Barbara, an all-woman music trio, is building buzz in Denver

Teal and orange lights flashed across a makeshift concert hall in a Glendale basement as nearly 100 people squeezed into the small space. Looking out on the crowd assembled in their home, one blooming Denver band knew they never wanted to let go of that feeling.

The basement’s concrete walls should’ve distorted the music, but the packed room — decorated with strings of lights, scrap metal concoctions and artwork — made it sound warm instead, said Bridget Hartman.

Hartman plays bass for Barbara, an all-woman music trio that refuses to be defined by a single genre.

“I can still see myself in the basement with the lights, and I remember us blowing ourselves away,” Hartman said. “That was the moment I knew.”

Barbara is marked by transformation — the merging of three musicians into one cohesive band identity, improvised moments becoming permanent fixtures of the band’s sound and the entirety of their bounce-ideas-off-the-wall songwriting process.

Three years after that house concert in May 2022, the trio is quickly growing in the Denver music community.

“We’re just letting all of our influences speak”

“With the pandemic, after things closed down, a lot of bands … didn’t come back,” said Maggie Moody, a talent buyer at the Hi-Dive bar and music venue in Denver. “Barbara was one of the bands that was on my radar after we reopened.”

Moody said Barbara grew fast. The trio only played one or two support slots before taking to the stage as the main act.

“The beauty of Hi-Dive is that it’s the place to see bands grow, both local and national,” Moody said. “It’s the spot bands hit before they blow up, before they sell out the Bluebird and the Ogden. … We get to see these local bands on their journey to getting bigger.”

The band was born from a combination of college burnout and three women trying to rediscover their passion for music, said Camilla Vaitaitis, the group’s guitarist and lead vocalist.

Vaitaitis, Hartman and Anna Panella, the drummer of the group, graduated together from the University of Denver, where they studied jazz and classical music. All three were living together when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

That’s when they started messing around in their basement, strumming cords and riffing lyrics together, Hartman said. Before they knew it, they had an album’s worth of songs.

“What started as a fun thing has now become the center of our worlds,” Vaitaitis said.

The three women named the band “Barbara” because they wanted it to have its own identity and serve as their collective persona, Vaitaitis said.

Barbara played music from its debut album, Escape Artist, at the pivotal house party and officially launched it in September 2022 with a live performance inside Twist & Shout Records.

The group released its sophomore album, “So This is Living,” in April.

Vaitaitis said Barbara’s first album was an exploration of what the band could do together. Now that they’re comfortable, they’ve had a chance to experiment with their sound and let their influences speak, she said.

Panella, who’s from Chicago, has a deep love of hip-hop and rap that the group often references for audio production and cadence. Similarly, Vaitaitis’ background with Brazilian music and Hartman’s love of afro-jazz have both influenced multiple songs on the band’s new album.

Hartman described the band’s sound as a mix of “spirit of the beehive” and echo chamber melodies with psychedelic rock influences. The band is “wobbly and dreamy” to their core.

“With Barbara, it doesn’t feel like it’s possible to burn out,” Vaitaitis said. “I know anything’s possible, but when you’re making art with your best friends in the world, and you get to travel to cool places and meet amazing people and make this album that you’re so proud of … I could do this forever.”