Marloma Built a Band From Grief and Turned It Into a Movement for Young Women

The founder of Marloma was 14 when she performed at her friend’s celebration of life. The friend, same age, had died from a rare form of cancer. She had written a tribute song, trying to process feelings she didn’t know what to do with. Her mom heard it, shared it, and before long she was standing in front of a room full of grieving people, singing about a girl with emerald eyes who wouldn’t get to grow up.

“It felt like the one moment that wasn’t absolutely dreadful because I felt that I truly made a connection,” she says about that performance. “Not just with every attendee, but with her.”

That’s when she decided making art wasn’t a backup plan. It’s what she’s been doing ever since.

Marloma is a Phoenix-based sad-girl pop rock band that’s built a following of over 33,000 on Instagram and carved out space for young women who feel too much, too often. The band’s name honors that same friend and the place its founder calls home: Loma Mar, a tiny town in the Redwood Forest where her family has spent every summer in a cabin built by her great-great grandparents. Green, her friend’s favorite color, is everywhere in the Marloma brand.

She’s written nearly 300 songs. She’s only recorded a fraction of them, which tells you something about her standards. “I write in isolation and only present finished songs that I feel meet a certain standard,” Marloma explains. She started writing in middle school and knew immediately it’s what she wanted to center her life around.

The band lineup reflects her instinct for surrounding herself with people who bring different skills to the table. John Curtis-Sanchez handles guitar and production, bringing over a decade of experience and punk rock influences. Kalleigh Gibson, with her background in vocal performance and country music sensibilities, handles bass and harmonies. Cassidy Brooke brings classical training on keys. Angelita Mia Ponce, the drummer with a degree in Music Education, pulls from Latin and R&B traditions.

What makes Marloma’s music work isn’t just the genre-melting-pot approach. It’s the prosody built into every song. If she sings the word “high,” the melody goes higher. “I make the melodies match any words that could describe a melody,” she says. “So that it subconsciously resonates with the listener.”

Marloma has played bucket list venues in Arizona: The Marquee, Crescent Ballroom, Valley Bar, The Nile. Last August at The Marquee, the same stage where Imagine Dragons and Post Malone have performed, she had a moment of recognition. The band’s first EP release show at The Rebel Lounge in 2023 nearly sold out after relentless promotion. They made a profit on merchandise. Young women started showing up to shows, and Marloma makes sure to keep an eye on them, make sure they’re safe.

On January 1st, Marloma released “Win,” their heaviest rock song yet. The track is female rage and revenge fantasy, with a music video that put trauma on full display. “I won’t say too much on the plot but I will say that it is the darkest visual story I’ve ever experimented with,” she says. The thesis: vulnerability connects and empowers women.

There’s a bigger project in the works. Marloma has been developing a concept EP for five years that involves around 100 local creatives. It’s a cautionary tale about addiction and a love letter to Arizona, complete with animated and reality-based music videos, character vocalists, comic book lore, theatre elements, instrument raffles, and video games. Different lead vocalists tell the story. The plot touches on wealth, childhood trauma, and 2016 nostalgia.

Marloma posts daily across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts. She writes Minecraft parodies, provides free instrument tutorials, and shows young girls they can play drums, bass, and electric guitar. She’s currently shifting her social media presence to focus more on artistry. Marloma invites anyone who connects with the music to call themselves “martians,” a reference to the green stage outfits and the feeling of being different in a world that doesn’t always make space for sensitivity.

“For the longest time it felt like my out-of-control emotions and sensitivity made me alien in some way,” she says. “That name is for anyone who feels different, so that we can all be different together.”

She’s doing what she set out to do that day at her friend’s celebration of life: making connections that matter, helping the next generation process what they’re feeling, proving that being sensitive isn’t a weakness. Everything circles back to that moment when she was 14, standing in front of a room full of people, realizing that art could do something nothing else could.

Marloma’s music is available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and SoundCloud. Follow the band on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, or visit their website for tour dates on Bandsintown.