The Cabaret presents Public Universal Friend’s 2023 performance at The Alley at Library Square.


Public Universal Friend (PUF) is an Indianapolis-based art rock band fronted by queer goth americana matriarch Jody Galadriel Friend. After a decade-plus solo career, PUF’s 2021 debut Perennials served as a touchstone coming out record for Friend, who came out as a gay trans woman in tandem with its release. The full-length earthy art-rock opus showcases sonic roots of post-punk and 90s alternative and echoes in Friend’s native Appalachian folk sound and hymnary.

Friend galvanized her place as a beloved mother figure in the Indianapolis queer music scene with her live band including up to eight members, whose queer representing, woman-empowering, fashion forward, socially angsty dynamism, having earned them attention from American Music Association via Amythyst Kiah, Secretly Canadian, Indy Pride, Pattern (fashion magazine), and Music in Transit, even becoming the first trans-led act to be featured on the London-based Mahogany Sessions global video campaign with OnePlus.