Bria Salmena is Always Emerging
Photo credit: Dianne Miranda
The last time I saw Bria Salmena onstage in Calgary, AB — she was fronting the snarling, post-punk band FRIGS at Broken City in 2018. That night, local industrial noise-wielders DRI HIEV opened: two bands with raw, uncontainable energy, cut from a similar jagged cloth. They’d go on to tour together, and that show pulsed with excitement as the crowd witnessed in live action an era of unique music coming out of the Canadian music scene, especially in a place like Calgary that was known for the cowboy boots and country ballads. Flash forward to July 2025: FRIGS is no more, DRI HIEV has disbanded (though members now helm the twangy group Bugswallow), Broken City has been reborn as Modern Love, and yet the same local music friends are gathered in the audience to support her. This time, it's a rainy afternoon at Calgary Folk Fest, the vibe much more picnic-blanket than punk pit.
What hasn’t changed is Salmena’s magnetism, her unwavering vulnerability, and the community around her. She’s no longer leading a band — this is her project, her name, her voice. Big Dog, her debut solo album released via Sub Pop this year, is a reclamation. Of sound, space, and self.
“Big Dog was a nickname from an ex,” Salmena shares with a dry laugh when we sit down together at the Calgary Folk Music Festival. “‘Hammer’ on the record used to be called “Big Dog,” and I didn’t want that title at all. But the people around me were like—you are the Big Dog. You have to reclaim that.” And so she did.
It’s almost surreal seeing Salmena’s name slotted into a folk festival lineup. “I was surprised too,” she admits. “I’ve done three folk fests this month, and honestly, they’re fun. But people sit down,” she says, laughing. “At Hillside in Ontario, I realized—if I want people to stand up, I have to tell them. As a performer, I have that control now to bring people in. It’s definitely a shift from a music venue.”
That shift mirrors her musical transformation. Big Dog trades the post-punk edges of FRIGS’ 2018 Basic Behaviour for something warmer, softer, but still emotionally poignant. The album blends synths, acoustic bones, and a low-simmering pop tension — think Alex G meets Fiona Apple, but still distinctly Salmena who’s raspy voice could be picked out of a lineup in an instant with my eyes closed.
Photo credit: Dianne Miranda
“Duncan [Hay-Jennings] and I had been writing for years, and not always with a record in mind,” Salmena says. “Because Duncan and I have collaborated outside of FRIGS, right? So everything has been kind of just like a tornado of whatever's going on. And I think what we learned from playing in various projects — we could explore: what does my songwriting mean? How does it exist outside of these things? And what does it sound like?”
One track, “Closer To You,” became the first touchpoint. “That's when Duncan and I had figured out sonically the sound and how we wanted the production to feel. This sounds so cheesy, but it was just about me and my experiences.”
What emerged was a record that balances acoustic lyricism with a pulsating indie/synth undercurrent. References include Yves Tumor, RIP Swirl, Aldous Harding — artists who defy genre by building mood and texture. “That last Yves Tumour record that came out. It was sick. We really leaned into that production. I was trying to think about female voices that I really liked and my influences and how to mesh them together without being too referential. I didn't want to make an indie record that just sounded the same all throughout the record. I wanted it to be cohesive,” Salmena explains. “I’m too ADD for that. That’s probably why I’m in so many projects.” The album also includes contributions from Meg Remy (U.S. Girls), who helped Salmena with vocal production — an experience she describes as dreamlike. “Her records are, production-wise and lyrically and vocally, ingrained in my memory. They are pinnacle records for me, especially her earlier ones when I was in my twenties.”
Releasing music under her own name brought a different kind of vulnerability. “Sometimes I wish I’d picked a pseudonym,” she says. “With FRIGS or Orville [Peck], you’re kind of performing a character, like wearing a mask. I thought it was important that we just try this project as being as vulnerable as possible.”
That vulnerability is baked into Big Dog. Written across four years, the album maps a winding personal journey through heartbreak, endings, and renewal. “It’s really a document of 2019 to 2024,” she says. “Each song comes from a different phase, like a map.” It’s about letting go, but also letting others in.
Post-pandemic, Salmena relocated to Los Angeles, while Duncan remains in Toronto. Still, the shift from Toronto’s interconnected DIY communities to the sprawl of L.A. wasn’t seamless. “It was a challenge for me in L.A., but I do love being anonymous there. I don't have the history of my teens and twenties, even my friends here in Calgary I've known them now for like 15 years,” she says. “But I love the community in Toronto and I think people are doing amazing things. I honestly feel out of the fucking loop there though now. I'm also just older. There’s shit happening. I know what a lot of my community is doing, but we're all not doing as much as we used to. But I think that's really common.”
She further adds, “I feel like there is a community of musicians that I really respect in L.A. But it took a while, like everything takes a while, and I think that's what you kind of underestimate, because all those things were so fluid when I was in FRIGS. You're touring all the time, and you're playing so many shows, I'm not playing as many shows anymore, and I'm living in a city where I don't know a lot of people. When you tour a lot, especially when I toured a lot with FRIGS, half of the success I think of that band was because we wanted to play with local bands and you meet friends and you have these little scenes in all of these different cities that you can relate to. I spent all of my twenties doing that. So it feels unnatural to just isolate.” But it’s allowed Salmena to focus on her craft and artistry, honing her sound and future direction. Salmena’s reverence for Canadian music still burns bright, from her roots with FRIGS to the alt-country world of Orville Peck’s touring band. Her current projects continue to thread these identities: thoughtful, experimental, rooted in collaboration.
One of the most thrilling evolutions of Salmena’s musical identity is God’s Mom, an electronic, rave-adjacent project where she sings in Italian, honouring her heritage while diving into club culture.
Salmena lights up when I mention a performance from God’s Mom that took place at Taverne Tour this past November in Montreal, QC. “I’m so glad you saw that. It’s such a fun project. Next year, Andrew [Matthews] and I want to spend more time on it. We might re-release the record—it’s mostly on Bandcamp now—but we’re particular about where we play. The vibe has to be right. At night.” It’s clear that for Salmena, every creative choice is intentional—from the title of an album to whether or not a project should live on digital streaming platforms. That instinct for pacing, energy, and vibe comes from years spent immersed in different scenes, genres, and roles.
At the end of our conversation, I ask what advice she’d give to younger, emerging artists — as someone who has so much experience in the industry now.
“I feel like I’m always emerging,” she says. “That never stops. But I wish I’d trusted myself more when I was younger. I was so inspired by other bands that I wanted to emulate them and I think that came from insecurity. I wish I’d just let go a bit more. The scene also felt very dude heavy when I was amongst the pricks in that world. For a long time it just felt really competitive in a way sometimes. I think a little bit of competitiveness is healthy of course, but yeah, I think I wish I didn't care as much about things.”
I still remember when she signed my FRIGS record back when we met for the first time in 2018: “To the one with beautiful and kind eyes.” It was a time when I didn’t believe I had either, often feeling beaten down by the turmoil I experienced from tumultuous relationships, struggling to find my own footing in the music community, navigating friend groups where you can easily feel like an outsider or that there is competition always imminent. But she did. Even now, as she reclaims the term “Big Dog” and opens up about her own feelings of being diminished by the people she trusted — she is now stepping into a version of herself that was there all along. She continues to offer that generosity outward — through her music, her spirit, and her presence on and off stage.
She might always be emerging, but that’s also what makes her so powerful and why she is here to stay.
