Biography

Public Universal Friend (PUF) is an Indianapolis-based art rock band fronted by the queer goth americana matriarch you’ve been waiting for, Jody Galadriel Friend. After a decade-plus solo career, Friend released the touchstone coming out album Perennials debuting under PUF in March 2021 just a month after coming out publicly as a gay trans woman. Since the release, Friend galvanized her place as a beloved mother figure in the Indianapolis queer music scene with her live band including up to eight members, with performances featured on their local NPR station, Indy Pride, Emmy-award winning series Music in Transit, all while also becoming the first trans-led act to have been featured on Mahogany Sessions based out of London. PUF’s upcoming 2023 release Chrysalis is a vindictive queering of songwriter Jody Galadriel Friend’s native Appalachian sound, laced with the bold romance and profound grief of southern gothic deconstruction. The record became a platform to reclaim the sound in a way that is particular to queer artists raised in the south, even digging at that certain Appalachian religiosity with the lead single Jesus Pt. 1, answering the culture of bigoted religiosity casting queer people as herself as “an abomination” to which Friend leans in and nearly whispers, “then I guess I’ll see you all in hell.”