When most people want to start a band, they don’t head to the library for a book on the topic. But most people aren’t Caroline Weinroth.
The Arlington-based singer, guitarist, piano teacher, DJ, and former beauty pageant queen sports an enviable work ethic—one driven by her unyielding determination to succeed on a national stage.
“I always knew I wanted to be a star,” Weinroth says.
Her band, Cinema Hearts, play Pie Shop on Aug. 1 in what may be their last local performance before wrapping their first full-length album, due out in 2026. The punk-tinged rock trio—featuring bassist Massimo Zaru-Roque and drummer Danny Ortiz—have played together locally since 2021. They’ve also traveled as far as Austin, Texas, to play unofficial South by Southwest shows—one of which got the attention of Rolling Stone, in a piece that dubbed them one of the best shows of the 2024 festival.
Weinroth, an MFA holder in creative writing and poetry, has created opportunities for herself in music over the past decade, working several jobs in the industry (from audio engineering to teaching to volunteering with Girls Rock! DC), building a healthy social media following, and applying a “DIY ethos” that once had her spray-painting CDs in her parents’ garage. The fruits of her labor include a 2022 EP produced by former Washingtonian (now Baltimore-based) Bartees Strange and an opening set for Hozier in 2023.
The Northern Virginia-bred musician formed the original iteration of Cinema Hearts in 2015, naming it after Cinema Arts, a Fairfax theater where she once worked. A couple years later, she was looking for paths to stardom (as well as something to do postcollege) and stepped into the world of pageants, which had captivated her as a child. “It’s pushing yourself to be your best self, while also showcasing your talent and being really polished and getting involved in your community,” she says.
Following in the footsteps of her mother, an alum of Junior Miss pageants, Weinroth participated in about 10 pageants in three years. She took home regional titles and competed for Miss Virginia in 2017, 2018, and 2019, singing and wielding her guitar during the talent portion. In 2021, she was featured in There She Was: The Secret History of Miss America, a book by Washington Post Style editor Amy Argetsinger, who dubbed Weinroth a candidate for the “first hipster Miss America.”
By the book’s release though, Weinroth had stopped competing, pivoting to invest more effort in Cinema Hearts’ success. Today, she coaches pageant contestants but grows wistful when discussing her own shot at the Miss Virginia title.
“There’s really nothing else like competing … when you wear that crown and sash, and people come up to you and they think you’re something special,” she says. “Through Cinema Hearts, I’m kind of replicating that—but on my own terms.”
The musician credits the pageant world with the promotional skills she uses today as an artist. But as much as she sings its praises, she also surfaces pageant culture’s incongruities. Her song “Mirror,” about a desperate-for-attention protagonist who relies on others to define her, reflects Weinroth’s views on pageant life.
“It’s like being a princess trapped in a tower,” says Weinroth of competing, where she often felt pressure not just to be more competitive but to also blend in. “I loved Miss America. I still love it. I’m obsessed with it. But it really brainwashed me, and it gave me the biggest anxiety of my life. I think it took a few years for me to really overcome that and heal.”
Part of that healing is encouraging those she coaches today to embrace who they are rather than trying to fit a mold, something that took her a while to learn. “The girls that win are the girls that stand out,” she says.
Cinema Hearts’ next record (produced by Don Godwin of Tonal Park, who also did their sophomore EP) delves into societal expectations around domesticity. Living with her boyfriend has piqued her curiosity about the housewife “trap” into which some women fall, Weinroth says.
“A lot of our mothers, grandmothers [were housewives],” she says. “My generation is breaking free from that, but then some of us are falling into that weird trad-wife trope.” Weinroth references “the imprisonment of being a girl,” a line from Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, and is currently examining her own “imprisonment” as a woman.
In her decade of performing as Cinema Hearts, Weinroth has dealt with her share of “gatekeepers” in the music scene and is open about the trials she’s faced when trying to earn respect as a young woman musician—especially one who leads a rock band. She describes it as having to “fight and claw my way forward.”
At times, her conviction that she is destined for a bigger stage is rocked by self-doubt. But she takes comfort in the idea that she brings something unique to the table—all while checking herself in the mirror.
“Something I’ve been thinking about lately is,” she pauses, “I think this will haunt me forever: What do I want to do versus what I think everyone wants to see?”