Sophie Hiroko has been crying all day long. Later today, the Twin Cities-based singer-songwriter plans to write down a list of things she needs to let go of — and then burn it.

Ahead of an interview with The Current, Hiroko has been feeling the astrological effects of the full moon. We are sitting down for coffee at May Day Cafe in Minneapolis' Powderhorn neighborhood. She's wearing a camisole over a button-up shirt and long, frilly white skirt. We're sitting at a table near the door.

“My [musical] inspiration comes from being a big, deep feeler,” she says, noting she just finished a "hookup culture" song. Despite the day's emotional rollercoaster, she’s full of bubbly enthusiasm and laughs at the moment.

Place of residence has also been an enduring influence in Hiroko’s songwriting, and she speaks affectionately about her relationship with Duluth and the outdoors. She grew up “off grid” a bit outside the city up the North Shore, and spent as much time in nature as possible. “I was a feral kid, out in the mud, out in the swamp, bringing things home,” she says. Her family moved to Park Point near Lake Superior when she was three. “The lake raised me,” she says. “The lake is also my mom.”

When ice skating on frozen Superior with her dad, five-year-old Hiroko spotted a decommissioned tugboat under the ice. A friend drilled a hole and confirmed the discovery, later dubbed “Sophie’s Wreck,” with an ice fishing camera. The lake is also tied to her early introduction to music. She remembers her mother singing the heartfelt “The Beauty of the Dancer” by Twin Ports singer-songwriter Sara Thomsen in a sauna outside of their house before jumping into the lake. Her mother sang, “Beauty all above you / Beauty all around you / Beauty all within you,” and Hiroko responded, “You are beauty / We are beauty.”

Now in her 20s, Hiroko searches for the beauty lurking within the challenges of adulthood. On her debut EP, to the core — recorded with Matt Castore at Soft Cult Studio in northeast Minneapolis and released in July — she airs insecurities, grapples with regret, and couples a confident voice with occasional softer crooning. “My hands are soaked in sorrows and my tongue is soaked in gin,” she sings on “ashes.” Echoes of blues-inflected grunge and ’90s alt-rock show up in the form of occasional gritty guitars and melodic, unapologetically honest verses.

Songwriting has also become Hiroko’s emotional coping mechanism. “I love poetry. I try to live and breathe my life like it's one big poem because it makes me feel better, romanticizing it,” she says, playing with the rosary around her neck. (She notes that she’s not religious.) “I write these songs about very uber-specific situations, and they're the only thing that can bring me comfort,” she says. For an even more visceral emotional outlet, Hiroko mentions she also fronts the Duluth-based “intersectional feminist pissy noisy queer punk band” C U Next Tuesday.

Talking about “rot,” the song she wrote earlier in the day, Hiroko pulls up the Notes app to show me the lyrics, “Is this the rot / That fills your bones / Existing thought / You were inside me and now you’re a ghost.”

Back in June, Hiroko was visiting a friend in New York, and her phone rang. It was someone calling from back home.

“The first time I listened to Sophie's music, what hit me hardest was her songwriting,” says Dave Simonett, frontman for the Duluth-based bluegrass/folk band Trampled by Turtles. “She creates very vivid imagery, and her turns of phrase are both irreverent and intelligent.” 

He intends it as a compliment when saying, “She sounds deeply like a Duluth artist. There's a dusty and loose quality to the songs. She sounds like what we used to call ‘a hillsider.’ Anyone who was in the Duluth music scene back when we started out up there would probably know what that means.”

That June phone call was from Simonett, who reached out to congratulate Hiroko on becoming the 2025 recipient of the Palomino Grant. Trampled by Turtles awards the $5,000 grant annually to a musical artist based in the Twin Ports of Duluth, Minnesota, and Superior, Wisconsin. In addition to the cash prize, Hiroko received two days of recording at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, and a spot opening for Trampled by Turtles and S.G. Goodman at Bayfront Festival Park in Duluth in July. The funds went towards filming a music video for the single “ashes” off to the core, a professional photo shoot, merch, and upcoming tour expenses. 

Hiroko plans to use the allotted days at Pachyderm to record a double-sided single. The single is a concept project that she describes as Japanese city pop and ‘90s grunge fusion. It will incorporate spoken or sung Japanese. She says she’s taking a Japanese class now. (Hiroko is a family name that comes from her grandma on her father’s side.) She jokes that her grandma and other family members can tell her if she doesn’t pronounce the words correctly. 

When talking about the upcoming project, Hiroko reminisces about a month-long trip to visit family in Japan this past February. She stopped in her grandma’s hometown, Morioka, and her dad’s hometown, Sendai. She ate at the sushi restaurant that her family has frequented for five generations, and took part in the Worldpackers work-exchange program with her then-spouse (and now best friend) in Tokyo. Cleaning for half an hour each day in exchange for room and board was a great deal, she thinks. 

The February trip helped Hiroko realize she would like to live in Tokyo one day. But also Berlin. And New York City. And in a tent somewhere for a summer. She’s in a transient state of life and seems to find excitement in the unknown. “My music timeline is secondary to where I want to be living,” she says.

Hiroko wants to be living in Minneapolis right now, so she moved to the Twin Cities a couple of months ago.

Gallery

Fullscreen SlideshowPrevious Slide

6 of 6

1 of 6

2 of 6

Next Slide

While she’s in the city, Hiroko is seeking to connect with artists. “I've been trying to go out as often as possible and talk to everybody,” she says. “It's so scary, but I'm being so brave.” She has quickly learned the interconnectivity of the Twin Cities music scene. She’s regularly out at shows as an audience member and uses Instagram to make connections.

Her commitment to showing up is evident. Within a week, we run into each other at two concerts. Sweating along with everyone else at a humid, sold-out Water From Your Eyes show at 7th St. Entry, it’s a pleasant surprise when the New York-based art rock duo’s set turns into a dance party. It happens again at Zhora Darling’s bar in northeast Minneapolis the night of L.A. indie-pop-rock band Dummy’s show, and she expresses excitement to see the Minneapolis noisy shoegaze band Linus. 

Hiroko calls herself an “overly sensitive person,” but standing face-to-face with her at the bar, she has a joyfully charged energy. “Life is big. The world's my oyster right now,” she says at the cafe. “I feel very grateful. I'm feeling it all.”

Sophie Hiroko will open for Oceanographer at 7th St. Entry on Wednesday, Dec. 3. Tickets here. She will perform at the Best New Bands of 2025 event at First Avenue on Saturday, Jan. 17. Tickets here.