Hot Press are proud to exclusively premiere 'Bruised Fruit' – the brand new single from Sister Ghost, winners of Best Live Act at the 2019 NI Music Awards.

The release, reviewed in our current issue's 'A&R Department', sees Sister Ghost cement their status as the future of punk rock on these shores with a '90s-inspired anthem about toxic relationships and reclaiming power.

"The first draft of this song was very personal; about my first encounter with sexual consent," band leader and songwriter Shannon Delores O'Neill tells us. "It later morphed into a wider concept of feeling bruised in any kind of toxic relationship, whether that be romantic or platonic.

"I wanted the metaphor of a bruised fruit, like an apple that's been dropped and hit the floor and it leaves that mark nobody likes, to represent how it feels to be used; the mark is left on you and it's up to you to see the mark as a lesson to not be bruised again or that this metaphorical mark shows your resilience to come through a toxic experience."

O'Neill, the mastermind behind the Sister Ghost project, has been recognised for mentoring and encouraging other female-identifying musicians in the Northern Irish music scene – setting up the Girls Rock! NI chapter in 2016.

'Bruised Fruit' gets its official release on Friday, March 13 – and will be launched that evening at an in-store show in Strange Victory Records, Belfast.

You can also catch Sister Ghost at a secret show in Manchester on May 1, and at Sound City Festival in Liverpool on May 2.

Listen to 'Bruised Fruit' below:

Photo: Carrie Davenport