having that immediate community where we were baring it all really helped seal my transition, coming from Ohio and then college in the hills in Vermont. Finding the music community and this band — it’s where I need to be.
KP: To speak about the city on a more micro level, what role has the New York City scene played in your growth — musically, personally, or professionally?
AW: It's where I met my bandmates. I came to New York to start this band. I didn’t know that it was gonna be this band, but this city gave me everything that I needed to get this project going. This is the best-case scenario.
EW: It's been a place that we could play incessantly for a few years. Having the opportunity to play many different stages many times over with many different bands has been the biggest part of our growth as a band and my growth as a musician. I don’t know what it would be like in another city because I’ve only tried it here, but I think the amount of opportunity is definitely a special thing that New York offers.
“Listen to your intuition. Try it all, and if it doesn't resonate, start over.”
KP: Emma, you joined SKORTS as the bassist after Char [Smith]’s arrival. What was your journey with musicianship like, and how did you end up in New York as well?
EW: I grew up playing classical viola; that was my foundation in music. I loved it, and I made all of my best friends through orchestra. Then, in high school, I got my hands on my sister’s, then my brother’s, then my acoustic guitar and learned some White Stripes songs. Then I started playing in a band on electric guitar and had the best time ever. I didn’t really play plugged-in music again until after college when my friend asked me to learn bass in order to tour with his band in 2021. I fell in love with the bass and loved being an adult learning an instrument. Later that year I connected with Char — who I knew from a coffee shop we worked at — and he said that he had started playing with this project and they were looking for a bassist. I said that I’d love to play with them, and then we never stopped.
KP: Alli, you said that SKORTS have had to “battle so much more bullshit than we would have ever had thrown at us, even 20 years ago. We are really trying to break through and do it as genuinely as we can, with the least amount of algorithmic influence.”
This is a conversation that could take us days to explore, but I don’t personally believe that social media has made it easier for bands to breakthrough — that is, if they’re genuine. If they’re willing to play the game of algorithms and produce vapid two-minute TikTok songs, then maybe sure, but the market is incredibly oversaturated, and everyone is bending their knee to play the game.
If you couldn’t already tell, I absolutely hate social media. [Laughs] As a New Yorker, I long for the days of a CBGB’s or a Hurrah’s or a Max’s Kansas City, where bands never had to conform or bow down to some Zuckerberg-Mosseri algorithm to be seen — or to make it.
As I said, I’m sure that we could go on forever about this, but I’m very curious as to what your relationships are to the way that bands need to market themselves to just be seen today. How are you navigating that, and how do you really key into this deep sense of authenticity, which is very present in your work?
EW: I feel differently about it every day. I don’t knock bands that are doing TikTok and the algorithm well, at least if they’re doing it in a way that seems genuine or fun to them. But we’re just not particularly savvy at it. And we don’t like to do anything mediocre. Our strengths are in writing music and playing good shows. If we can capture that and translate it online then we like to do it, but we don’t want to push it. It can be agonizing, though, to think that a social media presence could be the one thing that stands between us reaching people. I do feel like the landscape is changing every day though — what’s clicking and what service is “hottest” or trending is always changing, and if you keep doing you, one day what you do might be the thing that people are into. I’m down to wait for that moment rather than to chase what someone thinks it should be.
KP: To build on that, it seems like much of the authenticity that people respond to in your music comes directly from your live shows — performances that have been widely celebrated here in New York.
What does performing live mean to you? And as a band that so honorably reveres music legacy, what are some of your favorite live rock performances?
AW: Live is as real as you can get. You and the crowd are inside the music together while also having a very personal experience… It’s an irreplicable rush that we crave. [In Count Orlok’s voice] I recently lost a tampon from dancing so hard at a Sextile show.
KP: No way! [Laughs] I just spoke to Mel not too long ago — she’s truly brilliant.
EW: I’ve always been drawn to performance since I was little; it’s always felt like what I was meant to do. I’ve had some of my best memories being a member of a crowd and being moved by a performance. It’s so deeply human, something we’ve been doing forever. It’s so special to be able to orient my life around that and to feel a purpose on stage.
One of my favorite live performances is the Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense. And one of my earliest favorite performances was seeing The Flaming Lips at a festival in Cincinnati, where I mostly grew up. I was way in the back, but I was a perfect level of high — a rare thing for me — and I just remember the visual spectacle that they had, the grand playfulness of the music, and the joy in the crowd. It was all super euphoric.
KP: That sounds incredible.
While researching for this piece, I noticed that many outlets describe your sound as a fusion of ’90s alt-rock and ’70s glam, which I can hear. Do you feel that’s an accurate characterization, and more broadly, who or what have been your biggest musical influences throughout your journey?
EW: We don’t write with a specific genre in mind; we all come from different musical backgrounds, and the sound is an inherent melding of what we’ve been drawn to in our lives — we let the song and the impulse do the talking.
I never quite know what genre to call us and like hearing people’s interpretations to see how it’s hitting them, but it’s hard to know what is accurate or not. I leave that to the listener.
I was obsessed with Led Zeppelin and The White Stripes growing up. I’m really influenced by Finom right now, and Gustaf, and Jelly Kelly. Karen Carpenter and ABBA have been long-time influences for me, too.
AW: That's not accurate, but I also don't care to be genre-fied.
My biggest influences are Radiohead, Car Seat Headrest, and Angel Olsen.
KP: And speaking of research, one of the things that I always look for first is the origin of a band name, and I very disappointingly couldn’t find yours, so naturally I’m very curious now. Why “SKORTS,” and what does it mean to you as a band?
AW: We just wanna do the splitz without flashing the puss. Ya know?
KP: [Laughs] Makes sense, fair enough.
EW: It came from a group chat brainstorm in the early days. We like how it looks and sounds. When we want to go deep with it, we like the versatility that a skort allows.
KP: I love both answers. [Laughs]
Your debut album, Incompletement, was recorded in three Brooklyn practice spaces rather than at a big commercial studio. What does “DIY” mean to you in 2025, and how significant is it for your approach?
AW: “DIY” means that you have no money, so you bet on yourself and your friends to get it done. This was the approach, and luckily we have very talented friends.
EW: It means wanting to make and not waiting for the means to do so. And doing it the best you can and working very hard to achieve that.
KP: Can you walk us through the album as a whole — what themes or emotions guided its creation, and what headspace were you in while writing and recording it? Are there particular tracks that feel especially personal to each of you or that you consider standouts in terms of your connection to the music?
AW: It was recorded over such a long period of time that there were many different headspaces across years of writing. “I Won’t Be The One” — I was trapped in the basement in a winter storm in Denver in 2020.
KP: As women navigating the music industry, have you encountered particular biases or obstacles along your journey, and how have you approached or overcome them?
AW: I actually feel quite respected. I feel bad for the boiz… Lol jk.
EW: Yeah, I feel like we’ve been pretty lucky to be performers at this time and to be pretty grounded in our own identities. There are little things, random comments, but they are few and far between, and, if anything, they make me feel more validated to continue.
I do wish that I saw more women and non-binary people in other positions, like tech and sound. I imagine they face a lot more pushback. I feel like those areas are very male-dominated, and it’s good to keep changing the idea that the brainier, techier sides of music are for men. Those areas aren’t my fortes, and I feel like when I first started out I wanted to prove that I knew more to not add to that stereotype. But knowing that it’s just about me, my brain, and what my focus is as a musician rather than the fact that I’m a woman, it’s been empowering to actually lean into what I don’t know. Being comfortable not knowing things and asking questions — grounded in all that I do know.
KP: What advice would you give to women who are looking to start their own bands, both in terms of navigating the music industry and in finding their creative voice?
AW: Find your voice before you look for your band. You've gotta be able to inspire people to want to create with you. Find the places that contain the people that make noise that you like, and then talk to them. Have the audacity to gab about your music to everyone. Literally everyone.
EW: Let your curiosity, care, and desire to create drive you. There are so many factors that are beyond your control and so many questions to answer, but you must remove the question of your worth. Know it, trust it, and make it because you want to. You’re never going to feel fully ready — you find the readiness in the doing, so just start doing. Take stock of the little successes. Find people that are as passionate about it as you.
KP: What advice would you offer to women on life, work, or love?
AW: Listen to your intuition. Try it all, and if it doesn't resonate, start over.
EW: Be kind to everyone, but don’t waste your time being nice.
KP: What do you feel makes a provocative woman?
AW: Someone with a tight butthole.
EW: The sense of being provocative comes from the observer and not the person themselves — it’s only provocative if it stirs something within you, whether that’s good or bad. “Provocative woman” has had a negative connotation in history. In the sense of reclaiming the phrase, a woman is inherently provocative if she is herself.
Photography (in order of appearance): Nico Malvaldi, Sara Feigin, Nick Charnas
