CoSign is Consequence’s recurring feature series that highlights a rising artist who has captured our eyes and ears with a great new release. On this edition, presented by Lagunitas, we’re putting the spotlight one of our 2026 Artists to Watch, Violet Grohl, and her debut album, Be Sweet to Me. Watch the interview above, or via YouTube.
When Violet Grohl arrives at Gold-Diggers Recording Studio in East Hollywood, she’s still buzzing from band practice. Before the conversation even begins, she’s already somewhere else — caught up in the purple and orange flowers along the California freeways, picturing the festival crowd.
It’s a fitting headspace for an artist whose debut album, Be Sweet to Me, out on Friday, May 29th (get it on vinyl and CD here), was never really meant for the studio. For Grohl, it was all about gut instinct. “I would come in with an inspiration playlist, we would hang and listen for a little while, and then start writing,” Grohl says of the sessions with producer Justin Raisen. No demos, no pre-written songs — just whatever she was feeling that day, and the trust that it would be enough.
The resulting collection is a fuzzy, sweet-and-sour concoction, with plenty of grungy overtones and a handful of shapeshifting dream pop detours. Grohl runs the gamut across ’90s rock styles: grunge, shoegaze, slacker punk, and straight-up rock, employing her warm alto and allowing ample space for the instruments to roam. And yes, there are songs that evoke the early records her father, Dave Grohl, made with Foo Fighters, possessing the same jaded attitude, sticky hooks, and an instinctive grasp of dynamics. But Be Sweet to Me is its own thing — and unmistakably hers.
Like most things on Be Sweet to Me, the path to producer Justin Raisen was less planned than it was felt. It emerged from Raisen’s work with Kim Gordon back in 2024, which Grohl was an instant fan of: “[Raisen and I] connected after my Dad went to Copenhagen to see Kim Gordon play The Collective live, and my dad was totally blown away,” Grohl tells Consequence. “I love that record so much, and I was so into it when it came out; the production is so heavy and killer and just incredible.”
After some initial music chats over text — and a cruel bout of pneumonia that forced Grohl to pull out of an Elliott Smith tribute show she’d been dreaming of performing — the two finally wound up at Raisen’s Los Angeles home studio, talking music for five hours straight. “He has this incredible back-house studio and the vibe in there is perfect,” Grohl recalls. “It’s like a designated place to create and to work, but it’s also home… it feels comfortable.” Within weeks, they were recording, and on the very first session, the album announced itself. “We jammed and wrote the whole song,” she says of “THUM,” the record’s fuzzed-out opening track. “It was just such a hook, so catchy and fun.” She didn’t need a plan. She just knew.
After a few weeks of ripping through Be Sweet to Me’s more aggressive tracks, like “THUM,” the biting “Cool Buzz,” and the heavy-as-hell “Often Others,” Grohl felt there needed to be a vibe shift. She pulled back, opting for more space, more reverb.
“I just really wanted the weight to be there. I wanted the heaviness and I wanted more emotion,” Grohl says. The shift resulted in three dreamy standouts from the album: “Mobile Star,” “Pool of My Dreams,” and “Applefish.” The sonic reference points were as instinctive as everything else: Elizabeth Fraser’s weightless abstractions with Cocteau Twins, the glacial ache of This Mortal Coil’s “Song to Siren.”
“I think it leaves a lot of space for the listener to kind of paint a picture in their mind,” Grohl says, “or to kind of insert their feelings, whatever imagery comes into their head.” It’s here where Grohl’s sensitivity is used to its greatest extent; it wasn’t a conscious aesthetic choice for her and Raisen as much as it was a needed exhale, shaping the album’s softer side while also showcasing the raw purity of her voice.
Many of the days at Raisen’s studio blended together. It makes a certain kind of sense, because for all the confidence of Be Sweet to Me, the studio is still relatively new terrain for Grohl. The stage is where she’s always been most at home. Long before she was fronting her own band, she was watching her father fill arenas with Foo Fighters, and eventually joining him there across multiple tours. She also stepped up to front Nirvana alongside Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear last year for LA’s Fire Aid benefit concert. Now, Grohl is itching to return to the stage, this time as the main act.
“It’s all like family,” she says of her live lineup, which includes former Foo Fighters guitar tech Salar Rajabnik and Be Sweet to Me contributors Ainjel Emme and Anthony Paul Lopez. “We all kind of knew each other through different people at first, and now building this really strong relationship between all of us… it’s been so much fun.”
Grohl can’t quite contain her enthusiasm about her upcoming live shows, which currently consists of a brief set of headlining tour dates this summer and a run of festival slots going down through fall 2026. Having played and attended dozens of festivals over the years, she knows exactly what makes them special. “I love seeing the way that crowds in different places are, the way that they interact with each other, the way they interact with the band,” she says. “I love walking around and exploring, bumping into people, meeting new people… Maybe a phone dies and then you have to run around and ask somebody like, ‘I don’t know where the fuck I’m going!’”
But no festival has left a mark on her quite like Glastonbury. Grohl has attended the legendary English festival before — and even performed there alongside her father — but the weight of that experience hasn’t left her. “I’ve never been that nervous before a show in my entire life,” she says, beaming as she remembers the sea of attendees bearing witness. “And afterwards I had aftershock… I literally had to lie down backstage because it was so overwhelming and incredible.”
It’s that feeling, that total submission to the power of live music, that Grohl is chasing now on her own terms. Glastonbury, she says simply, is “the dream.” Her live show, similarly, she describes as “the end goal… the whole reason to get to this point.” The immediacy of being face to face with an audience, away from the perfectionism of a recording studio and embracing the rawness of live performance, is where Grohl feels her potential is unlimited. When I ask what she feels hopeful for, she once again reiterates the power of a great rock show, and hopes she can be a vessel for that pure connection.
“There are moments every day — and I try to look out for them in musical settings — where there’s just a connection between all of the people that are there,” she says, “and there’s this shared love for one thing and this like connected, almost purpose that we all have.” In an era of screens and distractions, she’s almost evangelical about protecting that experience. “Try to watch the show for 15 minutes without picking up your phone and see how that makes you feel,” she urges. “Because you’ll feel so much.”
It’s a remarkable thing to hear from a 20-year-old making her debut. But then again, Violet Grohl has never really been operating on a typical timeline. She has seen what music can do to a room — to a field, to an arena — up close her entire life. Be Sweet to Me is proof that she’s absorbed every bit of it. The rest, she insists, you’ll have to see for yourself.
Be Sweet to Me is out May 29th via Universal. Purchase physical copies here. Get tickets to Violet Grohl’s upcoming tour dates here.