An indie band called The Twigs are countersuing FKA Twigs for allegedly using her fame and money to “destroy” their trademark.
The singer, actor and dancer, real name Tahliah Barnett, filed a lawsuit against the indie group made up of sisters Laura Good and Linda Good earlier this year. In the suit, she asked a judge to rule that her stage name does not infringe on the name used by the LA band.
Legal disputes between the two acts date back over 10 years, as they went to court in 2014 after The Twigs sued Barnett for allegedly infringing on the trademark that they had been using since 1996.
There, the band lost an initial injunction request and dropped the lawsuit. Things picked up again in 2024, however, when The Twigs issued a cease-and-desist letter to Barnett, demanding that she stop using the name after she applied for a trademark of her own.
FKA Twigs then filed a lawsuit against the band and claimed that they were trying to “weaponise” baseless claims in order to get money from her.
According to Rolling Stone, court documents outlined that Barnett offered the duo $15,000 to allow their musical entities to “co-exist”, but was turned down by the group, who instead “declined and stressed that they did not consent to this proposed co-existence”.
The lawsuit also stated that it is “inconceivable” that people would confuse the two artists – saying that FKA Twigs has 3.2million monthly listeners on Spotify and over 300 million views on YouTube, while the band have “simply disappeared” and have just “705 followers on Instagram and 25 monthly listeners on Spotify”.
“The parties operate in entirely different commercial ecosystems,” it added, accusing The Twigs of having “threatened to seek an injunction preventing Barnett from using her stage name, [and] demanded a significant seven-figure payout to release any alleged claims against Barnett.”
Now, The Twigs have filed a countersuit against the singer. In their claims, filed on Monday May 11, Laura Good and Linda Good claim that they did not win their initial lawsuit in 2014 as Barnett was primarily based in the UK at the time and focused her efforts more on acting and dancing than with music.
They also state that the artist did not register any trademarks around that time, and distanced herself from any confusion with the band by using the prefix FKA.
This, The Twigs allege, changed when she got more momentum in the music industry – dropping the album ‘Magdelene’ in 2019, signing with Atlantic, filing a trademark application, and releasing the hit album ‘EUSEXUA’.
It was around this time, the sisters claim, Barnett started to gradually drop the “FKA” prefix at some live events and public appearances.
Their countersuit claims that the moves made by FKA Twigs over the years have been done to “weaken, if not destroy” the band’s intellectual property rights.
The suit claims (via Billboard) that “Barnett intentionally used her celebrity and resulting power with the media to act in ways designed to increase the public’s association of Barnett and her musical services with ‘Twigs,’ while eroding and overwhelming counterclaim-plaintiffs’ goodwill … in those same musical channels of commerce.”
Laura and Linda Good are seeking a legal injunction that would prohibit Barnett from using that stage name, as well as unspecified financial compensation for trademark infringement and unfair competition.
Neither Barnett nor her reps have issued a public statement about the countersuit at time of writing. NME has reached out to a spokesperson for FKA Twigs for comment.
FKA Twigs released the ‘EUSEXUA’ album last year, which was given a glowing five-star review by NME. Her track ‘Room Of Fools’ also landed at Number 25 on our 50 best songs of 2025 list.
Since then, she has also shared the follow-up album ‘EUSEXUA Afterglow’, which earned four stars from NME.