For years, The Beaches have been writing some of the catchiest indie pop-rock The Great White North has to offer. These days, the Toronto band is in a bright new era, having had their Coachella debut and dropped their third album—No Hard Feelings—in 2025.
Now, singer/bassist Jordan Miller is opening up to Vice about where the band is and where they’ve come from, as well as being in her “Stevie Nicks-era” and the band’s strict “no-gossiping” rule.
Scroll on to read more about The Beaches, their Juno Award-winning music, and their “Golden Girls-esque” band dynamic.
VICE: For someone who’s never heard your music before, give me a brief description of your vibe and who you are as a band.
JORDAN MILLER: Our vibe is very indie girl pop-rock music, a little bit new wave-y. In terms of the things that we sing and write about, it’s sort of sad-girl breakup songs meet party-girl anthems. It’s a lot of dancing while you’re crying kind of vibes.
VICE: Love it. If Spotify was curating a playlist based on your songs, what other artists would fit onto that playlist?
JORDAN: Definitely MUNA. Maybe a little Olivia. Who else? These are good Leandra questions. Phoebe Bridgers, probably, and The Pretenders and The Strokes.
VICE: Who, as a band, do you consider your main inspirations?
JORDAN: Good question. In terms of bands that we’ve probably listened to the most and pulled a lot from, specifically in terms of guitar melodies and sometimes vocal melodies, I’d say definitely The Strokes.
Especially because, if you listen to them, a lot of the time the guitar melody and the vocal melody play off each other in a really interesting way. I think that’s similar to the musical relationship that me and Leandra have.
VICE: Give me a little bit of info on your background and how you guys came together as a band.
JORDAN: Me and Kylie are sisters, so I’ve known her since birth. We started playing together when we were six and seven years old.
Then we met Eliza, our drummer, in grade school, and we formed a band called Done With Dolls. That band got a couple plays on the Family Channel, which is the Canadian Disney Channel.
When we got to high school, we were like, “You know what? We kind of want to write our own songs.” So we decided to change our name and start writing our own songs. That’s when The Beaches was formed, and around that time is when Leandra joined the band.
So we’ve been together for about 12, 13 years — the four of us.
VICE: I imagine working with four personalities in any setting can have its challenges. How do you guys navigate that as you work together on music?
JORDAN: We’ve implemented a no-gossiping rule.
VICE: Probably a good idea.
JORDAN: A good idea. No gossiping allowed. And we try to limit our passive-aggressive comments, as you know, women, to a minimum.
We don’t really argue that much. I know it sounds like a cliché, and I’m sure you get this from so many other bands, but we genuinely are so close with each other.
I think we’ll probably end up having a Golden Girls-esque relationship when all of our partners are dead. We’ll live together in Miami in a seniors facility, and that would be the dream.
We already spend so much time together, but we’ve literally gone on vacation together twice in the past two years. Even on our time off, we’re spending time together.
I think that comes from a long, storied, shared history. But we’ve also been through a lot together; we’ve overcome a lot together, and we’ve climbed really high together. We get to share everything.
We all have a really strong mutual respect for each other and for the project, which is amazing.
VICE: Of course, I can’t talk to you guys without talking about “Edge of the Earth.” Before we get into the explosion of it, tell me about how that song came to be.
JORDAN: That was from our previous record, Blame My Ex. That record — a lot of it was about my first really bad breakup.
One day, Leandra came to me. I think she had come out just a few years prior, and she had come out a little bit later in life. She had gotten a lot of DMs basically questioning her as to why the band hadn’t really written any queer love songs.
I was like, “Yeah, totally, we should. We absolutely should. I’m bi, you’re gay. We should absolutely write about this.” I think it took her a long time to figure out how exactly she wanted to write about that subject, whether it was exploring her own identity, which is kind of what “Lesbian Year” is about.
But “Edge of the Earth” eventually came from Leandra’s first real experience being in a queer relationship with her girlfriend Alex, and the complicated, messy tornado that being in love for the first time and being in your first queer relationship can bring.
I think it’s a really amazing song about falling in love for the first time and never letting go of that person. She and Alex are no longer together, but they still have sleepovers. They’re still best friends. Their relationship has evolved into something really beautiful.
I think “Edge of the Earth” is a real time capsule of their relationship. It’s super beautiful.
VICE: Of course, it gained a ton of popularity once it was placed in Off Campus. Talk about finding out about that, how that came to be, and the effect it’s had on the song and really your career.
JORDAN: Where to begin?
We get things every once in a while, and you never know as a band what that’s going to be like or the context in which your song is going to be played.
You just get, “Hey, there’s this show that Amazon’s putting out. It’s about teenagers — or, I guess, college kids — falling in love, and apparently it’s a big place.” So you’re always like, “Oh yeah, sure, cool. See how it goes.”
Then we started to see the posters for Off Campus everywhere, and we were like, “Oh, that’s that show I think our song is going to be on.” Then overnight it was the biggest show all over the world.
We really didn’t expect that. I think we were excited that our song was going to be part of a show that was so popular, but what was really exciting for us was the context and the placement in which the song was put.
It’s episode two, in a very seminal scene where Garrett is realizing that he has feelings for Hannah. In their first sort of sneaky, intimate, yearning bit of the show, it’s really impactful placement.
We were just so flattered, excited, and thrilled that this song we’ve always cared about — that’s always been a special song for us — was getting this new life and being associated with falling in love and yearning, which has always been really emblematic of what we write about in our music.
It’s just been amazing. Having all of these new fans discover us as a result of that has been totally life-changing and really sick and extremely humbling.
VICE: More recently, you guys released a deluxe version of your album. What was it about those four songs that made you say, “Okay, we have more to share with fans. They have to hear these”?
JORDAN: Whenever you’re putting an album together, the toughest thing is figuring out which songs aren’t going to make the cut.
Unlike other Toronto artists — Drake — I think sometimes less is more.
It’s always better to leave people wanting more rather than adding a bunch of songs that could potentially bloat your particular piece of art.
We had a lot of songs that, for whatever reason, didn’t make the initial album. But we wanted to keep them, maybe with the idea of doing a deluxe at some point, because it’s important to keep giving fans new music and keep giving people new opportunities to hear your songs.
Those songs didn’t make the initial album, but we were really excited to give them the special attention they deserve by promoting them as a deluxe feature.
VICE: Looking at your catalog as a whole, is there one song that stands out as, “This is the Beaches song”? If someone was new to your band and you gave them one song to listen to, what would it be?
JORDAN: It’s probably “Blame Brett” because that’s the song that first really latched people onto us. I know everybody is always like, “Well, it’s the hit,” but I think sometimes hits happen for a reason.
“Blame Brett” really encapsulates a lot of the things that make us unique as a band. The song is about heartbreak, but it’s really funny. There are lots of really crazy sex jokes in it, and it’s a little dirty and subversive.
The melody is really beautiful and catchy. Again, the melody in the verse has a full countermelody with Leandra’s guitar part. If you listen to it, it’s playing off my melody really interestingly and beautifully.
It has a bit of the new wave vibe, but it also feels like a pop song and an indie song. To me, it encapsulates all the things that make us a band within one song.
VICE: Looking at your songs, is there one that fans have totally misinterpreted, where you’ve thought, “Oh, that’s a meaning I didn’t even put to that song”?
JORDAN: That’s a great question. I think people often look at “Blame Brett” and think, “Oh, this is a song about a girl saying ‘F you’ to her ex-boyfriend.” But really, if you listen to the lyrics, the diss isn’t toward my ex. It’s toward me.
It’s about me taking accountability for being kind of a heartbroken piece of shit after a bad breakup and enacting bad behavior with other people as a way to fill the void from heartbreak.
The whole joke at the end is, “Oh my God, I’m going to break your heart and I’m a piece of shit, but oh well. Don’t blame me, blame my ex-boyfriend.”
I think a lot of people look at that song and think of it as a very empowering song. Really, I think it’s about me looking at my demons and, at the time, being like, “Oh, I’m doing some problematic things.”
VICE: What’s a song of yours that you feel doesn’t get enough listening or respect among listeners? What’s one that hasn’t popped off the way you thought it would, but you really have a soft spot for?
JORDAN: Everybody in the band would probably say a different one.
But there’s a song I wrote a few years back called “Orpheus,” which I still can’t believe we released because it’s a reimagining of the Greek myth, but with a boy I had a crush on in high school. It’s kind of topical now because of The Odyssey and Greek myths being back in the oeuvre.
But I think it’s a really beautiful, sweet, soft, yearning, romantic song. It’s a perfect summer song. I always hoped it would have a second life kind of the way “Edge of the Earth” did. Maybe this is me manifesting that it does.
VICE: Fingers crossed for that. You guys toured recently with Louis Tomlinson. Talk about that experience and what you learned from being on the road with him.
JORDAN: We finished that tour in August, but it was such a rush. It was so much fun.
Louis is such a generous artist with his fans. The way that he looks after his fans and the way they show up for him is really meaningful to me.
I think there are a lot of artists who are just there to play the show and earn a buck. He really seems to care about the individuals who are at his shows.
Very queer-friendly, which I was not necessarily expecting. It was interesting to see the amount of lesbians that showed up for Louis. We love it. We’re here for it.
He just makes his fans seem really looked after. He played a number of encores. Again, I know this is kind of what you would expect, but he puts a lot of care and attention into making sure his fans are really seen and get the best concert experience they can possibly have.
I really respect that and hope that we do that for our fans too.
VICE: I have to assume you guys are working on new music. What can you tease about what this next era is going to look like for you guys?
JORDAN: I’ve definitely been in my Stevie Nicks era the last two records — lots of breakup songs, lots of sad songs, lots of defiant heartbreak songs.
But I am in a new relationship and in love for the first time, so I’d love to be in my Christine McVie era and really challenge myself to write about being happy and about being in a relationship.
I think it would be interesting for us as a band to explore new territories, and it would be good for me to be in a relationship that’s healthy for once.
VICE: Lyrically, what do you think? Sonically, what are the musical influences you’re going into this album with?
JORDAN: Sonically, it’s interesting. I think we’ve been dipping our toes into it. Our song “Should Have Known Better” off the deluxe has a little bit of a country flavor to it.
Maybe not country — more like Sheryl Crow-ish, more like ’70s Fleetwood Mac-y. Something a little bit more grounded like that, a little bit more acoustic-y.
I’m not exactly sure. We are going to try out a lot of stuff. We’re very into sombr right now, so I’m sure that’ll infiltrate whatever we write about.
I don’t think we’re really going to know until we start getting into the studio and writing again. But that’s what I would like to show up.
VICE: Talk about what you’re most looking forward to in these next few months as you wrap up this year and look ahead to 2027.
JORDAN: We’re really excited to do the Jingle Ball tour. I think we’re one of two artists doing every single show, which we’re really pumped about.
There are a lot of artists we really respect and admire who are also on the bill. It’s just a really big opportunity for us to put our music out there to so many amazing individuals. We’re really excited about that.
We’re doing something fun on New Year’s Eve, but I don’t know if I’m allowed to say what it is. I’ll just say that.
And then, yeah, we’re really excited to write some new music and start getting it out there.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been slightly edited to meet publication-friendly standards
Feature photo by Frank Hoensch/Redferns
The post The Beaches Vocalist Jordan Miller Talks Inspirations, Their ‘No-Gossiping Rule’ and Being in Her Stevie Nicks Era (Exclusive) appeared first on VICE.
