Mia Brooks has never been particularly interested in blending into the background. With the blonde hair, punk clothes, harmonica never too far away and a healthy dose of bad attitude, she’s always been the unmistakable face and voice of The Swans. On stage she can be fiery, unpredictable and completely herself; one minute lost in a song, the next throwing a look across the stage that tells the rest of the band exactly what she thinks. There’s nothing polished or manufactured about her, and that’s really the point. She sings the songs because she means them, wears what she wants and has absolutely no interest in pretending to be something she isn’t.

But underneath the punk attitude and occasional glare is a very different Mia. She’s warm, funny, fiercely loyal and has a genuinely lovable soul; the sort of person who cares deeply about the people around her even if she’d probably rather you didn’t make too much fuss about it. That mixture of toughness and vulnerability finds its way into the music too, giving the songs their heart as well as their edge. Whether she’s standing at the microphone, picking up the harmonica or simply causing trouble with the rest of the band, Mia brings a personality that can’t really be taught or manufactured. She’s been at the heart of The Swans since 1996, and nearly thirty years later, she’s still doing it entirely her own way.