CSS Talk About Their 'Painful' Touring Experiences

"Of course I'm a feminist!” yelps Luísa Hanae Matsushita, aka Lovefoxxx, leader of Brazil's electro-pop outfit Cansei de Ser Sexy. “I don't understand any woman who would say they're not. I'm for equality for everyone; all I see feminism being is demanding your rights as a human-being. I believe in love, I believe in respect, I believe in kindness. Those are values I don't think there are enough of in the world.”

Matsushita, 29, is talking big-picture beliefs and humanist values because, as has happened so much in the promotion for CSS's fourth LP, Planta, she's speaking about Brazil. As one of the country's most visible pop exports, Matsushita has found herself often discussing the rise of mass public protests across Brazil in 2013.

“We're asked a lot to talk about it, and it's difficult, because it's something we're following online – that we're reading about online, watching videos of,” says Matsushita, from on the road 'somewhere in Ohio'. “Watching it from afar, it's hard to know exactly what's going on, because the manifestation has grown so big, so vast, and has lost real direction, real specific goals for change. And now right-wing people are becoming involved, so it's getting a bit weird, and we don't know how serious it is anymore. But Brazil doesn't manifest much, so it's really meaningful that it's happening.”

Growing up in Campinas outside of São Paulo, Matsushita – the daughter of Japanese immigrants – was far removed from Brazil's teeming poverty, and has spent much of her adult life outside of Brazil, including five years living in London and much of the last decade touring. She once described touring as “sucking her soul”: “It's always really hard. It's exhausting. It hurts. To detach from people is painful,” she says – but this life-on-the-road lifestyle is, for Matsushita, the culmination of a childhood dream.

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