Jackson Rathbone Goes Full Serial Killer in STARMOTHER’s First Official Music Video [Exclusive]

Image via Danin Jacquay Published Sep 4, 2026, 8:05 PM EDT Sign in to your Collider account Jackson Rathbone has spent the last five years writing what might be his most personal music yet, but he isn't the one stepping up to the microphone. For his first musical project in six years, Rathbone has finally convinced his wife, Sheila Rathbone, to take center stage. Together, the pair have formed STARMOTHER, an Austin-based disco punk band that is loud, weird, completely independent, and far more personal than its danceable sound might initially suggest. Their debut album, Disco Punk is Dead, was born out of Rathbone's sobriety journey, with songs confronting addiction, temptation, self-destruction, love, and survival. Sheila serves as the band's lead singer, while Rathbone plays guitar and provides backing vocals. And, according to Rathbone, this is something he has been trying to make happen for about 15 years. “I've always wanted to make music with Sheila,” Rathbone told Collider's Maggie Lovitt in an interview ahead of the launch of STARMOTHER's first single and music video​​​​​​. The two actually met through music, while Rathbone was touring with his former band 100 Monkeys, and they were both performing at the same venue. Originally, though, the music Rathbone imagined making with his wife sounded nothing like STARMOTHER. “The original music I wanted to make with her was more rockabilly because I always heard her voice like Wanda Jackson. That never really intrigued her. That wasn't necessarily her genre.” Sheila had performed background vocals with Rathbone over the years, but nothing had quite convinced her to become the lead singer of a band. Then, as Rathbone continued writing Disco Punk is Dead, he realized whose voice he was hearing. “In the last three years, it became apparent to me that it was her voice that I was writing it for,” he said. “I've heard her sing constantly, karaoke around the house, and I've been obsessed with her voice forever. So really, for me, it was just convincing her to do something, and I had to make the songs that would excite her.” For Sheila, it was finally music that felt like something she wanted to perform. “Style-wise, I really have always wanted to do this,” she told Lovitt. “This is what calls to me, and I'm really excited about it.” Who's Your Perfect Classic Rock Band? Classic Rock Personality Quiz Who's Your PerfectClassic Rock Band? A Personality Quiz · 10 Questions Five legendary bands. One perfect match. Answer 10 questions about your personality, attitude, and taste to find out which classic rock icon you truly belong with. Are you raw power, rolling swagger, operatic drama, thunderous riffs, or timeless melody? ⚡AC/DC 👅Rolling Stones 🤘Metallica 👑Queen 🎸The Beatles Begin Quiz → 01 How do you walk into a room? Choose the answer that feels most like you. ALike a freight train — loud, fast, and everyone knows I've arrived. BWith a slow, cool swagger — I take my time and own every step. CHead down, focused — I'm here for a purpose and small talk isn't it. DWith total confidence and a flair for the dramatic — all eyes on me. EWarmly and curiously — genuinely excited to see what and who is here. Next Question → 02 What does your ideal Friday night look like? ALoud bar, cold beer, cranked jukebox — the louder the better. BA smoky club, good company, and doing whatever feels right in the moment. CIntense concert or staying in with headphones — nothing in between. DSomething theatrical — a show, a dinner party, an experience worth remembering. EHanging with close friends, maybe making music, keeping it relaxed and genuine. Next Question → 03 What's your philosophy on keeping things simple vs. complex? ASimple is king. A great riff repeated perfectly beats any amount of cleverness. BKeep it loose and bluesy — the groove matters more than technical perfection. CGo deep and dark — I want layers, tension, and something that hits hard. DWhy not both? Elaborate arrangements and hook-driven anthems can coexist. ECraft every detail — a perfect melody is the result of countless small choices. Next Question → 04 How would your friends describe your personal style? ANo-frills, no-nonsense — jeans, a t-shirt, and ready to go. BEffortlessly cool — slightly dishevelled in a way that somehow always works. CDark and deliberate — black is a lifestyle, not just a colour. DBold and expressive — fashion is a form of performance for me. EClean and classic — timeless over trendy, always put-together. Next Question → 05 How do you want to be remembered? AAs someone who never let the energy drop — relentless, loud, and alive. BAs someone who lived fully and on my own terms, unapologetically. CAs someone who was brutally honest and made music that meant something real. DAs someone who transcended genres, boundaries, and expectations entirely. EAs someone who changed the world — and left it genuinely better than I found it. Next Question → 06 What kind of crowd do you want around you? APeople who are there to have a blast — no pretension, just pure fun and noise. BA mix of rebels and free spirits who don't take themselves too seriously. CA loyal, passionate crew who are all in — intensity over numbers every time. DEveryone — I want to unite people who wouldn't normally be in the same room. EPeople who appreciate craft and feel genuinely connected by the music. Next Question → 07 If you were writing a song, what would it be about? AHaving a good time, turning it up, and not overthinking it. BStreet life, desire, and the rawness of being human. CAnger, grief, war, or the darker side of the world — music as a weapon. DSomething epic and emotional — love, loss, triumph, or pure fantasy. ESomething personal and universal at once — a feeling everyone can recognise. Next Question → 08 What's your secret to staying relevant over time? ANever change the formula — if it works, it works. Consistency is everything. BStay hungry, stay dangerous, and always keep a bit of that rebellious edge. CEarn respect through dedication — the work and the live show speak for themselves. DReinvent constantly — never let anyone put you in a box or predict your next move. EWrite songs so good they can't be ignored, in any decade, in any context. Next Question → 09 You're playing to 80,000 people. What does your performance look like? AA wall of sound and sweat — pure, unfiltered energy from first note to last. BLoose, cool, and dangerous — every song feels like it might fall apart but never does. CBrutal precision — tight, powerful, and leaving no one unmoved. DA full spectacle — lights, costumes, vocal acrobatics, and total theatrical command. EWarm, joyful, and tight — the crowd singing every word back at you. Next Question → 10 Pick the word that best sums up your relationship with rock music. This is your tiebreaker — choose carefully. ARaw — stripped back, high-voltage, no frills. BRolling — fluid, dangerous, built on blues and attitude. CHeavy — powerful, honest, uncompromising. DMajestic — theatrical, boundary-defying, unforgettable. ETimeless — melodic, human, built to last forever. See My Result → Your Result Your Perfect Band Is RevealedBased on your personality, energy, and taste, the classic rock band that matches your soul is… ⚡ AC/DCYou are pure, undiluted rock energy. You don't need tricks, trends, or theatrical gimmicks — you have something more powerful: a riff that hits like a thunderbolt and an attitude that never wavers. Like AC/DC, you understand that simplicity executed with absolute conviction is its own form of genius. You're the person in the room who doesn't overthink it, doesn't pretend, and never turns the volume down. The highway to hell is a state of mind — and you've been on it since day one. 👅 The Rolling StonesYou've got swagger that can't be taught. Rooted in the blues and soaked in street-level attitude, you move through life with a loose, dangerous elegance that draws people in without ever trying too hard. Like the Stones, you've seen it all, done most of it, and somehow look better for it. You're not chasing perfection — you're chasing truth, groove, and that electric moment when everything clicks. Can't always get what you want? You tend to get it anyway. 👑 QueenYou are magnificent, and you know it — not from arrogance, but from an unshakeable sense of self that has never needed anyone's permission. Like Queen, you defy every category people try to place you in. You blend the epic with the intimate, the operatic with the anthemic, the serious with the playful. You live boldly, love fiercely, and perform every aspect of your life as though the whole world is watching. Because sometimes it is. We are the champions — and so are you. 🎸 The BeatlesYou have the rarest of gifts: the ability to make something that feels both deeply personal and universally human. Like The Beatles, you're a natural connector — someone whose warmth, curiosity, and creative instincts draw people together across every divide. You believe in melody, in craftsmanship, and in the quiet power of a song that says exactly what someone needed to hear. You've changed the people around you just by being who you are. All you need is love — and you give it generously. ↩ Retake Quiz ‘Disco Punk is Dead’ Is Jackson Rathbone at His Most Honest Image via Danin Jacquay The music that finally convinced Sheila to step up to the microphone also came out of one of the most vulnerable periods of Rathbone's life. He spent roughly five years writing Disco Punk is Dead, with songwriting becoming part of the way he processed his alcoholism and recovery. “Writing became a therapeutic process for me during my recovery from acknowledging and then addressing and confronting my alcoholism,” Rathbone said. “That was the impetus of this record, or that was the theme of the record for me, was radical honesty," he explained. "And I felt like I've always held the audience at arm's length with my writing.” Rathbone pointed to his previous music as an example of the walls he had built around himself. There were the “tongue-in-cheek” songs of 100 Monkeys and the more vulnerable music of American Spirit Blues, which he described as still having “a castle around me.” Rathbone told Lovitt, “This record stripped everything away.” Ironically, writing for someone else's voice helped Rathbone get there. “I think I had the comfort of writing for Sheila's voice,” he explained. “It allowed me to be more honest with myself than I'd ever been before. Working on the songs with Sheila, and some of the melodies we wrote together, just having that back and forth of working with a partner that you trust implicitly, it's hard to find.” That partnership also meant learning when to let go. Rathbone describes himself as a perfectionist who is constantly writing, often producing enough lyrics for a ten-minute song before cutting them down to three or four minutes. Sheila became one of the people who could tell him when something needed to stay. “I have to trust my bandmate here,” Rathbone said. “If she says that it's, ‘No, this is right,’ then I believe her and I trust her because she's got great taste, and she's the singer. The singer is gonna know sometimes maybe what the writer doesn't.” It turns out that writing songs for his wife also taught Rathbone something unexpected about himself. “I didn't really realize in my writing, I write with a Southern accent,” he laughed. “Certain things just don't sound the same coming from me [as] they do from you,” Sheila explained. If a lyric relied too heavily on Rathbone's natural twang, they would simply rewrite it until it sounded like her. “Karate” Turns Rathbone's Sobriety Journey Into Something Completely Different Image via Jackson Rathbone ​The first taste of Disco Punk is Dead comes with the album's lead single, “Karate,” and it perfectly captures the contradiction at the heart of STARMOTHER. Rathbone wanted to make something that sounded almost ridiculously fun while writing about something that wasn't fun at all. Inspired by what he calls “stupid-fun pop songs” like Sabrina Carpenter's “Espresso,” Rathbone started with a simple challenge: find a common three-syllable word that's fun to say. “Karate” immediately came to mind. The song quickly became a meditation on addiction, and the reality that getting sober doesn't simply make that part of someone's life disappear. Rathbone told Collider: “It's always there, and I have to acknowledge it without feeding into it. It's a precarious balance, like a violent peace within the soul.” At one point, the song was nearly titled “Horses and Glue,” based on the idea that someone can remain associated with an addiction long after getting clean. “We used to make glue out of horses. We don't anymore, but the stigma and association is still there,” Rathbone explained. “Carrying the weight of a dead past life is cumbersome. It fucking sucks.” For Rathbone, “Karate” is ultimately about learning “mental self-defense,” re-parenting the mind and breaking down childhood traumas. He just didn't want it to sound like it was trying to teach anyone a lesson. “I wanted it to sound dumb, not philosophical,” he said. “I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. You go drink as much as you'd like. I can still hang without drinking nowadays. ‘Karate’ is just me trying to express the way I feel about my own personal sobriety journey.” Naturally, the Rathbones decided the song's music video needed a cannibalistic serial killer. STARMOTHER's First Music Video Goes Full B-Movie Horror Jackson and Sheila are self-described nerds with a love for sci-fi, B movies, slashers, and all things weird. They have even invented an entire fictional mythology around STARMOTHER during nights spent sitting outside and brainstorming together. “We have this crazy grand story we tell ourselves about the band,” Sheila said. “We have all these fun stories we tell, and we sit outside at night and like to just hang out on the patio, and we will brainstorm.” When they started developing the “Karate” video, they took the song's central idea of living with an addiction and pushed it to its most extreme conclusion. “The point of the song was about this addiction you carry with you, regardless if you're clean or you're not clean. It's still the addiction. It's haunting you. So we were like, ‘Hey, what's the most extreme version of that?’ A serial killer is addicted to killing, right?” The resulting video became what Rathbone calls a “Looney Tunes serial killer set in the '70s,” directed by Danin Jacquay, also known as Deathcats. Rathbone himself plays the killer opposite Sheila. One particularly elaborate sequence features Sheila's disembodied head singing from inside a refrigerator, a practical setup created by production designer Olivia Maaghul after Rathbone spent months trying to figure out how to pull off the shot. “When Sheila's eyes pop open in the fridge, and her disembodied head is singing at you, God, it just makes me so happy,” Rathbone said. The video also came together with an all-female production and post-production team, with Paisley Zerr serving as cinematographer and Maaghul handling production design. More importantly, it established exactly what Jackson and Sheila want STARMOTHER to be. “The music is serious, the subject matter is serious, sure, whatever,” Rathbone said. “But the point is to have a good fucking time.” Sheila added, “If it's not fun, we don't want to do it. The whole thing needs to be fun, and if it's not fun, we're done.” STARMOTHER Is Doing This Their Way Image via Danin Jacquay That attitude doesn't stop with the music. STARMOTHER created Disco Punk is Dead without a label or distributor, keeping the project independent and taking the DIY approach very literally. Rathbone created the album artwork using one of Jacquay's photographs alongside miniatures he photographed himself, including a robot, kaiju, flying disco saucers, army men, and police cars. Even the STARMOTHER logo was printed and cut out by hand twice to create its shadow effect. But having fun with STARMOTHER doesn't mean they aren't taking the work seriously. “We don't really take ourselves too seriously in terms of having fun, but our work ethic is hardcore,” Rathbone said. That was especially true of Sheila's performance. Rathbone recalled other musicians from neighboring studios hearing her vocals and coming in to find out who was singing. “They'd see little five-foot-two Sheila, and they'd be like, ‘That's you?’” Rathbone said. After spending 15 years trying to convince his wife to make music with him, Rathbone finally found the record she wanted to make. And after spending five years confronting some of the most difficult parts of his own life to write, he found something he hadn't necessarily set out to make either. “Our mantra in the studio was we're making this for ourselves,” Rathbone said. “Our favorite record,” Sheila added. Collider was lucky enough to preview two more tracks from the new album ​​​​beyond "Karate." Track 4, titled "Hesitation," is a catchy disco punk bop with a delicious '80s undercurrent and a thrilling sci-fi sound that fits STARMOTHER's retro-future punk style and aesthetic perfectly. Meanwhile, track 3, titled "Landfill," is a percussive banger that grabs you immediately and doesn't let up for two minutes straight, and we promise the bridge will be stuck in your head for hours once you hear it. STARMOTHER's debut single, “Karate,” is out now. Watch the music video above, and save "Karate" to your preferred music platform here.