Bridie Monds-Watson is full of husky laughter as she shows me her latest tattoo: a huge, cursive scrawl of the word “goon” above her right knee. It’s one of umpteen designs the 19-year-old has had inked over the past three years, including Max from the classic children’s book Where The Wild Things Are and two dinosaurs, one of which boasts three legs. “I don’t know what my thing is or why I’m so relaxed about getting tattoos – like, stupid things on me for ever – but there’s nothing I regret,” she says. “I wanted to get an Australian tattoo. Goon is a bag of [cheap] wine in Australia, and the moment I heard that word I laughed so hard. I don’t even like wine.”

One to watch: SOAK Read more

I meet the musician better known as SOAK in her hometown of Derry, at an unassuming cafe that she used to frequent with schoolfriends. Across the road is the bar she did her first open mic nights at, as well as her 18th birthday. (“One of my friends did a striptease. It was so weird.”) Today she’s wearing an oversized leather jacket and her stretched earlobe is visible beneath her scene-kid crop. Fittingly, given her stage name, it’s raining – so hard in fact that she’s left her usual mode of transport, a skateboard, at home.

You might assume from her colourful language or alternative attire that Bridie is the lead singer in an emo or punk band, but you’d be wrong. Instead she makes ethereal, emotive folk that taps into the complexity of growing up, in the realm of singer-songwriters such as Laura Marling, Ben Howard and Emmy The Great. Talking to her, though, you’re reminded just how young she is – she gabs about how she wants to have Nando’s chicken wings later, how she wants to start a fanzine featuring her own drawings, and she gets excited about music she hears on the cafe radio.

Bridie’s story is becoming increasingly familiar in this age of bedroom pop. She picked up a guitar at 13 and began uploading acoustic demos online; at 16 she was flying to London for meetings with publishers. She put three EPs between 2012 and 2014, and her combination of sweet, stark voice and strikingly intimate songs stuck out amid the surfeit of home-crafted YouTube artists. By the time she signed to Rough Trade last year, she had already gigged extensively and toured with Tegan And Sara and Chvrches. More one-to-watch boxes were ticked: she made it onto the BBC’s arbiter of new music talent, the Sound of 2015 longlist, and – less a yardstick of cool than a rite of passage for new artists courting the mainstream – recently appeared on Later… With Jools Holland.

It’s testament to Bridie’s independence that at 17 she dropped out of music college so that she could concentrate on her career. She admits that her parents – who were also her managers at the time – weren’t initially thrilled but, as with her penchant for tattoos, Bridie remained remarkably self-assured. “I was doing all these things and then coming back and being taught stage etiquette, which was a pile of balls, so incorrect. It’s really boring to go back and have to sit in a class and be taught how to do something you already do and you’re already learning more of in real life. My parents were pretty annoyed because that was my backup plan, but I didn’t care. It meant I could go on tour with Tegan And Sara.”

Doing it Bridie’s way has paid off, and has culminated in her debut album, Before We Forgot How To Dream. In places, it’s everything you’d expect from a coming-of-age record – tales of losing touch with schoolfriends, teenage malaise and beating bullies. Yet her affecting songs are lifted by production from Villagers guitarist Tom McLaughlin. This shift is most evident on her “upbeat summer tune” Sea Creatures, which has been transformed from a bare-bones ballad to a swirling, poperatic affair loaded with strings. The gently anthemic Reckless Behaviour, meanwhile – about not wanting to waste her youth – matches twinkling atmospherics with an uplifting bassline, giving her sound a lo-fi danceability.

Photograph: Instagram/soakofficial

Two songs are particularly striking, B A Nobody and Oh Brother, which are both dedicated to her sibling. He went through a tough time when they were growing up and quit his university degree. “He smoked a shit-ton of grass while he was doing his A-levels and dropped out and did jobs, and left jobs,” explains Bridie. “Now he’s home, he’s got a job and he’s doing really good, but those songs were observations of what he was doing at the time and also my worries.” She felt guilty that while her music career was taking off, he was losing his way. “Kind of like: I’m doing this and it’s going really well; you’re doing that and I don’t want to feel like you’re angry at me because of that,” she tries to explain. Her music allows her to express some of the things she finds difficult to talk to her family about. “In general, songs are how I talk to them about a lot of things,” she admits.

It’s not just the deeply personal that Bridie tackles in song – even her most accessible tune, Sea Creatures, has a socio-political edge, penned for a friend who was bullied for her sexuality. Its refrain (“I don’t think they know what love is/ Throw it around like it’s worthless”) encapsulates Bridie’s strong attitude towards equality. She came out to her parents at 14 and often takes to Twitter in support of LGBT rights in Northern Ireland, where gay marriage remains illegal. The DUP party have even backed a so-called “conscience clause”, which would allow businesses to discriminate against gay people on religious grounds.

Northern Ireland under pressure after Irish gay marriage referendum win Read more

It’s because of this that Bridie feels a duty to speak out. “I know there is quite a bit of my audience that is gay, a lot of gay people come to my shows. And if I do have this audience they should know that I’m gonna be: like, here’s the craic, it’s not cool, we should do something about it. The anti-equality shit that is going on is really fucked up”. (Not long after we met, the Irish Republic voted for equal marriage with a resounding majority, giving hope for change across the border. “There are tears in my eyes…” she tweeted. “It’s you’re [sic] turn Northern Ireland”.)

Facebook Twitter Pinterest SOAK onstage at SXSW. Photograph: James Goulden

Suddenly the radio switches to Mumford & Sons’ cover of a song by her mate Shura, and the mischievous Bridie is back. “Holy shit! She’s gonna fucking die! That is the craziest thing ever. She’s gonna be dead.” It doesn’t sound as if Mumfords covering your song is necessarily a good thing in SOAK’s world. Who would she choose for herself instead? “Florence And The Machine, just for the hilarity,” she says, before mentioning UK grime up-and-comer Stormzy. “You could put a sick beat behind it,” she says, eyes widening, ideas whirring. “You know what, I’m gonna make that happen.”

Somehow you don’t doubt it. Bridie thinks for a second when I ask her what’s next. “This whole kinda career thing was never planned anyway, so everything up to this point has been a surprise. But who knows, next year, what my big thing will be.” She fingers that tattoo above her right knee. Like her growing collection of eccentric ink, you get the impression she’ll get bolder as she goes.

Before We Forgot How To Dream is out now on Rough Trade Records