Veronica Speaks on Translating Anger into Song and the Intensity of Girlhood

Veronica make songs for angry girls. There’s a bubbling intensity in each song that’s mixed with the bitterness of girlhood. The band, fronted by Sofia Zarzuela, released EP Rottweiler last September. It’s a chronicling of facing pain that has stuck with you like gum under a school desk. Easy to see and feel, but hard as hell to get rid of. There’s so much rawness in this project and Zarzuela sat down with us to discuss the origins of it. Each song is a master-craft of grunge and anger that rolls off of each verse in waves.

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Introduce yourself and tell me what you do.

My name is Sofia. I'm a musician, and I'm from New York. I play in a girl grunge band called Veronica.

What were some formative concerts and artists that you looked up to growing up or that have inspired you creatively?

So many! I was really obsessed with the DIY scene in New York when I was a teenager. I remember seeing…. I talk about this all the time, but when I was 15, I saw a Frankie Cosmos and Alex G show for $15. And being like, oh, whatever, I guess I’ll go. And having to cake on makeup so that I could look 16 to get into the venue. But, yeah, I was really into Frankie Cosmos and the DIY scene. And when I was in college, when I was 19, I saw Indigo DeSouza open up for Alex G, and that was incredible, it changed my life. Those are two big ones I can think of.

So Veronica is a band. It's not just you?

Yeah. Maybe, like, a year ago, I changed the band's name. I knew that I always wanted it to be Veronica something with a word that kinda felt like a last name, but I couldn't find another word. I hated it. The band name was Sofia. It was just my name. I didn't fuck with that because I was like, I don't want people knowing my name. That's my business. I really didn't like it, and I love the name Veronica. Are you a Riverdale fan?

I watched season one and it was so long ago, so I don't feel like I can't call myself a Riverdale fan.

Well, season one's the best. I feel like you saw what you needed to see. But I love the Archie comics, which obviously there's Veronica Mars. I love the show Veronica Mars. And Heathers is one of my childhood favorite movies. It was a name that followed me around, and I knew I wanted it to be a part of my identity. I couldn't think of a proper band name. And my best friend was like, you should just call it Veronica.

My next question was going to be how came up with the name Veronica! So are you the primary songwriter?

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Yeah. I write everything and then I bring it to all the boys in my band. My boyfriend's my guitarist, so I usually bring it to him first. They'll kind of build it out. I write things in a pretty, funky, simple way, and then I'll bring it to them. I'm like, can you guys make this sound evil? Can you make really loud? Sometimes they're like, no. But usually they'll build it heavy.

I was going to say, I was just a little surprised by how heavy some of it is. I love it. It's so well done. I want to talk a little bit about “Blue Ribbon.” It was immediately the one that stood out to me from the Rottweiler EP. And, lyrically, it feels borderline obsessive and portraying this all consuming inability to stop thinking about someone. What state of mind does a song like that come from?

I'm glad that it resonated with you. That makes me feel very lucky. I wrote it about my best friend that I had when I was younger. I had known her for a long time, but we became friends at the very beginning of high school. And I felt completely in love with her and was so obsessed with her. She had a lot of her own shit going on and I feel like she kind of pulled me into her world. She would bring me to delis and I would go up to the guy working and basically just complain that I had a really bad period and try to distract him while she would, like, shove a beer in her pocket. We fell out at the end of ninth grade, and then I spent the next, like, eight years just thinking about her constantly and about how much fun we had. It was that phase when you're still a girl, but you're kind of, like, pretending to be older and getting into naughtiness. This pattern kept presenting itself, but it always came back to this one girl. The song was reflecting back on her.

That's so beautiful. I've never heard any songs that have been written about that specific experience that so many people have gone through. I love the line “I miss being girls with you,” and it's followed by that emotive scream, which is just incredible. What made you decide to add such a rock and roll expression to this song?

I was really angry when I was forming Veronica because I've been recording and putting out my own music since I was 15, and now I’m 24. It was always kind of like folky bedroom pop. When I was around 20 I just felt really, really angry. I was living in my college town in Ohio and everything went to shit. It was my main goal to learn how to scream. And once I learned, I couldn't stop. With “Blue Ribbon” specifically, after I wrote the verses, I felt like there were no words that could properly follow them except for the scream. It's a form of release.

I love that part, and I think that's why I like that song so much, I adore the screaminess of it. How long was Rottweiler in the works for? How long did that album take you?

I wrote “Half Closed Doors,” which was the first song for it, in the summer of 2021. I was chugging away writing, and then we recorded the summer of 2023, like a summer and a half ago. Maybe longer. I was just trying to get it out. Nothing would happen until the fall of 2024. It took over a year, everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. I had to continually find new collaborators. I started releasing the songs as Sofia Zarzuela, and halfway through, we changed the band name. The whole thing was made in a time of change when I didn't really know what I wanted the band to sound like or look like or anything. Two and a half years. That's that's a long time in the making.

What song was the most creatively challenging for you, and which was the easiest?

I have multiple answers. Both “Pleasantville” and “Blue Ribbon,” which were the singles and are my favorites, I played them to the band, and it felt like magic. The structure came really quickly, and we were able to figure it out. But at the same time, “Pleasantville” was the hardest to release because it's so personal that I was just terrified.

“Home for the Weekend,” which I wrote earlier, too. It was like a teenager, a pain in my fucking ass, that song. We made so many demos, and we were trying to produce it in so many different ways. Nothing would work. I'm still like, why did I even put that out? That one pisses me off. But sometimes I'll hear it, and I'll love it. But most of the time, I'll get really frustrated with it.

Well, it happens. So that was the hardest one?

I think so. Yeah. Aside from the ones that we cut because they were too hard.

Gotcha. Well, that's funny because I think it's a beautiful song, but, obviously, I don't know the lore behind trying to just get it perfect.

I'm happy to hear that!

You can correct me if this takeaway is inaccurate in any way, but to me, Rottweiler almost feels like a push and pull between two sides of the same person. There's the wanting to forget memories that have seemed to turn bitter, but also the indulgence of remembering them. The lyric “I can't bear the weight of all this time on my shoulders” in “Home for the Weekend” really strikes that chord for me. Is that what it felt like for you, or was it different? Do you use these songs to reach catharsis?

That's really, really thoughtful and beautiful. Thank you so much for asking me that. I think, yeah, I graduated from college in 2022, and I had a kind of traumatic, horrible experience for the last two years. I was really reaching towards music in order to forget, but also to make meaning out of it. It felt like it was the only way that I could make it all worth it.

It’s this super, super nostalgic remembering of the last eight years and every bad thing that's ever happened. But then, like, I don't know, I got stuck on this belief that music would make it okay, which I don't even know if that's true, or that the fame will make it okay. I was very emotional and very vulnerable and had the protection of really, really intense angry instrumentals and being surrounded by boys. Even the image made me feel safer for expressing it.

I wanted to ask about the album cover as well. How did that come to be, and what does it mean to you?

The EP is very rooted in trauma, and I had a really bad fear of dogs. It's kind of convoluted, but I was living in Louisiana, and I had this crazy, alcoholic roommate, and he had these two huge dogs that I would take care of. And they kind of helped to heal my fear of dogs. They're huge. They're fucking nuts, but I love them. After that, I would get all these videos about pitbulls, rottweilers, German shepherds kind of very aggressive fighter dogs who had been severely abused, who were in rehabilitation homes.

I’d get videos of them. They're prowling through the bars and trying to eat people and then how they’d still find new homes. I was inspired of the idea of being a small girl and having these poorly trained aggressive dogs who take care of you, but also that it's kind of codependent and it could get dangerous at any time. Very similar to the “Blue Ribbon” relationships. So just thinking about trauma and feeling like a bad dog all the time, I came up with the name Rottweiler. I had written a lyric that said “I'm a Rottweiler of a girl / I won't let you down easy.” That made its way into the EP name.

We had actually shot two covers before, but I'm like a stickler and I didn't like anything. My friend Gianna gave me a fake dog bite because my friend was walking through a park by my house, and this dude had a rottweiler, and it just lunged at her and bit her. She had this huge fucking bite and scar and blood going to the scar. So Gianna, who's really talented, did this big bruise on my ass, like a rottweiler bite. And then my friend, Marcus, who's incredible, took the photos. It's just me in my underwear clutching onto a stuffed animal looking really humiliated. Which, I was, because I was being photographed in my underwear, and I felt bitten down, I guess. That was a really long answer!

Not at all. Now that I hear you describe it like that, it makes so much sense in the context of the songs and how it's truly all about vulnerability. What is a goal that you have for 2025?

That's a good question. I just restarted “The Artist's Way,” the book. I feel like it's been having a resurgence because Doechii just did it. I wanna build a very intense world, or I want to bring people into the very intense worlds that I see for Veronica.

If you could have a drink with any artist dead or alive, who would it be and why?

Oh, wow. People are always asking this, but I never sit and think what would my answer would be. I know that she's not lucid enough to answer my questions, but Courtney Love. And another… I'm actually too shy about this answer. Hold on.

You can give more than one answer if you want, a shy one and a serious one.

Okay. My shy one is Addison Rae because I think I think that we could kick it. I just think that we would have a lot to talk about. Whose brain do I wanna crawl inside of? I don't know. I think it just is Courtney Love. That makes sense. Oh, and Liz Phair. Oh my gosh. That would be so fun. I love Liz Phair. We went to the same college, so I feel like we would have a lot to talk about. That's so fun.