Goth pale, with a bleached out bob and wearing all black with a choker, musician and model Julia Cumming, 19, is a slice of NYC in the most LA of places, a tripped-out restaurant called Café Gratitude where super happy yogis serve dishes with names like “I Am Blissful”, “I am Beaming” and “I Am Grateful”. “This would never go down in New York,” says the front woman of slacker psych rock trio Sunflower Bean and Saint Laurent model, in town for a few days to play a show at the Echo. With every meal served at Café Gratitude, the diner is asked to ponder a question: this time it’s ‘what’s beautiful about your life?’ She’s game to participate. “Hmm…what is beautiful about my life? Too many things,” she says sipping on green matcha tea. “That I have the chance to do really cool things with musicians and artists that respect a lot and care about? Also, guacamole tacos. I am so grateful for those.”

Cumming has a lot more to get up for in the mornings than Chipotle cravings, though. Sunflower Bean have been championed from everyone from Tavi Gevinson, who called them “one of the coolest teenage bands making music right now in New York”, to The New York Times, who noted the unique interplay of punk, pop, and psychedelia to their sound. They may have just one EP to their name (January’s Show Me Your Seven Secrets), but you really need to see them live anyway. Doesn’t hurt that Cumming, who plays bass and sings, has a laidback, Kim Gordon-esque cool about her and a super now-ish, gamine 5’11” beauty that prompted Hedi Slimane to have her walk in his last two Saint Laurent shows in Paris, and front the brand’s SS15 campaign. On paper she’s the full rock icon package. In person she has the warm, understated confidence of those that don’t need to protest their cool.

Cumming spent yesterday wandering around the Burgerama festival, a yearly event put on by Burger Records, a prolific label and record store credited for spearheading SoCal’s teenage garage rock revival, and known for their cassette releases. The Burger devotees recognized her, came up asking if Sunflower Bean were going to play the festival. They weren’t, they were there to support their friends Cherry Glazerr, a hazy guitar rock trio fronted by fellow Saint Laurent muse Clem Creevy, with whom Cumming and her two band mates have been crashing “I had this feeling at Burgerama yesterday, like ‘they did it!’,” she says. “This is a festival with a big stage outside and inside and there are kids everywhere and good music playing—and it’s not an EDM festival.” Rock ‘n roll is not the sound of the mainstream any more, and it hasn’t really been for a while, so she’s inspired by her peers in the Burger scene as champions of a sound that remains steadfastly in the underground. For now.

Being from NYC, she and Sunflower Bean are not technically of the West Coast Burger Scene, nonetheless she’s loosely connected to the label’s zeitgeist energy: a DIY community inspired by bedroom recordings, being born in the 90s, sandwiches, minimum wage, pizza, Kurt Cobain, forgetting to wear makeup, chipped nail polish, Twin Peaks (the band, and the TV show), not being able to afford Coachella tickets – ingredients of an eternal adolescence, most likely spent in California or at least, dreaming of it.

Born and raised in New York’s Alphabet City neighbourhood, Cumming is less hedonistic and perhaps more politically-conscious than some of her super-chill West Coast counterparts. From 2011-13 she co-hosted an internet talk radio show about politics on the Progressive Radio Network, and has protested in support of SlutWalk NYC, the global movement challenging rape culture and slut-shaming. With parents who played together in 90s band Bite The Wax Godhead, Cumming started getting guitar lessons by her Dad at age 13. She adored The Kinks, Cat Stevens and Elliot Smith, but questioned why the rock legends in her parents’ record collection were practically all male. “My first memories are of wanting to be in the Beatles and wondering why there weren’t any girls singing,” she remembers of how she learned how to strum Fab Four’s songs. “I always had to sing from a guy’s point of view.”

Sick of having other people’s words in her mouth, it wasn’t long before Cumming was writing lyrics of her own. Bored and lonely during a temporary spell in Florida with her Mum, she begun a long-distance collaboration with her friend Rachel Tractenbuerg, who grew up playing in artrock outfit Tractenburg Family Slideshow Players with her parents. Quirky teen pop band Supercute! was born, with various floating third members including Olivia Ferrer (daughter of Guns ‘n Roses drummer Frank Ferrer). They played indie bubblegum teen 60s psychedelic acoustic pop on ukeleles, guitars and keyboards, covering Pink Floyd and wearing space suits on stage. “Their songs were about everything that affects 13 year olds. That is, apart from boys. “We took a stance we didn’t want to do that,” says Cumming of their lyrics, which were more likely to talk about pet turtles they bought in Chinatown. “Mine was named Elliot Smith. He died very quickly, and I was like ‘I’m sorry I gave you such a doomed name’.”

Supercute! grew into a real thing, with press in all the right places, SXSW performances, and tours with Kate Nash. The expereinces taught them the basics every indie rock band needs to know: how to budget tours, make itineraries, and handle correspondence.” They recorded an album in London with Nash which as never released, and the band dissolved, thanks to a “situation” with their publishing. When Supercute! came undone it was “devastating,” says Cumming. “I was like ‘what the fuck is my life, who am I?” because I had kind of given my whole life and identity to that project.”

In 2013, Sunflower Bean came along, to fill the void. Her band mates Jacob Faber

and Nick Kivlen were in a noise band called Turnip King, and wanted to start a new project. Their hunt for a bass player ended when they met Cumming. Now, the three musicians live with their manager in an apartment in Brooklyn. “We don’t drink or do drugs, not for any straight edge reasons, mainly we’re just like lazy.” Instead they practice a lot, five times a week for three to four hours, and try to stay as inspired as possible at all times. “I listen to the Velvet Underground every day, and it makes me cry. I don’t know what they did, how they recorded it—I mean, I’ve seen the documentaries—but it’s so just so good and you can’t even get close… we are trying.”

It’s this genuine passion for music that has informed every aspect of her life, including her style, which is perhaps what caused Slimane to single her out in the crowd, having her walk the runway three weeks after meeting her (WHERE), and making her the face of his Spring 15 campaign. Her collaboration with Slimane/Saint Laurent, while exciting and completely a propos, considering Slimane’s enduring obsession with rock ‘n roll babes (from Sky Ferreira and Clem Creevy to Marianne Faithfull), does not mean she now sees herself as a fashion muse more so than a musician. First of all, being a model is something Cumming never really thought about, as she never even considered herself to be “pretty” per se. “I didn’t think I was very attractive. Not in a bad self-conscious way. I just didn’t think that that kind of life would happen to me.” For her the modeling is another aspect of her journey through music. “I’m in this for life,” she says, and it’s clear she means the music. Everything else is just bonus.

In fact, it sometimes annoys Cumming that because she’s a girl, and good looking, and good at playing music, she gets extra attention. Like, why should it make a difference that she’s a girl? “Being a woman playing rock music now is basically kind of a press story in itself, mainly because women are attractive and have parts that are really interesting to men, and not necessarily because of the music,” she says. Cumming is all too aware of the specific challenges that a life on the road can bring for a woman, not to mention the gender-specific ageism that exists in rock ‘n roll. Iggy Pop and David Bowie and Mick Jagger face very different realities heading into their 60 and 70s, to Marianne Faithfull or Yoko Ono. “I’m even nervous about turning 21,” says Cumming. “I haven’t seen the world to be a very forgiving place for women, and I feel like there’s a lot of pressure for us.” Style doesn’t override substance with Cumming , and she’s ready for the ride, as it takes her playing over Europe this summer with Sunflower Bean, and then back to Brooklyn to wrap their record. “If I can be the best musician that I physically can be, and write the best songs and best bass lines and feel like I am doing the best I can, then no one can take that away from me. Who cares whether I’m a girl or not.”