Artist Profile: Neptune’s Core

Photo Credit: Miles Kalchikcar

Neptune’s Core— the alternative rock band composed of sisters Kaitlin and Jackie Cywinski and Sofie and Hannah Richter— has been making waves since their first appearances on the local Chicago scene back in the late 2010s, when each member of the band was at some point in their journey through high school. But as time has gone on, their vision of what the band could be has become more and more ingrained in their collective creative identity, and as they prepare for the release of their debut album Pivot, each member is well aware of the weight this next step carries.

The band is no longer simply an object of curiosity— it is a potent vehicle for deeply emotive ballads and genre-shifting explorations.

Of course, coming from backgrounds as similar as these two pairs of sisters did, there were shared musical affinities from the jump. But while the Cywinskis grew up, in part, surrounded by the Chicago indie movement of the early 2000s, the Richters remember their grandmother’s tastes in Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone as being foundational in their individual introductions to music, with bands like The Pixies entering their atmosphere as they grew older.

The band first formed when all four were young teenagers, and beyond the familial bond, there was a clearly serendipitous connection there. Each had fallen naturally into their instruments— Kaitlin on drums, Jackie on guitar and vocals, Hannah on bass, and Sofie doing vocals and guitar— through their own individual interests, and from early on, there was a somewhat immediate sonic connecting point that the four-piece found, at the very least, intriguing.

“We were raised around a lot of Wilco, so that's definitely inspirational,” said Jackie, “I love the guitar and all the songs are just so beautiful…. We played a lot of covers too when we first started. I think Snail Mail really stands out to me as someone who inspired us, especially because she started playing music so young, it was someone that we could relate to.”

As is the natural state of teenage bands, Neptune’s Core began as a casual venture. The group began mostly by playing and performing covers, and their first few shows around the local Chicago scene were largely just another adventure for the four-piece. While they had an inkling that they had stumbled upon something special, there was no concrete sense that becoming anything more than a local band or a short-lived endeavour was truly achievable.

Although they rotated through a number of additional members early on, they had found their core lineup by the time they opened for Chicago staple Dehd in late 2022— the sisters slowly came to acknowledge that, as their vision solidified, they didn’t truly need any additional members to help realize it.

Their first EP, 2023’s Called Upon, was another sign that they had found something sustainable. Across those six tracks— from the slow-burn melancholy of “A Widow’s Tune” to the saccharine distortion of “Unloved”— Neptune’s Core had clearly struck upon a unique and defined sound. As raw as it was in terms of energy, even tending toward the power pop aspects of the band’s earliest days, that project also carried a striking layer of emotional depth and lyrical nuance.

Even with the release of their EP, the band wasn’t fully convinced that what they had in Neptune’s Core was the right path to follow. It was their eight-show stint at SXSW in 2024 that, in many ways, cemented that belief.

“I would say it's been a slow, organic growth for us,” said Sofie, “Another really amazing moment was when we went to South by Southwest. I think that was kind of electrifying. We played eight shows that week and that was a challenge for us, but also it felt so good and we kind of proved ourselves. We were like, ‘We did that and we can do it more and we love doing it’” 

SXSW, in a singular phrase, put the battery in their backs. Their dream was more than achievable— it was well within reach. 

This shift toward a more serious approach to their craft also had implications for their songwriting process. While it was always very collaborative, with Sofie bringing fragments of ideas to the group and each member helping to flesh them out with uncanny intuition, the process became even more intuitive. As each member gained a more concrete idea of how they could contribute to the band’s layered and emotional sound, each instrumental part became more nuanced.

Sofie’s vocal performances gained more energy and sheer dynamism. Kaitlin learned to complement the vocal parts and the rhythms of Hannah’s bass lines with more nuanced drum sections. Hannah drew on her idols— including Tina Weymouth of the Talking Heads and Emma Richardson of The Pixies— to expand the scope of her rhythmic ambitions. Jackie leaned even further into the expansive solos and lead lines of the groups, like Wilco, that she had grown up idolizing.

The result, as displayed by the tracks immediately preceding their EP, was a polished sound. Neptune’s Core had finally found its first true sonic foothold and the pinnacle of its collaborative form.

“I think we focus a lot on dynamics and feeling and emotion, and it's all to convey a sort of message…” said Kaitlin, “I think that that's also one of the major ways our band has grown since [SXSW]. I think at South By, I would say a lot of the songs we were playing were kind of just that power-pop vibe. But now I think we feel that we have the ability to be a lot more experimental and comfortable within our own writing and each other.”

The first recording sessions for their debut album, Pivot, didn’t actually begin with the concrete intention of creating an album at all. They had some songs in the works, and there was a general sense that they should release some tracks in the near future to capitalize on their momentum from SXSW.

But even from that first session, it was clear the band had found a new, more complex sound in their experimentations after their first EP. That first session led to a second, and the second session led to a third, and by the time they were finished, they had an entire album’s worth of cohesive material on their hands— unified by the vision that they began developing on Called Upon.

And with the completion of those sessions came a realization: Neptune’s Core had transcended its early vestiges as a “young” band. They had fully come into their own, and Pivot— with the name itself signifying a transition or change— was undeniable evidence of that fact.

“I think we've been categorized as a young band,” said Sofie, “As we should, because we have been a young band, but that has to this day held us back from kind of embracing our full potential and being taken seriously in the music world.”

Now, as they prepare for the release of Pivot and plan out a hefty touring schedule for late 2026 and beyond, it’s with a distinct recognition of Neptune’s Core’s place as an up-and-coming band not just in the Chicago scene but on a clearly national stage.

“I think it holds weight for us as much as it does [for others]. We want to present the pivot to other people as much as we need to internalize it for ourselves,” said Kaitlin, “Because I think, to Sofie's point, when we only view ourselves as like a young pop-rock band, you can get into [a confined] headspace… We don't want to have that define our potentials in our own minds, because I think it can write off some opportunities that could be possible if we just went for it.”