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Photo by Maria Baranova / Design Andi Avery & joy burklund
Makeup Artist Colby B / Floral Design Linny Blossm
Alt-rock-anti-folk trans songstress joy burklund & her band have been a presence in the Philly DIY music scene since 2023, and released their debut album Songbouquet on March 21, 2025.
about joy
Photo by Jersey Wall
joy burklund (she/her) is a trans songstress, performer, filmmaker, and theater artist living on unceded lands of the Lenni-Lenape, also known as Philadelphia.
In 2022, after a decade of making theater and film in New York City, she found her way back into songwriting and vocal performance for the first time since playing in a garage band in high school. Between 2022 and 2023, in the winds of several life transitions, she wrote the songs that would become the seeds of her music project.
Summer 2023 brought new collaborations with her original bandmates, Anastasia DeFulgentis, Pansy Lee Erskine, and Ashley Ferrante, who collaborated with joy on bringing the songs to full life in live performances around the Philly DIY and house show circuit. Her debut record Songbouquet began production in Fall 2023 in collaboration with producer Mattie Kimberley Chaya Klauser of Pillow Princess Productions.
In her debut collection of songs, joy harkens to the style, strength, and confident femininity of divas both pop and alt (Céline, Alanis, Nina, Patti, Ezra, ANOHNI) while bringing her own sultry snarl, and knack for cheeky storytelling. Drawing from an expansive stylistic palette, joy blends punk grit and folk softness to tell her story of transformative queer love.
press for joy burklund & her band
about “Songbouquet”
Ranging from emotional, Americana-tinted ballad (“Not Gonna Fall”), to reflective fingerpicked confessional (“Next Life”), to massive, sunshine-optimist rock anthem (“Sunrays”), Songbouquet is a bold, trans-genre debut that centers joy’s dynamic vocal performance. Her playfully introspective lyrics call back to the anti-folk tradition of artists like the Moldy Peaches, Regina Spektor, and Diane Cluck, while her propulsive, energetic guitar riffs evoke indie punk acts like Ted Leo and the Pharmacists and The Thermals.
”For the last three years, I’ve been working my way back to songwriting for the first time since fronting a garage punk band in high school. Music-making had remained a casual and private practice over the years, but in the spring of ‘22, my fingers began to itch for guitar strings, and I had a strange, overwhelming urge to sing in belty, ornate, diva-esque riffs.
Overlapping this return to song was a time of wild, wavy change in my life on all kinds of levels. Riding that rough lifecurrent brought feelings of unsteadiness and ache, sure. But I simultaneously encountered a big beautiful swirling bloom of confidence, imagination, and relief as I greeted life’s chaos anew (*might* be referring to trans stuff in this here paragraph).
When I first started writing what would become this record, I felt shy about the tunes. They were too dramatic to appeal, too disparate to congeal! But as I befriended these songs, each a flower of her own, I learned how they do belong together. Like how the highlights belong next to the shadows, the screams next to the whispers next to the chants, and the longing next to the gratitude.
The cold sorrows of this world have been howling so strong and I’ve been feeling it. I bet you have too. It makes me glad I bottled this sunshine when it came to me. Maybe it’ll come in handy for you, too.
They’re all love songs.”
- joy burklund, 2024
making “Songbouquet”
joy & her band perform a benefit concert at Homies Helping Homies
Left to Right: Avery Dyer, joy burklund, Ashley Ferrante
Photos by Alasia Destine-DeFreece
While the songs are personal to joy, the creation of Songbouquet represents a collective labor of love by and for the Philadelphia trans music community. The 13-track album was produced by Philadelphia music-scene stalwart Mattie Chaya Kimberly Klauser (of Pillow Princess and Mandy Valentine) and features an extensive lineup of trans and queer collaborators at all levels of production, including guest vocalists Sam Rise, Amber Jane (of Moondrifts), and Zaza Diana Oh.
“The songs themselves may come from a private and playful place, but the way we gather and share music is and has always been political and profound. It’s been really meaningful that the majority of the live performances we’ve played over the last year and a half have been fundraisers supporting local mutual aid efforts, sending aid to Gaza, and gender-affirming care for community members.” - joy burklund
March 21, 2026 at Kung Fu Necktie, Philadelphia PA
self-portrait, Spring 2025