Some artists polish every corner until the humanity disappears. Ruby Waters does the opposite. GET A GRIP arrives with a video that is basically her biking through the woods around Whistler, hanging at a bar with friends, and refusing to treat any of it like a branding exercise. That looseness is the point. The song sits in bedroom and lo-fi pop territory while still carrying the grit, soul, and sly humor that have already made her one of the more interesting voices coming out of Canadian alternative music.
If you caught WET T-SHIRT, you already know the trajectory. That single blew past 11 million Spotify streams, became a Canadian alternative radio staple, and peaked at No. 8 on Billboard Canada’s Alternative Airplay chart. Billboard Canada later put it among 25 songs that defined its 2025 charts. Waters now sits north of 150 million streams globally with more than 800,000 monthly Spotify listeners. Her 2024 album What’s The Point earned a second JUNO nomination for Alternative Album of the Year. GET A GRIP is the next chapter, not a rebrand.
SubmitHub tagged the new cut Bedroom / Lo-fi Pop, and that frame fits the intimacy. The production leaves space around her raspy, dexterous voice instead of burying it under gloss. Waters has never stayed in one lane. She moves between grungy rock, dream pop, soul, and R&B, citing Rihanna and Nirvana as two poles of the same personality: sensual confidence on one side, raw vulnerability on the other. She writes about desire, insecurity, self-sabotage, and the messy work of figuring yourself out, often with a joke sitting right next to the bruise.
The video, directed by Adit Dixit, was shot in Whistler and keeps that same energy. Waters has said it was a pretty loose program of her just doing her thing. She loves playing around in the mountains and kicking it with friends. Two things she is thankful for. No high-concept narrative. No attempt to look like she is taking herself too seriously. It is the same instinct that carried her from Ontario farm markets and Toronto sidewalks to festival stages.
Her origin story is not a marketing myth. Raised in a musical family in Ontario, she started young, then busked in Toronto hard enough that the money sometimes covered rent. Dallas Green caught her at the Rivoli and invited her on tour after the set. She has listened to City and Colour since she was five, so the invite landed like a glitch in the simulation. She has since toured with City and Colour and Shakey Graves and played Osheaga. Now she is based in the mountains of British Columbia, still building the audience on her own terms rather than waiting for a machine to invent her.
That independence is why the music lands as a safe place for a lot of listeners. Waters has said people tell her they feel that way, and it makes her happy to make them feel like they are enough. GET A GRIP keeps that promise: instinctive sound, humor, vulnerability, and zero pretense.
Independent artists who want that same direct line to listeners still have to solve distribution. DistroKid makes it simple to get tracks onto the major platforms, and you can take 7% off your membership with this link: https://distrokid.com/vip/seven/2058328. Keep more of what you earn and spend the time on the songs instead of the paperwork.
What do you think of GET A GRIP? Does the lo-fi bedroom-pop frame match what you hear, or do you clock it closer to her rock and soul side? Drop a comment.
