Indie-Rock Foursome Camisole Puts Community First

Guitarist Justin Thompson kicks off “Vertigo,” the title track on Camisole’s latest four-song EP, with an insistent cantering riff that seems ingrained in our DNA. Then Briella Franciosi’s vocal sweeps in — shorn of illusions and indomitable — surrounded by a whirlwind of propulsive drums, growling bass and slashing guitars: “Now’s time I take control of/ My faculties are overused/ Whiplash! I spill all my guts/ Crossed from the vertigo I’m blue…”

The song, which dropped in October 2025, is about transitions.

“It’s describing emotional motion sickness,” Franciosi says. “It’s signifies, ‘Hey, we’ve found this new chapter and we’re hitting it head-on in a good way.’”

The Charlotte band has certainly pivoted to face new challenges and changes in a few short years. Launched as a trio in late 2023, the group has progressed from its inaugural gig in 2024 at Petra’s to playing Lovin’ Life Music Fest in May 2025, selling out Snug Harbor three times, embarking on its first tour and releasing two EPs.

In the process, Camisole lost founding member and drummer Logan Hawke to Canada while gaining new bandmates Ryan Fretter on bass and Amar Donepudi on drums.

In November 2025, the band launched Project Canisole, a self-initiated effort to raise funds for Second Harvest Food Bank. Band members’ response to the Trump administration’s gutting of SNAP benefits for local families set a goal of $2,500. So far, they’ve raised $3,479, which translates to 24,353 pounds of food added to the local community’s larder.

Camisole has also committed to raising awareness for opioid abuse, offering free Narcan kits — a potentially lifesaving antidote to an opioid overdose — at the band’s merch table during shows, right next to the donation jar for Canisole.

Throughout all these efforts, the music hasn’t stopped. Camisole is bringing its brand of melodic, 1990s alternative rock-infused bubble grunge to Amos’ Southend on Feb. 26, playing alongside fellow Charlotte indie acts Willingdon, Bedroom Division and Ali Forrest.

A rock band named for a tank top

Growing up near Kitty Hawk in the Outer Banks, Franciosi wasn’t interested much in music. That changed when she attended UNC Charlotte. She picked up a guitar once and was hooked. She stayed in Charlotte after graduating and began pursuing a career in music.

As a kid in Florence, South Carolina, Thompson would go through his father’s chest of drawers filled with CDs, discovering new musical treasures. After graduating from The Citadel Military College in Charleston, Thompson moved to Charlotte for work.

Camisole started by chance when Thompson and Hawke responded to a flyer that Franciosi posted in a coffee shop. Thompson provided the band with its name, though he didn’t know what the word “camisole” meant at the time.

“I thought it was something you clean dishes with,” he says.

It’s actually a woman’s tank top, but it sounds cool regardless, so it stuck.

The band began playing out in June 2024. Its first recording effort resulted in its first single, the ruminative, moody “Dust Mites,” the following month. Produced and mixed by Oceanic’s Nate Wyatt, the tune reveals a group of young musicians finding their sound.

“We thought we would try to play some indie stuff,” Thompson says. “And then…”

“…We realized we like rock music,” Franciosi interjects.

For Franciosi, it’s a song off the band’s self-titled debut EP, released in May 2025, that defined the band’s sound moving forward. The hard-charging “Flesh” brings in amped-up vocals that draw from art-punk and dance-pop outfits like Paramore, coupling them with crunching guitars and angular rhythms similar to post-hardcore Pennsylvania band Title Fight.

“In terms of what type of music we wanna make, ‘Flesh’ was the blueprint,” Franciosi insists.

In their debut EP, the band members also fine-tuned their recording methods, switching producing and mixing duties to their friend, JMichael, vocalist for Winston-Salem indie-rock band Sophia. Also in May 2025, the band was invited to play Lovin’ Life Music Fest, encountering their biggest crowd to date.

That was followed by Camisole’s first tour, with shows in Raleigh and Charleston as well as New York City. The NYC show was bittersweet — though held in the prominent indie venue Pianos, it was Hawke’s last performance with the band. The Canadian drummer had been in America on a work visa and his job had ended.

With Trump’s anti-Canadian regime calling the shots, Hawke had little chance of renewing his visa outside of work, so he returned home.

By the time of the Pianos show, Charlotte native Fretter was already in Camisole, having started with the band at the launch of the tour.

Donepudi had not come along to replace Hawke yet when they recorded the Vertigo EP, which dropped in November 2025. In a fortuitous coincidence, Hawke was back in town briefly during the time the band was recording, so he knocked out all his parts in a single day.

JMichael produced and recorded the drums at his home studio, the guitars were recorded at Thompson’s apartment, and Franciosi recorded her vocals at her home.

“I played bass, plugged into JMichael’s laptop,” Fretter says.

Like Fretter, Donepudi was a long-time Camisole fan, having attended the band’s second gig.

“I wasn’t supposed to be at that gig,” says Donepudi, who lives in Hickory. At the time he was playing in a country band, and when its outdoor show got rained out, Donepudi went to Charlotte to catch his first Camisole show.

“When [Camisole] announced that Logan was leaving, I sent a DM, ‘If y’all are holding auditions, I’d like to join,’” Donepudi says. “That’s not like me at all. I’m not good at putting myself out there like that.”

Franciosi remembers Donepudi coming to the audition and blowing all the other drummers away.

Camisole puts community first

Donepudi works for Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina in Charlotte, and in October 2025 he was aware of the looming government shutdown and its potential effects.

Democrats were holding out to extend Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies, which were due to expire under the so-called Big Beautiful Bill. In response, Trump and the Republicans cut SNAP benefits for families, weaponizing hunger to enable the Republicans’ goal of stripping health care from Americans.

“Food banks were really getting overrun and our CEO was like, ‘Hey y’all, we need money. We need to feed people,’” Donepudi says.

He broached the issue while the band was in Raleigh for a show in November 2025, asking if Camisole could raise funds for the food bank at its merch table. The band readily agreed.

“It was right before Thanksgiving, so everybody was pitching in,” Donepudi offers.

In the meantime, the band continues to hone its sound and write new songs. Fretter doesn’t play on Camisole’s earliest recorded output and Donepudi doesn’t appear on any of it yet, but that doesn’t stop the band’s bassist and drummer from putting their stamp on Camisole’s material live.

Each has their favorite from the group’s repertoire that they love to play. (The band is currently recording new songs that will feature the new lineup.)

Donepudi takes a philosophical approach to his instrument, saying a drummer needs to recognize that they’re not a lead instrument. “You’re a company man,” he notes.

That said, he loves to tear into “Crash & Burn,” a soaring, excoriating single from March 2025.

“It’s the most fun for me personally to play, because there’s a lot I can do,” Donepudi says.

For Fretter, “Tool,” a clangorous rocker with a leathery bassline, is the most fun to play live.

Thompson hopes that sense of fun comes across to the audience.

“I want people to enjoy the music,” he says. “Hopefully somebody will come listen to us, and maybe it inspires them to play their own music.”

Franciosi hopes people connect with Camisole’s authenticity.

“We were trying to figure out what our band stood for, and Ryan said something awesome,” she remembers. “It was that we don’t like computers. Honestly, I think we need to show more rawness and vulnerability because humans are that way, and that’s how we like to write our music.”

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Franciosi feels that real music needs to draw people away from going down social media and AI rabbit holes that trap people in self-defeating comparisons and toxic social constructs.

In pursuing this mission, a band with a hard-rocking ebullient sound and a fun, accidental name like Camisole is deadly serious.