Cumgirl8 is a ‘sex-positive alien amoeba entity’. Put another way, it’s four femme types from New York writing jerky post-punk about urinary tract infections, female orgasms, smashing the patriarchy and robots. Ahead of an international tour, their debut LP, The 8th Cumming, drops from the skies in October. When I caught up with Veronika Vilim (guitar), Chase Lombardo (drums), Lida Fox (bass), and Avishag Rodrigues (guitar), they had just released ‘Ahhhh!hhhh! (I Don’t Wanna Go)’, a second single from the new album. A cyborgy disco number with a video featuring the band in regency frocks interviewed by the AI hologram of Susan Sontag (you get the idea), its repeated refrain of ‘you’re inviting me and I already know I don’t wanna go’, could be about getting older, a relationship, the state of western culture. So, which one is it?

‘A little bit of all of those,’ says Fox. ‘But especially being disenchanted with going out in NYC or doing anything outside of the realm of my bed. It can be hard to feel excited when you’ve been around for 8000 years, but we still yearn to stay in touch with people in a human way outside of the phone.’ The way online interaction warps and moulds human behaviour is a big theme for the band. ‘The other day an old friend told me she feels the way people behave now seems like a performed recreation of something they saw from the past rather than an experience of the present moment’.

The 8th Cumming suggests all the classics of the post-punk genre (think The Slits or Le Tigre), with a veneer of louche, sleazy club beats. But when we talk influences, the band brings in everything from industrial noise (the various side projects of Throbbing Gristle) to digital-hardcore/rap mash-up artist LustSickPuppy. Their touchstones also extend beyond music, to the pioneering 1990s cyber-feminist art collective VNS Matrix and to critical theorist Donna Haraway, whose 1985 essay ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ muses on the liberatory potential of breaking down boundaries between human and machine. 

There’s a kind of world-building going on here, where music takes its place alongside fashion, film and photography as the expression of this rich creative and cultural backdrop. Indeed, the band’s appearance seems as creatively significant as their sound, involving a lot of neon Lycra, straps, buckles and skin. ‘Cumgirl8 is our universe’, says Vilim. ‘We were sent to Earth to spread love and confidence through craft in every sense of the word. So that means in music, fashion, film and more. Restoring art is our purpose on this planet.’

Activism is a guiding force, too. The band have given out abortion pills at shows, and they pulled out of all official involvement at this year’s SXSW in protest at the event’s ‘super-sponsorship’ from the US military, which continues to support genocide in Gaza. Instead, a series of unaffiliated concerts were planned in and around the festival’s base in Austin, Texas, while the group worked with the Austin For Palestine Coalition to press for divestment. ‘It actually worked’, says Lombardo. ‘SXSW dropped their military sponsors. To see what happens when we organise was so fucking motivating.’

‘Indirectly,’ Lombardo goes on, ‘just how we present ourselves is an act of protest. People are very uncomfortable with what women and trans people do with their bodies. On Instagram, people get very angry and think we’re “cheap” or “gimmicks” or worse. Which is great. We’re holding up a mirror to people and forcing a reaction. It’s doing something.’

The 8th Cumming is released by 4AD on Friday 4 October; Cumgirl8 will tour the UK this December; main picture: Bénédicte Dacquin.