“Enya rocks so hard,” proclaims Anastasia Westcott who, along with vocalist Kirby Lees, comprises the legendary Montreal-based Rave-Punk duo HRT.

The three of us are riffing in the living room of Westcott’s McGill-ghetto flat, which serves simultaneously as HRT HQ, on the music that we listened to as kids, delighting in many of our similarities: Free Jazz; Death Metal; Classic Rock; Hole.

Somehow it doesn’t altogether come as a surprise that Westcott, in addition to edgier artists, from Metallica to Coil, might count Enya among her influences — considering that Enya, too, is known for crafting tightly composed and densely layered electronic music.

Hailing originally from Atlantic Canada, Westcott from Newfoundland and Lees a Haligonian, there is something of a maritime work ethic and misty spirit that Enya and HRT share. And while HRT might aesthetically be as confrontational as Enya is calm, there exists an undeniable throughline.

Still, HRT is impossible to pin down, generically speaking, spanning Hardcore, Breakbeat, Electro, Post-Punk, and Darkwave. The result is a melange of infectious, industrial, danceable bangers specifically unique to this twosome, and indicative of Montreal’s appreciation for music’s most experimental margins, more broadly. Theirs is a decidedly niche brand of no-nonsense knees-up business.

For the uninitiated, HRT does indeed stand for Hormone Replacement Therapy, a not-so-subtle possession of their identity as Transgender artists.

“We kind of threw people a curveball not putting periods between the letters, I guess,” Westcott laughs. “We were initially going to start an anonymous hyperpop group called HRT because we thought, ‘what’s the most Trans-coded name we could think of?’”

“But then we were just like, ‘fuck it, go for it,’ and called ourselves HRT,” Lees elaborates. “I haven’t really thought about our music in relation to identity. We don’t write anything specifically with Trans identity in mind. We’re just Trans girls making music. I think the two just inherently happen.”

While music and identity can be mutually exclusive, every act is arguably political. And HRT are as radical as contemporary performance gets. They attract a core community of like minded devotees with volatile and cathartic live shows, one of which I attended at La Sotterenea on 7 February as part of the Taverne Tour. Standing at the edge of the stage, I suddenly realized, like a volcanologist poised on the threshold of an active lava lake, that I was precariously close to being sucked into the vortex of the mosh pit.

Their audiences “come to party,” as Westcott describes.

“That night felt particularly insane,” Lees remembers. “It was very packed. We weren’t really expecting it either, considering Taverne Tour had eight other shows happening on that block that night. Especially lately, it’s been that kind of energy pretty consistently.”

Westcott echoes: “Often when we play shows, I have to be like, ‘how was it?’ Because I don’t see. I don’t think. I’m nothing. Which feels amazing.”

The indomitable vibe that Lees and Westcott conjure together is vital, and it seems that the pair have their division of labour down pat. HRT formed in 2018 and, like everyone, was compelled into a two-and-a-half-year hiatus during the coronavirus crisis. “We had to take a forcible stop where we tried to write stuff together over Zoom,” says Lees. “I learned a lot about how to use gear, but it was kind of a nightmare.”

“The original songs were like Kirby making janky beats over a vocal sample and me turning them into songs on actual gear,” Westcott explains. “We’ve written in so many different ways at this point.”

“I learned how to play bass during the pandemic,” Lees professes. “And I did a lot of gear stuff. But my comfortable space is handling lyrics, largely.”

Both Lees and Westcott are self-taught musicians with no formal training. “I’ve been playing shows since I was 14 or 15,” Westcott tells me. “I did some Jazz guitar lessons in my early 20s. But most of my experience comes from just playing music.”

Lees fronted a band called The Dolly Partners after she moved in 2014 to Montreal from Halifax. “It was a Punk Dolly Parton cover band,” Lees deadpans. “But this has been my longest-standing project.”

Westcott decamped from St. John’s in 2012. “Originally I was going to go to Concordia for Jazz studies and didn’t get in,” Westcott confesses. “I’ve been part of a lot of different scenes, made a lot of different types of music. I’ve been in, like, way too many bands.”

Lees explains that HRT’s modus operandi is, “just doing it because we like it. The sound of it keeps changing, too,” she says, “between each thing we record. We’re not sticking necessarily to any one particular genre. We’re just doing what we want to do, when we want to do it.”

That liberatory ethos has served the band from their first release under the name Dregqueen, Connective, in 2019, to a live EP recorded at Café Cleopatra just before the lockdowns and launched on Bandcamp in 2021, and ultimately, to their most recent LP, entitled warm wet stroke of luck, released in late 2024.

If there were a band motto, Westcott says, it would simply be, “making people feel like they have a place to dance.”

Providing that safe space is central to HRT’s endearing appeal. Unfortunately, however, North America, and expressly our neighbours to the south, seems dead set upon making public spaces less safe for Trans people. The U.S. under Donald J. Trump has just passed an executive order banning travellers whose passport documents don’t conform to their birth-assigned genders.

“We would love to do a good tour,” Lees says. “But it doesn’t really look like the states is the place to do that right now. So maybe a European tour at some point. We’re literally living in a hellscape. But our main goal is to keep doing it until it’s not fun, honestly.”

For the moment, Westcott and Lees are content to hunker down in Montreal and explore the possibilities afforded by incremental technological innovations.

“I got a computer,” Westcott boasts. “I didn’t have one that could run Ableton before. So, I’m making music on the computer instead of hardware. It feels pretty good so far. But it’s weird to have everything because I am really used to working within limitations and having limitation act as a creative tool.”

As a cultural observer, I am tempted to suggest that social limitations to a large degree encouraged Westcott and Lees to pursue creative fields rather than, say, careers in finance. Some artists are made while others are born. Nonetheless, Montreal has nurtured HRT to an extent that few other metropolises would. How long this continues, though, is unknown.

“It’s changed a lot, but this city does offer you space and time and access to work on passion projects,” says Lees.

“Up until recently, there’s always been a lot of DIY venues,” Westcott recalls. “But housing is so fucked in Montreal right now that that’s having an impact. When I moved here, I was paying $170 in rent. That’s not the situation anymore. Community is what makes bands. And the more that Montreal becomes like other cities, the less it will be like Montreal.”

Lees concurs. “If you make it harder to live here, you’re going to lose everything that made this city what it is: its art scenes; its music scenes; the actual culture that makes up this city. And for what? Don’t wreck your city. It’s the last one we have in Canada where you can actually make something happen if you want to because you have that access. We’re losing it really quickly. Make living affordable. That’s the baseline.”◼︎

HRT perform 9 May 2025 at the D4E Rave, Location TBA.

_{Cover image: Anastasia Westcott and Kirby Lees photographed for NicheMTL.}