The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools

Drummer and Musician

Gigi Reece, '21

Gigi Reece, ’21 (they/them) is the drummer for what became known as one of Chicago’s hottest new acts last summer. Reece makes up one-third of the Chicago rock band Horsegirl, which also features co-band members Nora Cheng and Penelope Lowenstein, both on guitars and vocals. The trio are best friends who formed their band in 2019, while they were all still in high school. As a matter of fact, Lowenstein ended up skipping her own high school graduation to play the band’s highly anticipated debut album performance at Chicago’s famed Thalia Hall.

Referred to by The New Yorker as “stylish caretakers” of indie rock, Horsegirl was already taking the alternative rock world by storm when Versions of Modern Performance, their debut album, was released in June 2022. In March of last year, the trio played the Austin, Texas, festival South by Southwest and followed that up with a July performance at Lollapalooza, their hometown’s largest music festival. Before performing at Lollapalooza, an annual four-day music festival held in Grant Park in downtown Chicago, neither Cheng nor Lowenstein had ever attended the festival. During an interview with WLUW Radio, Reece, however, warmly recalled attending Lolla at the age of fourteen and fainting from heat exhaustion.

“It was a crazy time. But then we ended up playing the stage I fainted at,” Reece said last summer during a post-performance WLUW interview.

Coming off of a whirlwind summer that saw the band touring North America and the UK, Horsegirl has been hard at work to follow up their debut album, which Vulture referred to “as one of the year’s most confident albums” and The Guardian described as “a masterclass in a new kind of classic rock.” In late winter and early spring, Horsegirl finished a few tour dates with Wilco, a Grammy award-winning rock band also from Chicago and, in April, the group will play at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California. Be on the lookout for this group. They are just getting started and aren’t going anywhere, unless it’s a scheduled tour date.

Check out the official music video to Horsegirl's "Anti-glory" here.