If you’re a fan of post-rock, chances are you’ve already been haunted by Jessica Moss’s violin.

A longtime pillar of Montreal’s music scene, Moss was a core member of Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, the ensemble led by Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Efrim Menuck. With the release of her powerful new solo album Unfolding, Moss is stepping boldly into the spotlight, intertwining music and activism in a way that demands attention.

Born in Canada and raised in a Jewish family in Toronto in a home rich in song and political awareness, Moss was destined for a life in music. Her mother decided that she would have music lessons before she was even born, and her father played in political bands. As a teen she gravitated to Montreal, and by the late 1990s she found herself among the Constellation Records scene, the nucleus of underground music in the city. She joined Thee Silver Mt. Zion in 2001, and co-founded Black Ox Orkestar, a quartet blending punk ethos with klezmer and Balkan sounds, exploring Jewish diasporic music from an anti-fascist perspective, cementing her reputation as a dynamic team player in Montreal’s post-rock and avant-garde circles.

She soon became one of Montreal’s greatest collaborators, and her strings can be heard gracing Arcade Fire’s landmark album Funeral and Broken Social Scene’s Feel Good Lost, as well as appearing on recordings from Godspeed You! Black Emperor and many others, enhancing the work of countless peers with her signature strings.

In 2015 she released her first solo cassette, Under Plastic Island, and has released six full-length records on Constellation Records since 2017, steadily honing her distinctive sonic approach. On stage and in studio, Moss uses looping technology and effects to layer her violin, building rich tapestries of sound that often start from solitary melodies or drones and blossom into a stunning combo of post-classical minimalism, folk, ambient, noise and metal. A one-woman orchestra summoned on the fly, Moss stands alone amid a tangle of pedals, coaxing loops upon loops of crackling distortion and reverberant harmonies, by turns meditative, raw, and transcendent. Moss was the supporting act for experimental rock legends Swans on their 2023-25 tours, standing alone armed with just her violin and a few small bells and chimes, captivating crowds and reminding audiences each night that “No one is free until all of us are free.”

Unfolding (released October 2025) is her most explicitly political work to date, dedicating the album to “a free Palestine in our lifetime". Moss is a committed anti-Zionist who co-founded the local chapter of Musicians For Palestine in Montreal, organising benefit concerts and other actions. She donated 100% of the proceeds from her album For UNRWA to humanitarian relief, and all of these experiences fed into the creation of Unfolding, drawing on both Jewish and Arabic musical modes to acknowledge the intertwined cultures at the heart of the conflict. The album is a haunting and powerful prayer for solidarity and liberation, transforming anguish into art. Jessica Moss is a beacon of authenticity in the music world, seamlessly marrying the personal and political, drawing from her own emotions and heritage to speak to the broader struggle for justice, and we had to speak to her to find out more:

Hi Jessica, thanks for speaking with us! How are you feeling in the current political and emotional terrain?

Constellation Records and all their associated artists have been vocal about Palestine and other injustices for decades. Can you talk about their ethos as a label and how they are to work with?

Can you talk about the ways in which you’ve seen music and activism intertwine throughout your career?

Do you feel like the role of artists becomes more important as our collective political situation becomes more desperate?

How has your relationship with your violin and pedals evolved since working alone, as distinct from working with a band?

Unfolding is an album which deals with all of our collective grief. How does one even begin to start translating that into music, particularly without words?

What makes Montreal such a fertile environment for such powerful and politically engaged experimental music?

Can you talk about your recent tour with Swans and what you took from the experience?

How much of your live show is improvisational?

What do you hope that people get from listening to Unfolding?