The Ettes are back with neew single, “Not At All.” “It feels good to be back,” says frontwoman Hames. “But it’s not out of nostalgia — it’s out of artistic necessity and a real sense we had unfinished business with each other and with this music.”
Last month, The Ettes surprise dropped their first new song since 2011 with the teaser track “Dangerous Girl,” an incendiary rocker that served as a call to arms for the group’s devoted fan base. The video for “Not At All” was co-directed by Hames and Silver puts a playful narrative twist on the story of their breakup and reformation. The Ettes includes to guitarist/vocalist Coco Hames and drummer Maria “Poni” Silver. 

“Coco always says she has two left feet,” chides Silver. “But that’s actually why we decided to put a big dance routine in the video. We’re consciously forcing ourselves to do all the things that we would’ve been afraid of or too precious to try during the first run of the band.”

After ten years of relentless roadwork and recording — and suffering the psychic toll of a rock ‘n’ roll life spent in an Econoline van — The Ettes quietly split in 2013. “We were burned out and we had to stop the band at that point, or someone was going to die, probably me,” says Hames candidly. “But the relationship with me and Poni didn’t end, what we had between us always lingered.”

Going their separate ways, Hames went on to work with Canadian indie-pop band New Pornographers, wrote songs for film and TV (including for ABC’s Nashville and Disney’s Wander Over Yonder) and eventually cut a self-titled solo album for Merge Records in 2017, before becoming a therapeutic riding instructor helping children with special needs.

Silver, meanwhile, continued her showbiz career behind the scenes, becoming a costumer for some of country and rock’s biggest stars, launching her own fashion line, Black by Maria Silver, while occasionally playing with Nashville noise-rockers Kings of the Fucking Sea.

The creative bond between Hames and Silver remained powerful and inevitably brought them back together. Last year, they began working up a new batch of songs that captured the band’s original elemental spark, but which offered a more expansive musical scope than ever before. Joining them (on bass, synths and keys) was longtime friend and collaborator Jack Lawrence of The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather.

In the summer of 2025, Hames, Silver and Lawrence decamped to Joshua Tree, California’s iconic Rancho de la Luna recording studio and cut 14 new tracks with producer/guitarist Dave Catching (Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal).

order “Not At All” by The Ettes HERE