Once again, Jenni Rose finds herself in unfamiliar territory. And once again, she’s mired in a blend of cautious excitement and raw anxiety. “I was just talking to my girlfriend,” Rose tells Rolling Stone, “and I can’t believe that people are gonna hear
this and see me like this.”
Rose is referencing Tomgirls, a three-piece pop-punk band she formed with her Vandoliers bandmates Trey Alfaro and Patrick Smith. After coming out as a trans woman in April 2025 when Vandoliers — the cowpunk band Rose founded in 2015 — announced their Life Behind Bars album, Rose created Tomgirls as a side project to help her process and express the kaleidoscope of emotions she was suddenly feeling as the trans leader of a country band in Texas.
That band, Vandoliers, are going nowhere. But Tomgirls are what’s occupying Rose’s mind today. In February, they will release Sissy, their 10-track debut LP, on Rose’s independent label Skull and Bow Records. Tomgirls even set up a website dedicated to pre-orders.
“The idea of it is the trans experience,” Rose says, “and this dynamic build into accepting yourself.”
Ahead of the album, Tomgirls dropped Sissy’s first single “Run” on Friday, along with its accompanying video — a classically pop-punk themed production that features Rose in a white dress, singing, dancing and playing an electric guitar. She’s joined by Alfaro on drums and Smith on bass against a colorful backdrop that oscillates from hot pink to deep blue.
Those three did the lions’ share of work on Sissy. Rose wrote, produced, and engineered the record herself — a first for her — and was partially responsible for mixing it too. Its sound is decidedly punk, but that shouldn’t throw Vandoliers fans for a loop, as Rose’s native Texas drawl gives the project a sense of place.
Throughout the record, though, it’s the lyrics that keep Sissy grounded in Rose’s transition. The electric guitar and Alfaro’s punk beats are a cover for a lot of pain, interspersed with real hope, that Rose worked through. The agonizing title track mixes love Rose cannot have with insecurity as she sings, “Nobody loves me/I’m just a sissy, craving your touch,” in the refrain. And “Red Flags” is an angry state-of-the-world snapshot with a chorus of, “Wish I could go outside, without feeling like they want to murder me, because I don’t believe.”
Rose first realized she was trans while Vandoliers were recording Life Behind Bars. She started writing the pop-punk songs that would become Sissy as a means of processing the stress that came with that realization.
“I don’t know if it was just because I was scared that maybe my band wouldn’t accept me, or if I really wanted to transition,” she says. “These songs, kind of, are me processing if I’m going to transition or not. Because around October 2024 I didn’t have my name. I didn’t know if I was gonna come out publicly. All of these songs are me processing that, and in ‘Run,’ I found my name. It was really because I gave myself just a nice little cushion of familiarity to be vulnerable in, because I love this music. Nineties pop punk is what I grew up on. That’s what made me want to start playing in a band.”
Before Rose came out in a 2025 interview with Rolling Stone, she kept a tight inner circle, sharing her identity on a need-to-know basis. She started with her parents, and expanded her support system slowly and deliberately. As part of that process, she would share the demos that ultimately turned into Sissy with people as she came out to them. “This process was different,” Rose explains. “It was more like a diary.” Ultimately, it was Alfaro who heard the demos and insisted that Rose get in the studio.
“The thing I remember most is Jenni showing me these songs in a gas station parking lot,” Alfaro recalls. “My inner pop-punk kid ears perked, and as I listened to the lyrics, they are very personal and emotional. After 20 years of friendship, I feel Tomgirls is one of the truest things Jenni has ever written.”
On New Year’s Eve 2024, Vandoliers opened for the Toadies in Austin, and Rose came out to Toadies’ bassist Doni Blair, who shared Alfaro’s sentiments.
Blair sent Rose’s demos to his brother, Zach, lead guitarist for the punk band Rise Against and a Dallas resident like Rose. Zach Blair and Rose began sharing the demos back and forth and, in the process, Rose realized two things: First, she was capable of recording and producing the album herself. And second, the first real expansion of Rose’s inner circle beyond her family was to fellow musicians. Along with Alfaro, both Doni and Zach Blair encouraged Rose to play Tomgirls songs live, and the four of them eventually booked a handful of concerts for the band in Austin, Denton, and Dallas. Rose found herself learning parts of the music business in real-time that she had never had cause to take up before.
“I don’t know, maybe the universe is just teaching me how to do this myself right now, or be self-sufficient,” Rose says. “But that’s how it’s been. I’d be looking for all these people, and it wasn’t really panning out, and then I would just learn a skill and just do it. So, Tomgirls has been kind of like, in the back, while Vandoliers is touring the world multiple times. This was just happening in between all those massive Vandoliers things.”
Life Behind Bars has been out for more than a year, and Vandoliers have a handful of major gigs on the book this year — they’ll sail on Flogging Molly’s Salty Dog Cruise this month and have their annual co-bill with Silverada at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa in December. Usually, this is the point where Rose would have another Vandoliers album written. But she has to get Tomgirls into the world first.
“If anybody wants us to play, we’ll be there,” Rose says of Vandoliers. “But, right now, as far as doing another world tour? Not yet. We need another album, and I gotta get through this Tomgirls thing, even if it’s just for me and even if it’s just for my family. The moment Sissy is out, I’ll probably be writing something else.
“There’s not a big ‘Vandoliers are breaking up’ kind of story out there. But this is super exciting, and Tomgirls is just like a gayer, louder thing,” she continues. “And Patrick and Trey are in it. Once I’m writing a Vandoliers record, then we will be back in Vandoliers territory.”
Even if Rose’s nervous tension over Tomgirls is justified, she has already scaled higher emotional cliffs. Before her acceptance that she was trans, Rose had put herself through upheaval at a fundamental, personal level. Once a hard partier with alcohol and drugs, Rose found sobriety in the window between the end of the pandemic and her gender awakening. But when she made the decision to come out, she worried about returning to substance abuse and the impulses that accompany it.
That never happened.
“I didn’t know how resilient I was,” Rose says, reflecting on her life since coming out. “I felt like there were so many things that, if they happened, I would never recover. And I’m still here.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose upcoming book, Sonoran Sounds, is set for release in March 2027 via Back Lounge Publishing.
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