Biography
Julia Shapiro first emerged from Seattle’s indie rock circles through her roles in Chastity Belt, Childbirth, and Who Is She?, while also pursuing a solo path. Her guitar playing favors wiry textures and deliberate rawness that sit between indie rock and garage punk, yet she anchors the music with straightforward, elemental melodies. As a singer and writer she shifts between earnest and sardonic tones, her pointed humor most evident on Chastity Belt’s 2013 album No Regerts and Childbirth’s 2015 release Women’s Rights; her solo recordings, such as 2021’s Zorked, turn inward toward quieter, more personal reflection. Across these projects she consistently addresses feminism and twenty-first-century American experience.
Born in Palo Alto, California, Shapiro picked up guitar at age twelve but did not envision performing publicly during her teenage years. In 2010, while she was a nineteen-year-old student at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, she joined three classmates to form Chastity Belt. She handled guitar and lead vocals, Lydia Lund played lead guitar, Annie Truscott played bass, and Gretchen Grimm played drums. Despite her limited experience the band quickly developed a following for the sharp humor of its lyrics and the energetic, unpolished indie-punk sound. The group self-released the four-song digital EP Fuck Chastity Belt in May 2012 and the three-song follow-up Dude that October. Help Yourself then issued their debut full-length, No Regerts, in 2013, its title a nod to an especially unfortunate tattoo.
At the same time Shapiro began writing with Bree McKenna of Tacocat and Stacy Peck of Pony Time; performing in maternity attire, they billed themselves as Childbirth. Their sound echoed Chastity Belt’s template yet leaned further into garage territory and broader comedy. Help Yourself put out the ten-song cassette It’s a Girl! in 2014, and the track “I Only Fucked You as a Joke” gained modest traction after coverage from Vice and Pitchfork. Childbirth moved to Suicide Squeeze for the 2015 album Women’s Rights. Meanwhile Chastity Belt signed with the Sub Pop-affiliated Hardly Art label, placing Shapiro in direct competition with herself when the band’s second album, Time to Go Home, appeared the same year.
In 2017 Shapiro and McKenna launched another side project, Who Is She?, adding Robin Edwards of Lisa Prank. Conceived as an outlet for material drawn from Missed Connections listings in the Seattle weekly The Stranger, the trio released Seattle Gossip on Father/Daughter Records that October. By then Chastity Belt had already issued its third album, I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone, which refined the group’s approach slightly and gave Shapiro space for more intimate lyric writing. The band began a tour in April 2018; Shapiro was navigating the end of a relationship and a thyroid-cancer scare later shown to be unfounded. After a Knoxville, Tennessee, performance on April 19, her physical and emotional strain peaked, prompting the cancellation of remaining dates so she could focus on recovery.
Feeling uncertain about her direction, Shapiro started composing inward-looking songs centered on personal thoughts and challenges, supported by slow, open guitar lines. Teaching herself home recording and mixing, she produced a set of demos that became the album Perfect Version, playing every instrument and singing every vocal part; Hardly Art released it in June 2019. She relocated from Seattle to Los Angeles in March 2020, arriving just as COVID-19 lockdowns began. Confined to her new residence, she collaborated with roommate Melina Duterte of Jay Som, turning the house into a temporary studio. Duterte produced the resulting songs for Shapiro’s second solo album, Zorked, issued by Suicide Squeeze in October 2021. The record proved denser, darker, and more atmospheric than any of her earlier work.
Born in Palo Alto, California, Shapiro picked up guitar at age twelve but did not envision performing publicly during her teenage years. In 2010, while she was a nineteen-year-old student at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, she joined three classmates to form Chastity Belt. She handled guitar and lead vocals, Lydia Lund played lead guitar, Annie Truscott played bass, and Gretchen Grimm played drums. Despite her limited experience the band quickly developed a following for the sharp humor of its lyrics and the energetic, unpolished indie-punk sound. The group self-released the four-song digital EP Fuck Chastity Belt in May 2012 and the three-song follow-up Dude that October. Help Yourself then issued their debut full-length, No Regerts, in 2013, its title a nod to an especially unfortunate tattoo.
At the same time Shapiro began writing with Bree McKenna of Tacocat and Stacy Peck of Pony Time; performing in maternity attire, they billed themselves as Childbirth. Their sound echoed Chastity Belt’s template yet leaned further into garage territory and broader comedy. Help Yourself put out the ten-song cassette It’s a Girl! in 2014, and the track “I Only Fucked You as a Joke” gained modest traction after coverage from Vice and Pitchfork. Childbirth moved to Suicide Squeeze for the 2015 album Women’s Rights. Meanwhile Chastity Belt signed with the Sub Pop-affiliated Hardly Art label, placing Shapiro in direct competition with herself when the band’s second album, Time to Go Home, appeared the same year.
In 2017 Shapiro and McKenna launched another side project, Who Is She?, adding Robin Edwards of Lisa Prank. Conceived as an outlet for material drawn from Missed Connections listings in the Seattle weekly The Stranger, the trio released Seattle Gossip on Father/Daughter Records that October. By then Chastity Belt had already issued its third album, I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone, which refined the group’s approach slightly and gave Shapiro space for more intimate lyric writing. The band began a tour in April 2018; Shapiro was navigating the end of a relationship and a thyroid-cancer scare later shown to be unfounded. After a Knoxville, Tennessee, performance on April 19, her physical and emotional strain peaked, prompting the cancellation of remaining dates so she could focus on recovery.
Feeling uncertain about her direction, Shapiro started composing inward-looking songs centered on personal thoughts and challenges, supported by slow, open guitar lines. Teaching herself home recording and mixing, she produced a set of demos that became the album Perfect Version, playing every instrument and singing every vocal part; Hardly Art released it in June 2019. She relocated from Seattle to Los Angeles in March 2020, arriving just as COVID-19 lockdowns began. Confined to her new residence, she collaborated with roommate Melina Duterte of Jay Som, turning the house into a temporary studio. Duterte produced the resulting songs for Shapiro’s second solo album, Zorked, issued by Suicide Squeeze in October 2021. The record proved denser, darker, and more atmospheric than any of her earlier work.
Albums
Singles
