“If you wannabe my lover, you gotta get with my friends.” The iconic Spice Girls line is sampled on the chorus of “On Venus,” a laid back R&B track with a G-Funk-inspired beat, from girl group NADUH’s 2022 debut EP, HOMIESEXUAL. It also references the philosophy driving the femme-powered five: friendship (never ends). 

The Vancouver-based group grew up listening to the Spice Girls, as well as other acts like Destiny’s Child, TLC, SWV, and All Saints. With messages of girl power, independence, and awareness around social issues, girl groups of the ‘90s represented a continued push towards greater female empowerment in pop music, despite many being assembled by male producers or managers looking to capitalize on commercial appeal.   

In a feature on the history of girl groups, Pitchfork summed it up well: “As the old joke goes, Fred Astaire was a great dancer, but Ginger Rogers did everything he did—backwards and in high heels. Similarly, when it comes to pop music, women have often had to fight twice as hard and be twice as savvy as men to triumph in an industry eager to minimize them. This is especially clear in the history of girl groups, which has offered a reflection of women’s evolving autonomy in America across the last 60 years.” 

From the Supremes and the Ronettes to BLACKPINK, girl groups have always made room for themselves. With that in mind, NADUH—Rosita Alcantara, Giorgi Holiday, Larisa Sanders, Jenny Lea, and Tee Krispil—carries the tradition forward and redefines what it means to be a girl group in 2023. Totally independent, the quintet writes, engineers, and produces their music, underscoring it all with an emboldened sense of autonomy, enlightenment, and camaraderie.

“We chose to be in a group with each other,” Lea says, speaking to the Straight over Zoom. “There's something very special about that.”  

“We're not a mass-produced product,” Krispil adds. “You know, ‘This girl has this look and that girl has that style’… We're more than just a marketable package. We're actual homies.” 

“I think that's what people really gravitate towards,” Sanders continues. “That's one of the biggest things that we get when we come off stage is that you can feel that we're friends, and that baseline is different.”  

“Yeah,” Alcantara nods, with a grin. “It's sort of like our 13-, 14-year-old selves getting to live our girl group fantasies… I feel like part of that is opening the space for us to be, like, ‘Yeah! We're having a slumber party!’”

The good vibes exude through NADUH’s music, which is equal parts ethereal, soulful, and rhythmic, with rap verses and dreamy harmonies coasting over heavy-hitting beats. The dynamic sonic landscape is a credit to their creative process, which is truly collaborative—an admirable feat, considering all five members have successful music careers outside of the group. 

“It makes our sound, because all of us are musically very different,” Sanders says. “Obviously, it goes together really well, but I don't think that any individual one of us would put out NADUH-style music. But the combination of all of us, it's quintessentially all of us. It's created this other thing.”  

“Five heads are better than one,” Holiday adds. 

NADUH will be releasing new music all summer long, the first being a single, “Legacy,” due out mid-May. Sanders describes it as expressing the awareness women hold as womb carriers—especially with the line, “Between my legs you see this is my legacy.” It’s cheeky and not on-the-nose, filled with deeper meaning when taking a closer look.  

“We call it WizDUM, with a D-U-M,” she says. “You gotta sprinkle it in with what the kids are saying so that they catch on to it, right?”  

It highlights the divine feminine energy that courses through everything NADUH does, right down to the merchandise. The group’s online store has hoodies and T-shirts designed by the artist RBRTH (“One of my personal idols in the scene as far as fashion and art,” Alcantara notes), who created a “meditative visual” that integrates symbols of Venus, the lotus flower, and 666. There are also items like angel number necklaces and tinctures.  

“We want to keep developing the types of things that we can offer to our audience, because we want them to feel like a part of us and what we're doing and the kind of things that we're interested in and the lifestyle that we live, which is, you know, tinctures and plant medicines and angel numbers and meditation,” Lea says.

“And there's no gatekeeping,” Krispil continues. “These are the things that help us get to our creative mode and we work at these things. So, we want to share that with our audience too, so they can catch the vibe on the same level.”

While not intentional, it recalls the kind of lifestyle merchandise that groups like the Spice Girls had back in the ‘90s—gum, body spray, polaroid cameras. And even though these things were specifically produced for tween girls and obviously not reflective of the group’s personal lifestyle, they still created an intimate relationship between the band and its fans. For NADUH to bring that element into reality is refreshing. 

“I remember exactly how that made me feel to be a part of that growing up,” Lea says. “That's our number one goal with all of this: to build that connection.”  

NADUH performs at the Biltmore Cabaret on Friday, April 21. Tickets are available online.