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Jun 27, 2025 Web Exclusive By Mark Redfern and Issa Nasatir Photography by Pooneh Ghana

My Firsts is our email interview series where we ask musicians to tell us about their first life experiences, be it early childhood ones (first word, first concert, etc.) or their first tastes of being a musician (first band, first tour, etc.). For this My Firsts we talk to Greta Kline, front person of Frankie Cosmos.

Beginning Frankie Cosmos in 2011, Kline released her debut LP Zentropy three years later. Kline and the rest of the crew that’s joined her in Frankie Cosmos over the years—Alex Bailey, Katie Von Schleicher, and Hugo Stanley—have been working on their new album recently, titled Different Talking, which is out today via Sub Pop. This is the sixth LP to be released under Frankie Cosmos. Different Talking marks the first time that the band has self-tracked a record without any external producers, taking on the entire endeavor themselves.

The band have released the three singles “Bitch Heart,” “Vanity,” and “Pressed Flower” ahead of the album, with the latter coming with a music video starring comedy legend Tracey Ullman. Kline described the experience in a press release as “a dream come true. She’s the funniest person I know, and brings love, depth, and care to every character she plays. Getting to play dress-up with her and find this Manhattanite havoc-wreaker character was a blast.”

“Pressed Flower” is a bittersweet track that deals with the lingering past as Kline visits a former lover whose stagnancy threatened to keep her frozen in time. “You pressed into me / Like a flower amongst words / Done growing and / Willing to be preserved,” she sings sentimentally. “This song, for me, is about figuring out who you are, moving on while looking back, and feeling the effects of memories on locations,” Kline says. “The video is about someone running around NYC in a disguise, causing a chaotic chain of events for the locals (played by my band).”

Read on as Kline discusses her first band in middle school, a surprising celebrity crush, and trying to change diapers.

First pet?

My family’s dog, Joe. He was a totally freaky anxious rescue dog, but filled with so much love and sweetness. I was seven when we got him, and I wanted to name him Kisses. He was so cute, and very unique looking; every time I took him on a walk people would call out, like, “that’s the cutest dog ever!!!,” which I loved. His legs were too tall and skinny for his body, and when he would lie down his legs would sprawl out in front of and behind him, and his tongue would hang out of his mouth.

First favorite band?

Spice Girls!!

First record your parents played for you?

My parents used to play the song “Copperline” by James Taylor at bedtime when I was really little.

First concert you went to?

If it counts as a concert, I saw Michelle Branch play in 2003 at a JDRF fundraiser. Her hit song was “Everywhere,” which I loved.

First actor or actress you had a crush on?

Seth Rogen, from Freaks and Geeks. I was like 11 when I watched it, and from then on he was my celebrity crush. Nothing more romantic than him holding the back of Amy’s tuba while they kiss before she plays in the marching band. This was a couple years before he became an actual romantic lead in Knocked Up, so I felt very ahead of the curve.

First music festival you went to?

I think it was c/o pop festival in Köln, the first date of my first real Frankie Cosmos tour, in 2013! It was one of those spread out festivals, kind of like SXSW, where the festival takes over the city, and there are little pop-ups everywhere. We played as a two-piece, in a clothing store. The tour was 18 shows in 22 days, all in Germany, booked by my friend Peter Schneider. It was the longest I had ever been away from home.

First job you had?

Babysitting. I was 14, and the first family I babysat for had three kids between the ages of like, two and 11. The oldest kid helped me so much, especially changing the diapers of the baby on my first day, which was literally a shit show.

First time you voted?

It was in 2012, for Obama. I was 18, and there was a way to register to vote through my school. I remember like three months after the election, getting a letter in the mail that my vote hadn’t counted for some reason. I was really pissed off.

First instrument?

Violin, which I quit pretty quickly because it hurt my neck (and in hindsight, I was pretty bad at it, even for a six-year-old). I don’t really count violin as my first instrument, because I was so young I barely recall the lessons. Then I took classical piano lessons for about 10 years, with an incredible teacher who taught me so much and made it fun. I feel like piano is my actual first instrument.

First band you were in?

I was in fifth or sixth grade, and some kids in my class tried to form a band to play in a battle of the bands (we were too young to qualify, as it turned out). Someone in my class just, like, gathered the 10 kids that they knew played instruments. The first practice was a nightmare, and it was just way too many people. I had a kind of silent communication with just our eyes with this one girl who was really good at guitar, and we seemed to kind of acknowledge to each other (with our eyes) that we should just branch off and play together, alone. We stuck around after, became best friends for life (to this day), and formed Foxy Pig, a duo, and my first songwriting project. I played drums and Eliza played guitar.

First recording device?

GarageBand, straight into my computer’s internal microphone. All my early multi-track recordings have so much bleed, because I didn’t know I should be using headphones, and would just turn down the previous tracks as low as possible while still being able to hear them. I still use GarageBand to make demos, and have been teaching myself how to use it/expanding my knowledge for like 16 years now.

www.frankiecosmosband.com

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