Teenage Joans are a powerhouse duo consistently on the rise, who have long marked themselves as ones to watch.

Made up of Cahli Blakers and Tahlia Borg, the South Australia-based rock-punk upstarts have hit musical milestone after musical milestone: winning triple j’s 2020 Unearthed competition, charting in the Hottest 100, winning a record-breaking seven awards at the 2021 South Australian Music Awards, being nominated for an ARIA Award, and recording a stunning ‘Like A Version’ of one of the greatest pop songs of all time: Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe.

Blakers explains the thought process behind the song choice: “We’re both in our early twenties. We’re quite young. We’re Gen Z.” The two musicians thought to themselves, “Instead of covering a classic that came before we were born, let’s cover a classic for our generation.”

“We grew up on Call Me Maybe,“ Borg chimes in, reverent.

“We love pop music, so we really wanted to do a pop song and make it a bit more fleshed out, sort of like a coming-of-age indie rock song.”

This Like a Version song choice is extremely telling: although Teenage Joans is generally classified as rock/punk, they are set apart by the bouncy pop sensibility that lends a certain brightness to their songs.

Filling The Music in on their songwriting process, the two explain that their approach is very collaborative.

Blakers says, “I’d say usually I’ll first come up with a quick idea because I play guitar. So I’ll come up with a little riff or chords or whatever. And usually, we’ll just come together and make a song out of it. It’s very 50-50.”

“We work really well in terms of riffing off of each other as well in terms of lyrics and structure,” Borg adds.

On the back of a peppy new single called Sweet And Slow, out today, the duo are undertaking a mini tour across Adelaide and Melbourne at various beloved venues.

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Borg says of playing in Adelaide, “Because it’s our hometown…There’s something about Adelaide. They just have more love for us.”

Blakers adds, “They’ve had us for a bit longer too. The first year of the band we were only playing in Adelaide.”

They like to think of themselves as “Hometown Heroes.”

“We feel that everyone is super proud of us that we got to break out of the city, and even the country. It’s special playing at home,” Blakers says.

They feel very affectionately toward the South Australian scene. In terms of local talent, they mention being massive fans of both shoegazers Sunsick Daisy and pop queen aleksiah.

But they have ingratiated themselves in musical success on a national - even an international - level. 2024 was the year that Teenage Joans were nominated for an ARIA Award for their debut album, The Rot That Grows Inside My Chest - an achievement that any Australian artist should feel supremely proud of.

“So crazy!” Borg squeals when the topic is brought up.

“It didn’t feel real,” says Blakers. “We felt like we were the outsiders on the inside. We were like, we shouldn’t be here. We didn’t know how to walk a red carpet.”

“There was one point where Troye Sivan was standing right next to us. We were literally breathing the same air.”

“Our table was at the very back corner next to the fire escape. It was kind of like, we made it; we got here. Even though we’re right next to the fire escape. We’re still here. We’re in the building.”

The Rot That Grows Inside My Chest generated so much acclaim and fervour - surely following up such a critical tour de force must be intimidating.

“It is a little bit nerve-wracking,” Borg admits. “But I think the thing with us is, we’re proud of the music that we put out, and that’s what matters to us.”

“Also,” Cahli adds, “The Rot That Grows Inside My Chest was the first eighteen years of both of our lives. And now it’s from age 18 to 22, so we’ve got a much smaller period to write from. Like Tahlia said, we’re proud of whatever we make.

“Because it comes from us, it is very Teenage Joans, and we’ve never put ourselves in a genre box or a visual box. People know us to take risks and do different things all the time. So, fans who stick around, stick around, and the people who don’t, it’s not for them, and that’s okay, you know?”

But their new single, Sweet And Slow, is sure to be adored by diehards and newcomers alike. It is impossibly catchy, danceable, yet poignantly relatable.

The creation of the track saw them working with producer and musician Jayden Seeley.

Blakers says, “This is the first ever song we’ve ever had a co-writer on. It’s very exciting to have someone that we really respect as a songwriter be on the track. I think it’s still the same old Teenage Joans, but there’s just a bit more energy - “

“It’s a bit more fun,” Borg says. “Definitely quite poppy.”

“Jayden made the space very comfortable. He made it super collaborative…We were in LA when we wrote it, which is where he lives now, but he’s Australian, so it was cool to have that taste of home even while we were in the States.”

They are definitely a musical act that has a taste for the visual. Their artistic flare is multi-faceted - they have an image to maintain and they dress well for it, and they are open to creation in whatever medium it comes in.

“We love physical media,” Blakers says. “We’re such trinket girlies.”

“Hoarders,” Tahlia jokes.

“Hoarders of beautiful things.”

And, lest we forget, creators of beautiful things too.

‘Sweet And Slow’ is out everywhere now. Tickets to their tour stops can be purchased here.