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An intense, dance-ready beat carries five female voices that embrace and complement one another in a dance of sisterhood. That is perhaps the most striking musical appeal of “Final Girl,” a song that brings together the talents of independent artists Kiki T, Teresa Suydam, Dina Renée, Helen, and XOË Miles, while extending that sense of connection into an initiative supporting women.
The release marks the beginning of Girl Song Presents, an initiative through which Kiki T hopes to continue this kind of collaboration. On “Final Girl,” that idea takes shape through five artists who bring their own creative choices to the song while sharing a common cause.
That commitment has a tangible expression. From the song’s release on October 1 through October 1, 2027, Kiki is donating 100% of her share of streaming royalties from the master recording to Take Back The Night.
The organization has spent decades working to end sexual violence in all its forms and support survivors in their healing journeys. While Take Back The Night began as a movement focused primarily on women’s safety, its work has expanded to include survivors of all gender identities and backgrounds. In this way, a song about resistance can also contribute to supporting those who have to face it outside of fiction.
“Final Girl” takes its name from the woman who is still alive in the final scene of a horror movie. Exhausted, wounded, and covered in blood, she remains standing after confronting the person who was hunting her. Here, that character becomes a way to talk about the moment when fear coexists with anger and the decision emerges to say enough, defend yourself, and reclaim the possibility of writing your own ending.
That image of a woman still standing also lands in a very real cultural moment. In September 2026, a former Cornell University student identified in court documents as Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit alleging that seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity sexually assaulted her at a fraternity house in 2024. The case has since prompted New York prosecutors to reopen the criminal investigation and prepare it for consideration by a grand jury, while also renewing debate over how the state’s laws address sexual assault involving intoxicated victims. The allegations remain the subject of ongoing legal proceedings, and the accused have not been convicted.
The name Jane Doe carries a meaning of its own in conversations about sexual violence. The 2017 documentary I AM JANE DOE, for example, follows several American mothers fighting on behalf of their middle-school daughters who were victims of sex trafficking. In both the documentary and the Cornell case, the pseudonym points to something larger than one individual identity, representing a survivor whose story is being told while her real name remains protected.
That makes “We are all Jane Doe” a way of widening the conversation around who gets seen and supported. “Final Girl” begins from a specifically female experience, but sexual violence does not belong to one age or gender. RAINN’s latest statistics estimate that 443,634 rapes and sexual assaults occur each year in the U.S. against people age 12 and older. FBI data cited by the organization also shows that 51% of reported rape victims are ages 0 to 19, while men and boys account for 11% of reported rape victims. At the same time, women and girls remain disproportionately affected, accounting for 89% of reported rape victims.
The image of the final girl may come from horror fiction, but the reality behind that metaphor can be just as frightening. The numbers show why the feeling of needing to stand your ground can resonate far beyond one woman’s experience. Kiki had that scene in mind when she began writing, although the idea soon grew beyond her individual experience. She found something shared in that need to feel strong and brought in four other artists to give it a voice. Her explanation retains the rawness and defiant humor that run through the project. “One unhinged woman who has had enough is one thing. Five? That's unstoppable,” she shares.
Born in Hawaii and based in Los Angeles, Kiki left a PhD program in cognitive neuroscience to pursue music. Her self-described “dark tropipop” blends the brightness of pop with darker stories, a contrast that finds fertile ground in this track. She wrote the foundation and lyrics before sharing them with her collaborators, who developed their own melodies, harmonies, and interpretations.
Teresa Suydam, who also contributed four verses to the outro, presents herself through an Indigenous and Filipino identity, with the irreverence of someone who knows what it means to be underestimated. Helen finds a connection between her love of pop and the country songs where women push their responses to an unfaithful or abusive partner to the limit. Dina Renée and XOË Miles round out the collaboration with their vocal contributions. Although Kiki wrote the majority of the lyrics and Teresa contributed four lines to the outro, all five artists receive songwriting credit.
“I'm giving all five of us writing credit because what I really wanted from the beginning was a collaborative environment where everyone felt like whatever they brought to the song mattered. Regardless of what ultimately made the final mix or didn't, every artist brought 100% of themselves to it and made the final song better. I think that process is actually a big part of what makes Final Girl what it is.”
“I could be your final girl” serves as the center of that declaration, somewhere between a warning and a promise to keep standing. Sung together, the survivor from the final scene finds companionship. That is where the strength of “Final Girl” expands beyond its horror-movie image, as women listen to one another, recognize themselves in each other, and choose to act for themselves and for those around them, while leaving room in the wider conversation for every survivor whose story may still be waiting to be heard.
Listen to “Final Girl” and connect with Kiki T, Teresa Suydam, Dina Renée, Helen, and XOË Miles on Instagram.
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