When, in the fall of 2020, Claud Mintz, Noa Getzug, Josh Mehling, and Claire Cottrill released a two-song EP as a band called Shelly, it sounded exactly like what it was: four best friends from college just having fun together.
First meeting at Syracuse University—which Mintz and Cottrill, known professionally as the singer-songwriters Claud and Clairo, respectively, had dropped out of early to pursue music full-time—they’d all found themselves marooned in their childhood bedrooms: Mintz in Chicago, Getzug in Los Angeles, Mehling in Houston, and Cottrill in Atlanta, passing MP3s and Voice Memos back and forth until Shelly materialized.
From that EP came “Steeeam,” its guitar progressions perfect for dancing around in our own parents’ houses. The song became an unexpectedly viral hit; then, as the world opened up again, the band’s members went off in their own directions—Claud, Clairo, and Mehling as musicians, and Getzug in A&R at UMG.
This past April, however, the band was back together again, performing “Steeeam” live for the first time at Coachella—and watching tens of thousands of people sing the lyrics to their little pandemic project back to them. It was only then that they decided to give the people what they wanted and head into the studio, and in July, the band released Shelly 2, an EP with the same Side A/Side B style as its predecessor.
Shelly’s members can’t promise when they’ll be back for more; Mintz, Getzug, Cottrill, and Mehling all contend that the band’s superpower is its intuitiveness—something that shows up in the music. But whatever they do, it will be on their own terms—and always put their friendship first.
Here, Mintz, Getzug, Cottrill, and Mehling talk to Vogue about Shelly’s origin story, the success of “Steeeam,” and releasing the band’s second EP five years later.
Claud Mintz: Our freshman year [at Syracuse University], Josh started producing for me and we were too embarrassed to be in the same room while we worked on music. So I would record vocals and guitar to a click track and then I would text him the MP3 and then he would add stuff. When the pandemic hit, nothing really changed with our music-making process. We just kept texting stuff.
Noa Getzug: While Claud was working on their own project, Josh texted me and was like, “Can you send me a recording of some drums for this song that Claud and I are making?” I have a shitty old drum set at my parents’ house, and I recorded it on my phone. I sent it to Josh, and then we were like, “Wait, this is super cool. We should send it to Claire and see if she has anything else to add.” And from there, we were like, oh, we can make music virtually from four different cities. We didn’t have a plan for it. We were just like, “This is so fun.”
Josh Mehling: Out of boredom, all we could think to do was just make music and be creative together and just have fun. We were all in different places, and it was all in our little friend group, and it was just very organic. And I feel like there were years of friendship and collaboration already there. It just kind of felt like magic. It was really quick.
Claire Cottrill: We never made music as a group until the pandemic, but we knew each other really well before Shelly even started.
“Steeeam” was probably a two-day process. I know Noa had drums with this little guitar loop on top, and then I did all the electric guitar and wrote the lyrics, and then Claud sang, and Josh added some more production. I remember listening to it and asking my parents to come to my room and listen to it. I was like, “Isn’t this so cool?” We obviously had no idea what “Steeeam” would do later on.
Cottrill: During the pandemic, it was sort of like the Wild West, in terms of art and pumping out projects and starting side projects. I think it was just a really interesting time and a fun time to be brave, which, to me, is the same type of artistic outlook you have when you’re first starting, or when you’re a teenager. You get together with your friends, and you’re like, “We should make a band.” You’re not jaded, you just kind of do the fun thing. We did not expect it to become like an actual thing where people are asking us for tour dates.
Getzug: It was cool, too, because I remember, we were like, “We’re gonna do this all ourselves. Nobody’s gonna help us. We’re gonna put it out through TuneCore.” I remember the night it was released, it took us a few times to properly upload it and it didn’t go to the correct Spotify artist page. It was just a complete mess. But it was so fun because it felt like it only belonged to us, and it was just this bedroom quarantine thing that me and my best friends made.
Cottrill: Listening to it, I love the tone of the drums, but I love them because they can’t be recreated, because it was a Voice Memo recording of Noa’s parents’ drum kit. It’s such an amazing, frozen-in-time thing. All of it sounds and feels like that because of the exact places we were in, and what we recorded with, and the ideas we had.
Mintz: When we were deciding on a name, Josh, Claire, and Noa found out they all have family members named Shelly. And I was like, “I don’t have a family member named Shelly, but that’s okay, because Shelly is such a good name for a band.” And then me and Noa found out we were distantly related—and I had a family member named Shelly!
Cottrill: Let’s clear this up in Vogue. We got such a hard laugh out of that whole thing.
Getzug: We were only cousins, nothing else. We never dated. Best friends and cousins.
Cottrill: It was all, like, a crazy kismet situation. Every part of the band-making process, I felt like we were just following paths that were laid out for us. The album art was printed-out pictures of all of us from our friendship. I spent a whole night with my mom’s printer, wasting all of her color. We were just following the feeling. Following the feeling is the best thing, as an artist and as a band, and it’s also super intoxicating. My favorite bands always kind of followed their path and followed whatever they felt. That’s why it feels so exciting and why it feels so boundless, because we really feel like we can do whatever we want. It’s rooted in friendship. It’s the best type of thing to ever happen.
Cottrill: The first time I performed it was in London. I got my band to learn it, and from the first note, it was like the most shocking thing of all time, to hear the crowd sing it as loud as they were. It was unbelievable. So after that show, Coachella was next, and we had the idea for everyone to come on stage and have headphones and dance around.
Mintz: The first time we performed it with Claire was at Coachella, and me and Josh and Noa were shaking side-stage, being like, “Oh my God. We’re too scared.”
Getzug: We had nothing planned, by the way. We’re standing in front of that many people like, “So…what are we doing?”
Mintz: It was very intuitive. And I think because people were so excited, it made us so excited to be there.
Mehling: We were freaking out outside the stage. As soon as we ran in and we’re just there, the four of us, I felt like I was just locking eyes with each one of them. You kind of forget there’s tens of thousands of people watching. I just felt like it was us in one of our apartments’ living rooms, dancing to the songs.
Getzug: If you look back at the [Lollapalooza] video, we hug Claire, and the first thing she says, she looks at me and goes, “Is that my shirt?” It’s, like, classic best friend stuff. It was so cute. That is exactly who we are. And then we all drank from her wine, because we thought it’d be funny.
Cottrill: You guys are getting comfortable. Now when they come onstage, I’m a little bit nervous. I’m like, they’re gonna truly fuck with me somehow.
Mintz: [Laughs.] We’re not coordinated enough to plan something.
Mintz: All four songs are from the same era. The songs [from Shelly 2 EP] are from five years ago, but with current updates and reflections. “Hartwell” was a Voice Memo I sent Josh in 2019. “Cross Your Mind” was a demo I made in 2020 that I think we had in our group chat, where we would just send ideas that we thought would be good for the band and then we would forget about all of it. A year would go by, and we’d collect the demos that we want to work on, and then we’d forget about it again, and then we would just come back to it. In April, we gathered demos that we wanted to cut, and earlier this summer was the first time we actually went to a studio to reproduce a lot of the older ideas and make them sound a little bit more professional.
Getzug: I remember we all stayed at a house together during Coachella weekend, and we had the best time swimming and running around. One night, we were like, “Should we see what happens and just go to the studio? When we get back to New York, let’s try a day or two and just re-record things and see how it goes.”
Mehling: I would say 95% of the time, it was just us doing bits. The other 5% is the actual recording. I feel like half of the day was just us finally getting to be in the same room, just the four of us, which doesn’t happen that often. The first or second day, it was a lot of us just goofing off and hanging out. And then in the last hour, it just all comes together.
Getzug: I think if you look back to five years ago, from 2020 to 2025 we lived through a lot of experiences. That inherently changes your outlook on your taste and your creative process, too. Shelly 1, it’s fun, it’s messy. At 25 I’m still having fun, but now I’m a little bit more responsible. I’m working on myself. I just think it’s cool how that is reflected [in the music].
Cottrill: A lot of bands talk about “demo-itis” which is falling in love with your demo. If it gets produced out, you sort of just lose the magic, and you always revisit how the specific demo sounds. With “Steeeam” and “Natural,” we kept those as demos. It was finished to us, it was perfect to us. So I think when we were working on the Shelly 2 EP, we’d be very careful to not lose the demo feeling, or what we loved so much about [those songs], and why we held onto them for so long. There was some additional production, but we kept it the same.
Getzug: With “Hartwell,” I tracked new drums because we wanted it to sound professional. Then, when we listened to it, we were like, “Honestly, no—keep the 2020 drums from the phone.” That’s the essence of Shelly.
Mintz: It’s similar to what we did with the first Shelly EP: We made the cover art the day we finished the song, when we were in the studio and we were like, “It’s ready. Let’s not touch it anymore.”
Getzug: We are very impulsive people. We’re just like, fuck it, why not? if we love something. We’re so lucky that we have full autonomy over our creativity and are keeping the boundaries of our friendships and our bands. It’s nice that we’re able to be on our own timeline. Five years from now, or tomorrow, we could just go to the studio. There’s never any pressure because it’s our own, and I think that’s what makes Shelly unique. Maybe I’m biased, but I think that comes through in the music. It just feels authentic to us.
Cottrill: I like that it’s not forced. The reason we didn’t put out music for five years is partly because we just don’t want to force ourselves to become a band that puts a strain on our friendship. We’re already a band, for sure. Not adding additional pressure keeps it fun and keeps it friend-forward. So we do two songs every five years. [Laughs.]
Mehling: Maybe we’ve created a space where people are finding their version of their little queer, four-person friend group. It’s soaked in the music just because it’s us four, but it’s also how we’re so open about it.
Cottrill: All four of us have had a different journey with queerness and with our sexualities and how we approach it. I think it’s nice to have a group of people with variety. It’s nice to have a group of people possibly represent something that young queer people might be going through, or things that they’re discovering about themselves. Because we all have different experiences, that definitely bleeds into the music, but also, when we’re all out onstage having a fun time, it’s nice to see a group of queer people after the struggle of growing up and being confused and unsure. Sometimes that never ends. Sometimes it’s always confusing. But I do think that seeing a group of people really happy and comfortable with themselves and all the different facets of their queerness is super beautiful.
Cottrill: I’m excited for whatever we make in the future. We have tons of demos still sitting around that could become something. I’m also excited to start things from scratch again and see where we’re all at. We all have different influences, so it could be really cool and different. I just love that it is an outlet, and that it is this wide-open thing, and we don’t have to adhere to any sort of rules or any sort of style that’s been put upon us. I love that that’s our outlook. We’re very lucky; it is so rare to have success in a place that is just coming from passion.
Getzug: If we love it and we feel good, then hopefully everybody else does too. And if they don’t, that’s okay, because we love each other. It could be amazing, it could be a disaster, but it’s ours, and that’s what matters.
