BY BRITTANY DANIELLE for WEEKLY VOLCANO 1/2/2026 |
South Sound band Fern Spores are welcoming 2026 with a release that bursts into the new year with a bold and unapologetic message. On Jan. 1, the all-female group drops the music video for its single “Ain’t the Marrying Kind,” a defiant track that challenges traditional ideas of love, commitment, and what women face in certain traditional situations, such as marriage.
With the single out on streaming services at the end of 2025, Fern Spores give listeners the chance to take in the music and paint their own visuals before the band paints it for them with the video release.
Written by lead singer and songwriter Alyssa Nunke, “Ain’t the Marrying Kind” began years ago during an unhealthy relationship in which her partner repeatedly referred to her as his wife, despite her clear opposition to marriage. The song remained unfinished until later, when Nunke’s parents divorced and her decision against marriage became final.
Around the same time, a surge of trad wife content flooded the news, social media, and politics, reinforcing narrow, romanticized ideals of womanhood, marriage, and domestic life. The song crystallized as a response to all of it.
The single is a nod to the woman who charts her own path, rejecting what societal or religious pressures tell her she should be. Instead, this woman is unashamed to be who she desires to be and refuses to be put into a box of social norms. She recognizes that these normative qualities were accepted by women before her, and instead of accepting them, she is changing the very foundation on which these “norms” were built by defying them.
What has emerged is a song for those who want to redefine what partnership looks like. It is not a rejection of love and relationships, but a redefinition of them. “Ain’t the Marrying Kind” is a song about building relationships in your own way and according to your own preferences, as partnership without prescribed milestones, where individuals come together to accentuate their unique traits and characteristics instead of burying them and forcing each other into a cookie-cutter mold to look and act like everyone else. It argues for keeping color in the world instead of painting over it with the same beige paint in order to dim, dull, and silence anything interesting or free about each other.
Nunke reflected, “I wrote it about how I wanted to be seen, as someone worthy of growing old with despite being unconventional and not wanting to get married or have children. I think that so much of what love means in our culture is based in the institutions of marriage and parenthood, yet more and more people are deciding against that path.”
The song pushes back against the idea that love must be legitimized through rings, legal status, or heteronormative life scripts to be meaningful.
Those ideas are woven throughout the lyrics, which balance playful irreverence with vulnerability. Opening lines like “Baby don’t like babies / She don’t want no picket fence” quickly establish the song’s refusal of the expected path, while the chorus lands on something softer and more intimate: “That ain’t gonna stop me from watching her get old.” It is a promise rooted in choice rather than obligation, and it gives the song its emotional weight.
Musically, the track showcases Fern Spores’ fluid, genre-blurring sound. Drifting between vintage psych folk, garage rock grit, and Americana warmth, the band creates a backdrop that feels nostalgic without being retro-bound. Angsty but uplifting, whimsical yet fierce, the song reflects the band’s broader approach to songwriting: emotionally direct, but never one note.
Fronted by Nunke and fellow singer-songwriter Jade Kovats, Fern Spores have carved out a sound that is as thoughtful as it is fun.
Filmed, designed, and edited by Sean Trani at Megafauna Foundry, the music video expands on the song’s themes with camp, chaos, and visual excess. A collage of lace, Jell-O molds, spray paint, and grainy camcorder footage, it follows the story of a disgruntled wife who leaves her grumpy puppet husband to start a rock band. What follows is gleeful disorder. The use of a puppet husband skewers outdated gender roles while leaning into absurdity, reinforcing the song’s message with humor rather than heaviness.
Feminism is not an accessory for Fern Spores; it is central to their identity. In a moment when gender equality often feels like it is taking a step backward, the band embraces what they call being “flamboyantly feminist,” centering empowerment as both message and practice.
Comprised of five unmarried bisexual women, Fern Spores have collectively fielded the question “So do you want to get married?” more times than they can count. This song is their answer.
With members spread across Mason, Thurston, Pierce, and King counties, Fern Spores remain rooted in the South Sound DIY scene while speaking to a broader cultural shift.
As more people question the expectations placed on their relationships and futures, “Ain’t the Marrying Kind” offers reassurance that love does not have to follow one script to be real or lasting.
Music by Fern Spores is available wherever music is streamed, and the music video was released on the band’s YouTube channel on January 1st. Be sure to follow their Instagram to see where they are playing next: @fern_spores.
