Toronto glam-punk 5 piece Nameless Friends have unleashed a double single. Out now, the release pairs the emotional excavation of ‘Mary’ with the blistering political force of ‘There’s a rapist in the White House’. Together, the tracks form one of the band’s most fearless statements yet – two songs tethered by an undercurrent of fury, vulnerability, and the urgent need to turn overwhelming feelings into something hearable.
‘Mary’ opens with deceptively gentle guitar work, a lull that feels like the quiet before an emotional breach. When the full band finally detonates, the track erupts into a raw punk surge that mirrors the moment buried emotions finally crack open. Its title carries generations of weight. For four generations, women in Number One’s family carried some variation of the name Mary, a tradition woven with both connection and inherited pain. Number One is among the first to break that pattern, and the song uses its sparse lyrics and explosive dynamic shifts to explore what it means to step out of a lineage that shaped you before you could speak.
“Some feelings are too big for words,” says Number One. “We needed the music to carry what language couldn’t hold.”
If ‘Mary’ is an internal rupture, ‘There’s a rapist in the White House’ is a public reckoning. The track creeps in with a brooding bassline before Number One’s vocals cut through with unflinching clarity. Drawing on a lineage of protest music that spans folk, punk, and hip-hop, it channels a fury sharpened by lived experience. Even the lowercase title is part of that message.
The lowercase spelling is intentional – a deliberate choice to strip away any sense of glorification. “We refuse to make it sound like an honorific title,” Number One explains. “Sexual violence is banal, it’s horrifyingly normal. When somewhere between one in four and one in three North American women survive sexual assault, we’re not treating this like some distinguished position. It’s lowercase because it should never be dignified.”
Though the song predates the recent cross-border tariff tensions, its anger only feels more timely. For Number One – who holds both Canadian and US citizenship and has relatives whose political choices clash with her values—the track became a release valve for feelings that would otherwise implode inward.
Written before the recent cross-border tariff drama, the track’s fury feels even more prescient now. For Number One – who carries both Canadian and US citizenship and counts Trump supporters among her relatives, the song becomes a pressure valve for all the rage and heartbreak of watching a country betray itself.
“We wrote these lyrics before the tariff chaos, but that’s the thing about speaking truth—it doesn’t expire,” Number One reflects. “When you’re holding dual citizenship and watching family members vote against your values, the anger becomes something you have to transform into sound or it’ll eat you alive.”
Nameless Friends have carved their identity out of exactly this kind of transformation—taking emotional devastation and political urgency and turning them into heavy, glitter-smeared rock that feels both ferocious and alive. Based in London, Ontario, the group operates like a tiny, glamorous insurrection: Number One on vocals and production, Number Three on guitar, Number Five on bass, Number Seven on drums, and touring keyboardist Number Six fleshing out the live sound. Their shows, glitter everywhere, bleach-stained shirts, ecstatic chaos, have become a staple of each city they hit.
Their momentum has only accelerated since the release of Blasphemy in 2023, which pulled in millions of views and sparked a high-profile confrontation with Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe over transgender youth rights. They’ve sold out rooms like the Horseshoe Tavern, delivered a full Queen tribute set that proved their range, and toured Canada, the UK, and Ireland while consistently uplifting femme and queer artists on their bills. Their catalogue takes aim at climate collapse, economic injustice, menstrual equity, and the systems that fail the most vulnerable—always with a sense of danger, spectacle, and joy.
Listen below:
