By: Aiden Nelson

June Henry is making a name for herself in the queer music scene. She just released her second EP of 2022, her style and sound maturing with each release.

The eighteen year old, currently hailing from Prairie City, Kansas, is a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. She writes candidly of queerness, mental health, and growing up, her songs infused with nostalgia and a maturity beyond her years. Her first EP, “Class Pet” was released only months ago in March of this year, and her second project, “somethingfriend” was released on June 20.

“Class Pet” has been on repeat since I first heard it, and after a few listens, “somethingfriend” is on track to take its place. June Henry’s style is distinctly hers even as it evolves between albums. From “Class Pet” to “somethingfriend” she has already refined her sound, her music more cohesive and her lyrics maturing.

I spent my youth going to basement shows and her music reminds me of that, sonically as well as thematically. Henry’s music is youthful, it’s fun, it’s raw. There’s a sense of the person behind the music, it’s grounded in its instrumentation and honest in its lyricism. It sounds homemade in the best way possible, just as the live music I heard in stranger’s basements was. “somethingfriend” even has tints of Midwest emo I heard so much at those shows—as Henry plays with tropes such as the voicemail, just as The Front Bottoms and Modern Baseball do—as well as bubblegrunge and bedroom indie. Each song is definitely June Henry, held together by her distinct voice and witty lyrics, even as she plays around with sound and style.

Henry’s DIY sound is absolutely part of her charm. She’s not polished by any standard, but the messiness of her style captures the chaos of being a young adult. Henry explores themes of gender, love, and growing up: of wanting to leave your hometown but being scared to do, late nights with friends, and queer confusion. There are moments of hope. There are moments of pettiness. In “LMR,” she sings “you’re not the protagonist.” There are moments of reflection. In track five of “somethingfriend,” a song called “Pharmacy,” Henry sings: “I felt so grown at fifteen.”

With grace and nuance, Henry captures the spectrum of emotion, giving each feeling space and dignity. She doesn’t shy away from heavy emotions or complex ideas. One of those being queerness, which she sings of in “void-adjacent”––my personal favorite track off the EP. The song is an ode to queerness, to falling somewhere outside the gender binary. In a recent TikTok (side note: go follow her TikTok account. She’s relatable and funny, and her GRWM are so fun to watch) she said: “we need for representation for girls who used to be boys who used to be girls.”

Henry has been nothing short of candid about her transition from female to male as a preteen, and then back to female as an adolescent. She talks openly of her experiences, debunking the sex binary as well as the gender binary. She captures this feeling of in-betweenness in “void-adjacent,” with lyrics like “I don’t need another body / I need mine to somewhat match what I think I look like”. As Henry describes in her song, her experiences make her “boy-adjacent” as well as “girl-adjacent” and “void-adjacent”. I have never heard a song so clearly describe gender queerness. As a nonbinary person myself, I couldn’t help but relate to her words. Societal standards for gender and transness don’t hold space for people who don’t fit neatly into boxes. “void-adjacent” is an anthem for those who break the boxes.

June Henry’s music is honest, messy, and so, so good. Do yourself a favor and support girls who used to be boys who used to be girls, and stream “somethingfriend.”