Mother Soki feels at home with First Ave’s Best New Bands

She went off to study fashion design in Chicago but got wrapped up in music instead. Coming home to the Twin Cities, Annie Tammearu said, is what sewed up her plans to focus on recording and performing.

“When I left Chicago, I was afraid I was leaving big city life and big dreams behind,” said Tammearu, who creates darkly ambient electro-pop music under the stage moniker Mother Soki. “It was the opposite, though. I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t moved back to Minnesota.”

Where she’s at is the place most young musicians aspire to be, with a new deal to record for one of New York’s preeminent indie labels, Mom + Pop Music (home to MGMT, Lucius and Flume). She has a bona-fide viral hit, too, “Rivet Gun,” which took off via TikTok after British hitmaker Ellie Goulding shared it with the comment, “What is this sorcery?”

Just 11 months after playing her first gig at 7th St. Entry, Tammearu is making the leap next door to First Avenue. She is one of seven acts selected by club staff for the annual Best New Bands of 2025 showcase happening Jan. 17.

As excited as she is about all that — she sometimes shakes her head incredulously when talking about it — the 22-year-old singer and multi-instrumentalist sounded even more ecstatic discussing the creative partnerships she has made since moving back to town.

Among the local music scenesters who’ve helped Tammearu find her footing as Mother Soki are shoegaze rockers She’s Green, who’ve helped her record and connected her with her manager. Her guitarist Elijah Herchert and bassist/roommate Mo Todd, also have helped with production and videomaking, too.

She’s especially grateful for her co-writer and bandmate Jack Pfeffer, whom she knew in passing from their days attending Minnetonka High School. They didn’t strike up a creative partnership, however, until meeting via the dating app Hinge.

“I was on [Hinge] really just looking for new friends to hang out with and people to make music with,” Tammearu said. (She got both.)

“There’s a musical chemistry I’ve found with Jack and Elijah that makes me feel like this is the place I was always meant to be.”

All combined, she said, this group of local collaborators has helped her “sort of come out of my shell and turn my weird, little song ideas into full-blown recordings that sound like the kind of songs I want to listen to.”

The results of all this creative energy can be heard on Mother Soki’s debut EP, “Fantasy.” What’s “weird” about the EP is how the songs alternately sound heavy and gothic but also beautiful and tender, reminiscent of synth-rock pioneers such as Siouxsie & the Banshees and even Suicide but also current strange kids such as Ethel Cain and Mk.gee.

Included on the EP is the final studio version of “Rivet Gun,” which Tammearu finished after it unexpectedly blew up in a hurry. In fact, she finished it in a hurry at her manager’s urging, which she said was fine by her under the circumstances.

A song about “co-dependency and being mechanically joined together,” Tammearu said, “Rivet Gun” demonstrated the abstract imagery and wordplay heard throughout Mother Soki’s songs.

Another standout tune, the eerily tribal rocker “Sliver,” includes the deep-digging line, “You’re stubborn like grout,” and ambiguous refrain: “I hope I fill you up.” The lighter, more melodic opener “Joneses” riffs on the addictiveness of our own social media personalities with the repetitious hook, “God, I thought I killed you.”

With the EP now out, Tammearu plans to hit the road in 2026 as a duo with Pfeffer and a drum machine while also playing with her full band as much as possible locally. Even more than performing, though, she said she hopes to focus on recording new songs in the new year.

“It took me a while to find my people and my footing and really myself,” she said, and then added with a smile, “Now that I have all that, I’m ready to go.”

When: 7 p.m. Jan. 17.