With bandmates Jun Park on guitar, Chris Marshall on bass, and Tom Leggett on drums, they’re clearly enjoying playing another high profile support. Since forming in 2013, the explosive four-piece has warmed up for IDLES in 2019, played the same stage as The Datsuns in 2018, and in 2015 toured the country with Shonen Knife and supported the Foo Fighters.
Of the Foo Fighters experience, Bel (who was 19 at the time) says, “It was super cool, but I was very much not interested. I did not feel safe around the band.”
Although still a teenager, Liddell had been playing music with serious intent for around a decade. Her mother set her and her two older brothers on their way by offering tuition in any instrument they liked “as long as it was smaller than a double bass”. She chose guitar and, after getting four chords up her sleeve, immediately began songwriting.
As a teen, after getting four guitar chords up her sleeve, Liddell immediately began songwriting
“I was like, ‘I’m good, I can run with this,’” she says. “In Year 6, one of my teachers used to let me play a song for my class on Fridays. So, I would write and play little songs for my class on Fridays. I have all of my old notebooks, so I still actually have all of that material.
“I was also always in school choir, so I was singing since forever, from primary school, then all the way through high school. Then I moved from Tāmaki Makaurau to Whanganui, and it was really when I was in Whanganui that I got super into my music stuff. I think I was just bored. There wasn’t much to do, and I started taking music really seriously. I did a lot of different music stuff, songwriting, was part of a lot of different ensemble groups. I used to perform at a few different clubs around Whanganui – I would play the Savage Club on the weekends, and perform my original songs – then I started filming and putting them on YouTube.
“I joined my high school band, and did Smokefreerockquest and talent shows. I remember the first proper song I ever wrote. My mum was still in Tāmaki, and I called and played it to her over the phone. I just remember her crying, and my mum doesn’t really cry. She was just, like, ‘Oh, my god, I had no idea you were fully writing songs.’
“I played on the radio in Whanganui. I played in a little bluegrass band with three old men, where we did covers of ‘Banjo in the Hollow’ and stuff. I’ve got all of that on YouTube as well. It’s all private now because my banjo’s so bad,” she laughs.
She won a songwriting contest at 15, and used the prize money to fly to Tāmaki Makaurau and attend a songwriting seminar.
“This guy, I think, had written some popular songs for Britney Spears. At the end of the week, everyone got to play a song they wrote. I was so nervous because every single person I was around was pop music-focused, and at that point I still was like really influenced by Gillian Welch, Townes Van Zandt, et cetera. So, I was writing these really dark folk songs. I played for this guy and the class, and he sort of had a go at me, and was like, ‘You’re such a beautiful young woman. Surely you have a boyfriend or something? You could write a love song about that.’ I had written this metaphorical war song, so dark. I was really deep in my feels, and I just remember being totally shamed out. I couldn’t believe I spent all this money. I think it was $3000, which – when you’re 15 – is a huuuge amount of money. I just remember going back home and being like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s terrible. Do I have to pivot? What have I done?’”
As for the pivot, she turned her dial toward rock music.
“I really loved Karen O and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and I’ve always been a massive fan of Nirvana and My Chemical Romance, because I was sort of also in the emo crowd. It spoke to me because it’s similar to that sort of folk ethos. It’s like emotional music. Then I moved back to Auckland when I was 18, and I joined Grrlfriendz.”
Liddell says Grrlfriendz “100 percent” paved the way for Miss June
Liddell says Grrlfriendz, which included herself on guitar, Toyah Webb on vocals and Sophia Lawler-Dormer on drums, “100 percent” paved the way for Miss June. In 2013, they released their sole album – Welcome to Planet Lesley. It offered a noisy set of mostly sub-three-minute peeks through a crack in the door of a bedroom stuffed with a trio teenage girls as pissed off as they were talented.
in 2013 Liddell decided to take matters into her own hands when the rest the band were in Vietnam and unable to take a booking.
“I planned to play the gig by myself, just do guitar and sing Grrlfriendz songs, but I had a whole lot of material I had written for Grrlfriendz. And then Toyah knew Chris [Marshall], who played bass.”
Marshall was in jazz school with drummer Tom Leggett, so he drew him into the endeavour. When Liddell said she needed to borrow an amp, Jun Park entered the picture, bringing more than equipment.
“For the first rehearsal, Jun just sat in the corner, like, ‘Do you guys mind if I watch?’ He was never meant to be in the band. Eventually I was just like, ‘Do you want to put some on, bro? Like, you’re sitting there with your guitar, quietly noodling.’ So, he ended up joining the band, and it’s been like the same four of us since 2013.”
She jokes that Jun likes to think the band is named after him. Marshall also plays in the Miltones, and Leggett also plays in Wax Chattels, and has toured Europe with alt-pop brother duo Balu Brigada.
Miss June have undertaken three international tours to date. “Our tour party was the four of us. We were the drivers, we were the roadies. We slept on floors, slept on couches, slept in the car. When we toured America, we got a van and we drove it from the east coast all the way down into the south, up to the west coast, up into Canada and back around, and just did all of that ourselves. We stayed in some really dodgy places – like, the boys got mugged in Louisiana. Now Tom’s got like his own hotel room and he’s got a king-sized bed. He’s living it up [in Balu Brigada], playing to like 20,000 people every night, so that’s fun.”
While she acknowledges touring on a slim dime is hard work, she says the band were bonded by their shared dream. “And we were young when we did those tours,” she says. “We were still in our early twenties, you know? Young, single, and best friends. They’re still my best friends 13 years later. They’re more actually akin to family.
“we’re road dogs. We’re a rock band. There’s a sort of grimy grittiness to it”
“It was very difficult, but we all just felt so lucky to be there. And we’re road dogs. We’re a rock band. There’s a sort of grimy grittiness to it, and I’ve never been in my life a high-maintenance sort of person. One of my superpowers is I can sleep anywhere. If you were like, ‘Go to sleep right now,’ I would put my head on this table and I could fall asleep. And I don’t need, like, a lot of money. I don’t necessarily need comfort. We really just had the music, and that sustained us and our friendship. [Touring] was really cool. It was it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.”
Liddell thinks highly of Tom, calling him the “best drummer in New Zealand”. “He is the McCartney to my Lennon. He has a real ear for songwriting, and a lot of the songwriting and nutting out of the songwriting was done with Tom having a really heavy hand in that songwriting. The passion that he plays the drums with is unbelievable. And, truly no one has ever given Tom anything. Like, he’s been on his own since he was a young teenager, like really, really on his own, and made his way in life. He just amazes me. He’s a very resilient person and a very talented person.”
Chris is a bit of a dark horse within the band, she says. “There’s something that unlocks in Chris when he’s on stage and he plays the Miss June riffs. He’s a very innovative bass player. A lot of what he has done on the bass are things I didn’t realise you could do on the bass, like a lot of his effects work, and a lot of his stage performance stuff with feedback. Chris has blown up more bass amps than any bassist in New Zealand. That was a theme for a while. We’re going to have to pay out of our earnings to replace the bass. He is one of the loudest. He likes to play bass so that you can feel the vibration in the floor. He plays through the feeling of the actual vibration of the bass. It’s fucking loud.
“And I always have him to thank for being the person that brought us all together. I don’t mean to be woo-woo, but I am someone that believes in fate. The fact that Toyah knew Chris and introduced me to Chris, and then the people that Chris happened to bring to band practice were Tom and Jun, I always have him to thank for that.
“Jun is the person who introduced me to heavy metal. I always liked emo and grunge, but I remember Jun showing me Dillinger Escape Pan. He was a big fan of Rancid and these heavy, heavy bands. And when I first heard them I was very like, ‘Ooh, this is horrible. I hate this.’ But it’s funny now, all these years later, I’m now really, really into metal. It’s probably the genre I listen to the most. So I kind of have this running joke with Jun that he’s so ahead of the curve in terms of what’s cool.”
In addition to her work with Miss June, Liddell has also worked as a model, and has been studying, then working, as a doctor for almost the entire duration of the band
Liddell’s feminism can be felt in her lyrics, doesn’t believe that makes Miss June a feminist band
The singer’s feminist leanings can also be felt in her lyrics, but she doesn’t believe that makes Miss June a feminist band. “I think the reason that label came into being is because our first EP was called Matriarchy.”
She notes that when they released it in 2015, “There was no TikTok, there was not really social media. I think now, nowadays, you have to have this very clear tagline and branding about what you are at the time. I think a lot of people put that tagline on me, which is fine for me because I am a feminist, but there was no intentional marketing behind the band as a feminist band.”
Although she says they started out “very strictly punk”, their sound soon developed to take on rock, pop, noise, and no wave flavours, without leaving behind the Riot Grrrl moxie of Grrlfriendz. Think the Pixies, think the Breeders, think Sonic Youth, think Weezer’s “Blue” album, think Babes in Toyland, and Bikini Kill, then think again. In 2020, they were nominated for Best Group at the AMAs 2020, and the Taite Music Prize for Best Independent Album (for 2019’s Bad Luck Party).
In February 2025, they reunited with The D4 in Mt Maunganui (seven years after legendarily helping them farewell the Kings Arms Tavern in 2018), and opened for Amyl and the Sniffers at the Powerstation in Tāmaki Makaurau.
“Amy [Taylor]’s a friend of mine,” Liddell says. “I wouldn’t say she was necessarily an influence because I feel like we are in the same sort of scene.”
Miss June’s single ‘Halo Per Idol’ was released at the same time, providing an early taste of their new album, Playfight.
Liddell relocated to Melbourne in early 2026, enjoying some time between day jobs to work on music around the transition. Singles ‘PPD’ and ‘Liar’ were released in June and July. ‘PPD’ has a dark animated video, created by Sydney-based Ally Baston (aka Peaboy3), while the ‘Liar’ video features live and road footage.
The single ‘MLE’ – a deep, personal reflection of Liddell’s experience as a doctor – was released in September 2026. “It’s about meeting people on their worst day and finding things more in common than one would think,” she says. “It’s a song about empathy, self-love and resilience.”
