May 22, 2026

We Just Want to Live: Liberation Weekend II Recap

May 22, 2026/ Caroline Liaupsin

*All photos by Kyle Meyers // All Sketches by Galen Summers*

Naming a music festival Liberation Weekend takes some gumption. Liberation is a word I associate with only the most intense and daring of political movements, events that upend entire systems of power, carving a new path forward for a people. Not typically how I would describe a music festival. Yet Liberation Weekend, now in its second year, is willing to make this bold choice.

There is no need to recount Liberation Weekend 2025, as Swim Into The Sound had some brilliant coverage that does just the job, but there is a need to recount my Liberation Weekend 2025. A weekend where a young trans woman, hardly two months in on estrogen, not yet going by her chosen name, could be surrounded by other trans people. A weekend where she could watch other trans artists embrace themselves, their transness, and each other.

This was, in a sense, liberatory for me. A world where I could embrace my transness seemed possible. In the ensuing months, I found my voice on-air as the host of DIY Not, became ingrained in the DC DIY music community, and started playing bass for a trans punk band called thisdogllhunt. And as I have changed, so has Liberation Weekend.

In its second year, the festival has gotten bigger and (in this writer’s opinion) better. Now spanning three days instead of two, featuring late-night DJ sets and emo-centric day parties alike. The festival is split between two venues: Black Cat for the larger evening shows, and Transmission for the daytime sets and late-night after parties.

Just like last year, the festival is centered on raising money for trans people, with proceeds going to its partner orgs, Gender Liberation Movement and No More Dysphoria. Gender Liberation Movement is a non-profit group that brings together organizers, creatives, and community members to build power for gender liberation across culture, organizing, and policy. No More Dysphoria is a trans mutual aid non-profit, created to help transgender individuals pay for major aspects of their transition and necessities like housing and groceries. Early estimates from this year are looking to be around $20,000 going directly back to trans people, the people who care for them, and the people who fight for their rights.

This year’s edition of the fest sadly feels even more prescient than last. Attacks on the rights of trans people are only increasing, with the US Government designating “radical pro-transgender ideology” as a terrorist ideology on the same level as narcoterrorism. Among many of my friends, there is a growing sense of unease about our future in this country. There is a desperate need not just for the funds that an event like this can provide, but the space as well – somewhere that trans people can let their guard down, if only for a moment.

I spent the three days of Liberation Weekend looking for liberation. I searched for it in the artists on stage, the sweaty mosh pits of Transmission and Black Cat, and in the organizations fighting to make this world just a little easier for trans people. A year ago, I found it for myself. This year, I hope to find it again.

April 23: The Unofficial Liberation Weekend preshow in which Caroline watches the trans girls of DC two step to folk music

Liberation Weekend II began with what the DC trans community considered an unofficial preshow. On the night of Thursday, April 23rd, well over 100 people packed into a tiny warehouse art gallery called The Fridge, tucked in an alleyway near Capitol Hill. We came out for a night of somber folk, riotous country, and boot-stompin' Appalachian bluegrass, all played by trans women.

Beginning with a solo set of mostly covers from thisdogllhunt, AKA Bailey Payne, she brought her knowledge of country classics to us uneducated city slickers. She wore a Texas A&M football jersey – her hometown team and alma mater – but it had been lovingly modified, with the neckline cut out, a high crop, and sleeves nowhere to be seen. Transforming a symbol of Good Ol’ Boy culture into something just a little scandalous, maybe even a little sacrilegious, depending on which A&M fan you ask.

As Payne closed out with a blistering cover of Charlie Daniels’ “Trudy,” she was so deeply at ease with the audience. She joked her way through the cover, shouting out to the crowd between verses. As she led into the second verse, she took a moment to pause and ask in her best southern drawl, “Now who here can tell me who Johnny Lee Walker is?” She let the silence hang still in the air amongst a bewildered and entranced crowd, as she launched into the verse, finally telling us who this mystery man is. Nearing the end of “Trudy,” she took a moment to hop on the soapbox while still cycling through the chords. Addressing the crowd directly, she said, “A real transition goal was to play this song and feel free. And we aren’t all the way there yet, but we’re getting there.” She talked about how all these old country songs are just stories, elaborating, “I collect these stories, and I’m happy you’re part of my story.”

As she said this, I looked around the warehouse. I was surrounded by the friendly faces of trans people from across the District. We always show up for one another; we are all helping write each other’s stories.

Payne was followed by Rosslyn Station AKA Guinnivere Tully, who performed a slow and somber set of covers. Tully opted to take a seat on stage, drawing us in with intricate finger picking and delicate vocals. Her anti-folk came at the perfect time to give us all a breather following Payne’s high-energy country showcase and before what was sure to be an absolute barn burner of a set from Clover-Lynn. She is a dyke, an Appalachian folk musician, and a trans woman. And she would likely tell you it's in that order. She beams with a natural charisma, telling stories about family and acceptance with an accent so country you almost can’t believe it. Clover-Lynn’s music pulls from a deep tradition, discussing how one of her songs is meant for a traditional dance style called Appalachian flatfooting. Here in DC, we don’t know flatfooting, but we certainly know how to mosh. Trans people began running into each other, giving friendly shoves. There were even a few couples in the mix spinning each other around with the widest smiles on their faces. In this room, there was no shame and no judgment, just the joy of moving our bodies in ways that felt right. Maybe this is liberation.

April 24th – Day 1: In which Caroline meets her heroes, has a cheerleading squad, and thinks about God

On the first day of Liberation Weekend, I pretended I was a rock star. Along with my journalistic duties, I was also playing bass for the DC-based cow-punk act, thisdogllhunt. We were slotted to play second on the first day of the festival, right after Brooklyn-based punk act Eevie Echoes & the Locations.

Liberation Weekend gave me and a number of other small trans artists the opportunity to be part of the “big leagues.” With few exceptions (Laura Jane Grace, Ethel Cain, underscores), most trans musicians and artists exist on the DIY circuit, tracing paths from bars to basements to community centers along the endless highways of this country. Those spaces are home to me as a performer.

Before this show, we had largely played DIY venues, so loading into Black Cat, my bandmates and I felt a little out of our element. Real catering, access to a shower, and having to try our absolute hardest to be normal about sharing our green room with Laura Jane Grace. We sat quietly and kept mostly to ourselves, staking out a claim on a single couch, too nervous to eat any of the various charcuterie prepared for us.

With my stomach still churning and my nerves on edge, I found time in the early afternoon to sit down with Philly emo legends, Snowing. Born from the same scene that gave birth to acts like Algernon Cadwallader, Snowing had called it quits years ago, only recently reuniting to start playing shows again with the resurgence in popularity of fourth-wave emo. The four-piece was a hero to a younger Caroline as she first dipped her toe into emo and DIY music, and now here I was, sitting in a small green room with them, most of the band crammed onto a small love seat. This interview would not calm my nerves.

I began by asking the band why they wanted to play Liberation Weekend. Guitarist Willow Brazuk gave me an incredibly straightforward answer. “I mean, it's a pretty important cause to me personally as a trans woman.” She continued, “We need it [money] right now. It's a pretty desperate, scary situation in the United States.”

Unsurprisingly, as a band born from a scene known for its tight-knit nature, Snowing is deeply committed to playing fundraiser and benefit shows as a “fundamental part of punk ideology for your community.” Explaining, “The only way that we win is to live in community and care for small communities that work and spread it.”

Sitting with Snowing, it is apparent how much this band loves each other. Over the course of our interview, someone would break out in laughter at some point during nearly every question. Breaking through this laughter, Willow offered perhaps the most workable definition of liberation I would receive all weekend:

“To me, personally, I just want to live a normal-ass life. It doesn't need to be fancy. I don't need power. I would love to walk down the street and feel safe. I would love to be able to go to the bathroom in every state I go to. I would like to keep accessing my health care, whether it's transition-related or not. I would like to not be discriminated against in any area: employment, housing, et cetera. That's liberation. It's not a huge thing. It's just like… I want what everyone else has. It's not a lot to ask for. I think when people in marginalized groups ask for something, it feels like they're asking for the world. It's really just wanting what everyone else has. That's liberation to me.”

Liberation Weekend has the capacity to make that real, even if only for a weekend. Sometimes that can be enough, as Willow notes, “We're not going to stop legislation from being passed because we played a fucking show in DC I know that, but maybe some people could feel better because they got to go do this and be among people they like.”

”**I just want to live a normal-ass life**”

– Willow Brazuk, Snowing

This comes to the central challenge of Liberation Weekend: how does a music festival move us towards liberation, in whatever sense of the word that means? There are small actions, like bands that make sure people know where they stand. A seemingly small gesture offered by lead singer John Galm at every show is “If you are at a Snowing show, and something makes you uncomfortable, you can come and find one of us at the merch table, and we will figure it out, because everyone that comes through these doors needs to be safe.” I appreciate that it’s something concrete, and the passion with which John delivers this tells me that it’s something he believes with his whole heart.

As we began to wrap, Black Cat’s lovely audio engineer popped her head in, asking if we could sound check early. I lost my place a little bit. I’d been able to lose myself in Snowing’s love for one another and for music just enough to forget I actually had to get up on that stage. I told her five more minutes and proceeded to take ten to wrap up with Snowing.

Soundcheck was professional, yet eerie. Standing on stage, looking out at a venue as large as Black Cat and its empty floor with enough space for 800 people. It is a venue steeped in history, having hosted local heroes like Fugazi and The Dismemberment Plan, as well as national acts like Weezer and Foo Fighters. It all weighs down on you, straining your shoulders. Every pluck of a string, every step, requires you to focus just a little more. Act with a little more intentionality. Find composure within yourself.

We blazed through a song and a half, got the levels set, and suddenly found ourselves off stage just as quickly as we were whisked onto it. I now faced the prospect of sitting, waiting, and doing everything in my power to prevent my anxiety from growing like a festering algae bloom, sudden and suffocating.

A couple of hours after soundcheck, the doors opened, and I ventured into the crowd. A trickle of people slowly began to fill the cavernous space. I was finding peace in this moment when suddenly I heard a group of voices screaming “Caroline!!” and felt arms thrown around my shoulders.

Before a single note was played, the first person to speak at Liberation Weekend was Rayceen Pendarvis. Rayceen is an icon of the DC queer community, and was respected as such the whole weekend. She was the host for the Black Cat shows, appearing between sets, talking about the organizations, complimenting the crowd, and constantly discussing which cities she had made, or lost, a lot of money in. She was charming, sweet, and endlessly entertaining.

Pendarvis introduced the first act of the night, Eevie Echoes & the Locations, who delivered a raucous set, with frontwoman Eevie venturing into the crowd to make sure a mosh pit got going.

Before heading on, we stood side stage to do our goofy thisdogllhunt chant. “Hands in, and on three, thisdogllhunt! One! Two! Three! This-dog-llhunt!” The syllables don’t match the count. We’re never quite in sync, and the rhythm is never quite right. I hope it never changes; this is sisterhood to me.

Climbing the four steps up to the stage of Black Cat, it didn’t take long to feel at home. Despite gazing out at a crowd of at least a hundred, suddenly a chorus of voices erupted right at the front, chanting my name. Amongst that endless sea of faces, some of my closest friends made sure they were seen and heard by me. It was hard not to feel like an embarrassed high school graduate, just trying to make her way across the stage while her family makes absolute fools of themselves, but having a personal section of trans girl cheerleaders can calm even the shakiest of nerves. I could tell you all about the set, but why do that when you can just watch the whole thing right here:

After our set, as I navigated my way down the stairs side stage, the first person to notice my frazzled state was Augusta Koch, the lead singer of Gladie, who had been watching just off stage. She looked me in the eyes and, with a calm, collected voice, simply asked, “How are you feeling?” I was forced to take in my surroundings and live in the moment.

At that point, I didn’t have words to describe the feeling. I do now. Fulfilled. Fulfilled by my community, by music, by trans love. This moment grounded me. I needed all of these little grounding moments – the type of moments that can only come from a community that is tight-knit and allied both locally and afar. I believe this is one facet of liberation: to have confidence in your community and their support.

It also hit me that we were just the second set of the entire festival. I’d better find my grounding ASAP because there was a whole lot of festival left to go.

After catching my breath in the green room, I popped out to catch the tail end of Spring Silver. K Nkanza’s indie emo project has been a mainstay of the DMV scene for years, and sounded right at home on Black Cat’s stage.

The rest of the evening would be out-of-towners, with Gladie taking the stage. As the Philly-based indie rockers launched into their set with “Push Me Down,” I traced a path through the crowd like a snake in the prairie grass to make my way to the front of the stage and scream along. Gladie offers a unique brand of indie rock, with guitars swirling and unraveling behind Koch’s wonderfully sweet and gravely voice. Everything is just a little fuzzed-out, but still catchy and thoughtfully laden with a deeper meaning. After first helping me find grounding, Augusta helped me fall into the music, carried away and out of my body.

Shortly after Gladie was Snowing, who repeated many of the same beliefs they had shared with me during our interview. Lead singer John Galm explicitly asked audience members to find him if anything makes them feel uncomfortable. The set, of course, was excellent, as if you had any doubts in their abilities. I was transported back to the first time I saw them in the dust bowl that was the Second Annual DIY Superbowl in 2022. Eighteen years in, absolutely no one in Snowing has lost their edge, still able to get a crowd screaming their lungs out about drinking too much as a 20-something in Philly. Nothing is more cathartic than a good Midwest emo set.

Nearing the end of their set, I ran into an old friend, a former partner who had seen me go from man to woman. We embraced. We were brought together by emo music nearly seven years ago, making the trek up to Philly together to see Snowing in 2022. After hugs and pleasantries, we briefly caught up before settling in together to watch the final set of the night, Laura Jane Grace.

Laura and her band delivered a rapid-fire set of hits, hits, and, dare I say it, more hits. The setlist spanned both her solo catalog and the Against Me! discography. As she ascended to the stage, the entirety of Black Cat came to life. Myself and many trans punks of my generation and a little older owe a great deal to Mrs. Jane Grace and her music. So many of us felt a strange attraction to her music for years before any of us had the realization or the confidence to live as ourselves. From my vantage point about halfway back in the venue, I could see a wave of hands rising up in front of the stage, bodies moving in tides, waves of people crashing into the stage as choruses of voices rose up, nearly drowning out Laura at times. Her set, and the night, fittingly closed on “True Trans Soul Rebel.” When she asks, “Does God bless your transsexual heart?” I don’t need to know the answer, because I am already blessed by my community. Blessed by the love I have for trans people and the love they have for me. Perhaps that is liberation: being blessed by one another.

April 25th – Day 2: In which Caroline aids the downfall of capitalism, rediscovers her inner child, and guesses which band member has hemorrhoids

Day 2 got off to a rough start. The night prior, my car got snowed in at the venue. (Snowing’s van was blocking us from leaving). My head did not hit my pillow until around 2 AM, two and a half hours later than I usually like it to. I was also still riding the high of the previous night.

Upon waking up, I managed to race over to Transmission, where I met up with Max Narotzky from Ultra Deluxe in the alley behind the club to chat. She was sporting a cheery and busy dress covered in smiling tomatoes, waving ladybugs, and a lovely orange ruffle flowing along the shoulders. Her face was adorned with a bushy red beard and a blazing mess of curling hair atop her head. Despite being the frontperson of Ultra Deluxe, Narotzky is, in some DIY circles, known just as much for her posting around leftist organizing as she is for her music. Max is a self-avowed communist and Marxist-Leninist who believes liberation will be achieved through the organization of the working class and the eventual overthrow of capitalism. Her politics are radical but straightforward, and it’s refreshing to hear that.

For an event titled so boldly as “Liberation Weekend,” it takes a radical to truly articulate liberation and how to get there. At one point, Max prompts me, “What's affecting trans people the most? Access to medicine, that's a capitalist problem. That's not just for trans people, it's for everyone who is working class, because our medicine costs money. Housing costs money. I mean, we know homelessness rates in trans people are much higher than in cis people, right? So how do we help trans people? We have to destroy capitalism.”

Lofty goals certainly, but incredibly clear. Max sees the utility of events like Liberation Weekend for getting us there as the spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down, “It's like kind of tricking people to go because obviously going to a punk show is more fun than going to a fucking communist meeting. I mean, even most communists would agree with that.”

While I appreciated the matter-of-factness of Willow’s answer the day before, Max is precise and consistent in recognizing capitalism as the thing that holds us back from liberation. “Liberation means the things that are coercing us into work or coercing us into cis heteronormativity, those need to be abolished. Abolition of private property, the abolition of capitalism and imperialism.”

As Day 2 went on, I came to appreciate Max’s radicalism more and more. Between sets, organizers from different groups would come on stage and share platitudes about the importance of voting and how our existence itself is resistance. That being here is in itself radical. I can appreciate the feel-good nature of this, but I think about what Max said, “music is important. But liberation is not going to be done through vibes alone.” Her words resonated with me throughout the rest of this weekend as I looked for the individuals and the movements that went beyond just asking for Instagram followers. A striking example was watching members of the DC Democratic Socialists of America Bodily Autonomy Working Group walking up to members of the audience and giving them Narcan, intent on getting as many people as possible to begin carrying the potentially life-saving drug.

The second day of Liberation Weekend began with my friends in Somebody’s Daughter, who are rising alt-punk stars in the DC scene. Up next was Ok Cuddle, fronted by Nicole Harwayne, who was at Liberation Weekend last year as a member of Pop Music Fever Dream. I don’t think anyone this weekend was having more fun on stage than her as she orchestrated a wall of death and told the crowd, “Transmission, it is 2 PM, I want to see some goddamn blood in this building!” DC riot grrrl rockers RenRiot took the stage next, where they embodied the spirit of Rage Against The Machine if they were black queer 20-somethings instead of middle-aged white guys.

*“Music is important, but liberation is not going to be done through vibes alone.”*

– Max Narotzky, Ultra Deluxe

As Ultra Deluxe took the stage, I was curious how Max’s beliefs would translate to the stage. Turns out the answer was, simply put, by providing the most batshit concert experience I have ever seen. I am no stranger to inflatables being tossed into the crowd (see literally any DRAIN show), but there is a certain whimsy when those inflatables are brightly colored inflatable hammers, letting you feel like Mario running through the pit, whacking one another on the head. But then, during “Manufacturing Medicine,” she got the parachute out, as in one of those parachutes you’d use during elementary gym class. Most of us found an edge to grab and started rhythmically waving it up and down in time with the pounding bass. While the parachute pulsed up and down, Max unveiled her greatest weapon, a giant bubble gun, which rained whimsy down on to the crowd.

Truly, nothing is more freeing, more liberating, than a mosh pit underneath a parachute while hitting each other with blow-up hammers. Suddenly, I was seven years old all over again. I had insisted I was too tired to mosh, but none of this mattered; how could it? She offered all of us the chance to let go of our current world and just be kids again. I couldn’t turn her down.

Following the batshit fun of Ultra Deluxe, Local DC indie rockers Cryptid Summer took the stage, and their lead singer, L Mazer, had the most striking look I’d seen all weekend. She had painted three eyes on each cheekbone, creating perhaps the most ominous vibe of any act in the lineup.

Headlining Transmission that afternoon was none other than NYC dance-punk darlings Crush Fund. Late last year, I had them on my radio show; check out that interview here. The Crush Fund girls are gearing up for the release of their first LP, and they are sounding as incredible as ever. Their sound is massive and abrasive. At any moment during their set, it felt like the roof was about to be blown clear off Transmission. Instead, I witnessed them make this little room feel claustrophobic as ever, bodies crashing into each other, climbing on top of one another as the band ripped through their set. Especially of note was a three-song run of “Shooting 2,” “FFS,” and “Shooting 1,” the first and last of which are as yet unreleased. Crush Fund shows off their hardcore chops on those tracks, delivering absolutely punishing vocals over instrumentals that are not dissimilar to someone taking a real (not inflatable) hammer and repeatedly (yet rhythmically) beating you into a semiconscious state. Even as their set slowed for a moment at the end with their unreleased track “Go,” people still managed to mosh. I watched a pit form where two trans girls pirouetted into a crowd functioning like human pinball bumpers, sending them careening back and forth across the venue.

I was starting to crash as I arrived at Black Cat for the evening shows. But within me, the journalistic flame burned bright, giving me just enough energy to survive this night. As I prepared for the evening shows, I found myself thinking about those around me and what their Liberation looked like. I have stories of two people that I’d love to share. The first is a trans woman named Tommi Parashos. She flew in from San Diego to be a part of this weekend. Over the course of the festival, she became the talk of the town for her attempt to get every artist to sign the instructions for her estrogen injections. Tommi told me that it “started as an idea for a cool keepsake, but it’s also a fun way for me to interact with the bands and force myself to be social and make friends.

She continued saying, “Liberation Weekend was the first time I felt like a girl. Before Liberation Weekend, I literally didn’t think that I was pretty enough or confident enough to call myself a doll; I guess dysphoria does that to you. Being surrounded by a festival’s worth of wonderful trans people all complementing me and wanting to be my friend made me feel like, yeah, I can call myself a doll. It was so liberating being in a space where I didn't need to flag the fact that I was trans or do the cotton candy barf look to be seen as a woman. Initially, I came out to Liberation Weekend to have a fun trip with my friend, who’s also a big fan of the DC scene, but I left wanting to build a trans community back home in San Diego.”

The other is a trans woman named Lizzie Rose from Fayetteville, Arkansas, who made her way up to DC for the festival. For her, Liberation Weekend was a rare opportunity to be surrounded by other trans people. She told me how “growing up queer in the south, you spend your life trying to prove you belong, prove that your existence has worth. I’ve always struggled when creating music because of this, because I felt the need to prove my worth as a person through art. But at Liberation Weekend, watching people who were just like me perform songs about experiences just like mine, surrounded by people who celebrated and cherished me for existing, I realized that my music didn’t have to do that. Anything I create matters because it is an extension of my life, a life that, despite the pain and anguish I’ve experienced, is beautiful.” In the weeks since Liberation Weekend, she told me she has started writing music and rededicated herself to learning both the guitar and drums.

Kicking things off for the evening session back at Black Cat was Adult Human Females. Their track “Tuck Tuck Goose” has the most sardonic approach to the realities of trans life in this country, with the line “Hiding in the bathroom / Creeping on the playground / It’s a drive-by grooming.” Sometimes we need to laugh through the oppression.

The standout set of Day 2 belonged to Brooklyn’s MX LONELY. Admittedly, this was mostly due to lead singer Rae Haas and their tendency to jump on top of large objects. What can I say? I’m a sucker for someone looking big and giant on stage. While performing “Big Hips,” they ascended to the top of their amp again as every member of this very Brooklyn-looking band would headbang in unison, long hair and mustaches flying everywhere, kind of like a Gen Z version of whatever the hell they were doing in that one Attack Attack! music video.

Following them was the Pacific Northwest dark and ethereal metal duo Ragana. They were loud and all-encompassing, which is deeply impressive to accomplish with just a guitar and drums. New York post-punkers Bambara took the stage after, providing some of the most oddly danceable post-punk I’ve heard in quite a while. Pissed Jeans followed, fronted by Matt Korvette, who was one of the most energetic frontmen I had ever seen. He began the set dressed in a too-big black long-sleeve that I suspect he wore just to flail the sleeves around wildly. Eventually, he’d lose the shirt as he careened back and forth across the stage. In one of the few moments of calm during a tuning break, he treated us to perhaps the most bizarre stage banter I’ve ever heard as Korvette began pointing at his fellow band members, asking us to guess which two had hemorrhoids. I don’t know if this is liberation, but it was funny as hell.

Closing out the evening was a solo performance by Devi McCallion, who commanded the space, using the entire room as her stage. McCallion stepped directly off the stage of Black Cat and into the crowd, imploring audience members to circle close around her. She began her set saying, “This song is dedicated to Charlie Kirk.” It was sadly not a cover of “We Are Charlie Kirk.”

April 26th – Day 3: In which Caroline learns about the South, wishes she could dodge parking tickets, and takes flight

I rolled up on my bike outside a small Ethiopian coffee shop just in time to catch Peach Rings as they were headed in to meet me. They hail from North Carolina, and I mean this in the nicest way possible… what a North-Carolina-ass-looking band. We’re talking Realtree hats, long, ratty punk hair, a rugged coolness to every single one of them. And here they are, talking to Caroline, the city slicker, in her Sydney Sweeney x Ford x Dickies collab khakis (listen, my friend gave them to me for free, and they look great). Despite this, they still think I’m cool, and lead singer Ramona Barton agrees to an interview on the back patio of the coffee shop. Peach Rings got started by making emo music about being trans. At least that’s what Ramona did back when this was a solo project by a 19-year-old girl. “With a song like ‘dream girl,’ which we're playing tonight, I wrote that at a time when I wanted nothing more than to not be trans. I've 180'd on that, but we still play it because I think it's a beautiful song and it captures a feeling. That was me at one point. It feels special to touch on that, and it also resonates with a lot of people who might be in that part of transition.”

Peach Rings, like Snowing, is yet another artist whose music has shaped my life in some small way. Her music helped me discover my own gender identity, with songs like “i'm going to be a girl for halloween” serving as a safe outlet for my confusing feelings about gender in college. Her music was liberating to me, and she is aware of how important it has been to people. She describes how “being a teenager and hearing a song that speaks to you is extremely important. We're not, like, a super successful band by any means, but having moms come to shows and say, ‘My 13-year-old daughter just came out, and your music means so much to her’ is extremely touching. It just makes me cry. To me, that is liberatory for someone younger than me.” Maybe liberation is loving yourself.

For Ramona, someone who is about six years into transition, liberation is “to just be able to live freely without bigotry around us. I shouldn't have to worry about going to the bathroom.” As harsher and harsher anti-trans laws are passed around the country (see Idaho’s bathroom ban law, which could result in life sentences for violators), trans people have simple requests. “We're just trying to hang out and exist, and they want us eradicated.”

Many of these laws are being passed in Southern and red states, but despite this Ramona is “very proud of being from the South and being a southerner,” explaining, “I think that there are obviously difficulties, and there are a lot of prejudiced people, but I also have had experiences back home with old conservative religious people who treat me as more of a woman than people in, say, New York have… All of our friends back home are trans people. There are lots of trans people in the South, and I think that is just overlooked because it's a red state.”

I appreciate having the influence and perspective of trans people outside of the Washington-Philly-New York core that largely makes up this festival. Especially after learning that Peach Rings just today released some new music with banjo on it, which this author welcomes with open arms. Peach Rings isn’t even the only southern trans band here, as they brought their friends in Motocrossed, who also hail from North Carolina. While this lineup is over-representative of Philly, NYC, and DC, trans musicians being able to thrive and create in places outside the traditional blue cities points towards a potential of what liberation could look like for trans people. A reality where, from the biggest metropolis to the smallest hamlets, there are thriving communities of trans and queer artists and musicians able to live in peace.

I was only able to catch a couple of sets at Transmission before needing to depart for my interview with Pool Kids, but this sampling did not disappoint. First was DC emogaze act Emotional World, whose delicately layered sound was enough to warm the frozen heart of this staunch shoegaze skeptic.

DC punk band Soul Meets Body were outstanding, delivering a ripping set of grungey punky tracks. Frontwoman Genevieve Moore controlled the stage as well as anyone at Black Cat or Transmission all weekend long with an undeniable swagger. They closed with “No Youth No Future,” suddenly turning into a seasoned hardcore band, making me dearly wish I had the energy to crowdkill my fellow dolls.

I don’t want to forget about the acts that closed things out at Transmission, Motocrossed, Latchkey Kids, Jade Weapon, and Peach Rings. Though I know every single one of those bands can, and did, put on an amazing show while I raced back over to Black Cat.

Hailing from Tallahassee, Florida, Pool Kids have been rising stars in the emo scene ever since releasing their cult classic debut, Music to Practice Safe Sex to. Their self-titled sophomore record began to add a more refined touch, cleaning up the rough edges of the first record and rounding out the two-piece into a full four-person setup. With the recent release of their third LP, Easier Said Than Done, Pool Kids has been leaning further into the poppy songwriting that we only heard glimpses of on their second album. Lead singer and guitarist Christine Goodwyne told me that “we sort of just keep trying to sound like Pool Kids without repeating ourselves.”

As their sound has changed, their philosophy has not, as bassist Nicolette Alvarez highlights how it’s “important to show up to things and be there as allies. Now more than ever, it's important to stand up and loudly and proudly say that we're here. We stand with trans people.” Christine shares how “If you don't clarify where you stand on that stuff, people who you don't agree with might be thinking that you actually are on their side.” Later that evening, when Pool Kids played, guitarist Andy Anaya would drape Christine in a trans pride flag, much to the delight of a raucous, almost out of breath crowd. I think it's clear where they stand.

Throughout the weekend, Pool Kids were the only band I interviewed, and one of the few bands on the entire bill, without an openly transgender member. Despite this, they still have a compelling vision of what liberation could look like. Drummer Caden Clinton provided the perfect white guy perspective on this. “Everybody gets to live the same life that I do. I'm a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, cis male. I will never get a speeding ticket, but it's not fair that all my other friends have to struggle with that.” Pool Kids are a perfect example of what allyship actually looks like.

I was lucky enough to catch Nicole Maroulis from Hit Like A Girl immediately after talking to Pool Kids. Much like me, Nicole was also pulling double duty at this weekend’s festival. Outside of their frontperson duties singing and playing guitar in Hit Like A Girl, Nicole is also executive director and one of the co-founders of No More Dysphoria – one of the two main beneficiaries of Liberation Weekend, along with Gender Liberation Movement.

When asked how they describe the organization, Maroulis explains that No More Dysphoria is ”a punk rock, mutual aid effort, where we essentially just directly give financial resources, aid, or assistance to people in the transgender, gender nonconforming communities.”

As I ushered them into the spare green room, grateful I could fit a quick chat in their busy schedule, I noticed that Nicole has the DIY punk look down to a T: an oversized septum piercing, tattoos spilling out of a long-sleeve flannel, and a mullet with the bangs dyed a bleach blonde. Nicole is DIY through and through, and the ethos of being a DIY musician has bled into their work at No More Dysphoria. “So the way a band normally starts is like you get a little group of friends. You write some songs. You make some T-shirts. You play some basement shows. The organization started kind of similarly with a group of friends. We made some T-shirts and sold them at my friend's basement shows in New Brunswick.”

After starting Hit Like a Girl, Nicole was able to “bring a mutual aid effort with us on tour in all these different cities and all these different communities, getting the word out there.”

This work can genuinely be life-saving, helping trans people secure housing, medication, and necessary medical care that they otherwise couldn’t get. I wanted to hear from Nicole exactly why this work matters, and they explained, “It is important to give money to trans people because we are so fucking at a disadvantage. The moment we were born, we were ahead of goddamn disadvantage because, unfortunately, everyone is actively working their hardest to fucking erase us and dismember our existence.” As they answered, I visibly saw them building with rage at the system. Nicole is a rare breed, someone who so genuinely, with every fiber of their body, wants to help their community, wants to give and help build a cycle that will support everyone. “Helping people is like such a crazy, radical idea, right? Because it's not directly servicing yourself or being selfish. I think that's like what a lot of society wants us to think you're supposed to do. ‘Just be selfish and only worry about yourself.’ But like that's just not at all how the world works, you know? I think of mutual aid as kind of like a cycle, so you need to give in order to get.”

”**I think of mutual aid as kind of like a cycle, so you need to give in order to get”**

– Nicole Maroulis, Hit Like A Girl

The way Nicole sees it, Liberation Weekend is helping provide money directly to this mutual aid cycle and also “creates a safe space for queer people to gather and to have this common ground. You're in a room with like-minded people, and you can relax your shoulders a little bit. That is such a small thing that a lot of cis people don't really think about. That is huge because you know you're gonna go to work tomorrow and probably get misgendered the next day. At least tonight I can be myself and, you know, the people around me are gonna respect me, and I know it.”

No More Dysphoria has become essential to who Nicole is, as they described how “mutual aid is really important to me because I really love helping people. It's a privilege that I have the resources and the capability to help people. It's important to me that, if you can, you should.”

Along with Max, there was no one else I wanted to hear more from about the actions we can take to help move us towards Liberation. Nicole shared that, “I think a good step that people can take, whether you're a musician or not, is just to keep the conversation going. How many bands in the middle of their set say 'fuck ICE' and 'free Palestine'? I hope a lot of them. The importance of it is that we bring it up and keep it fresh in our minds. There are probably going to be kids who are going to get inspired to go to protests because they watched you play and heard you speak. Those are kids that are going to go tell their conservative parents to fuck off because they were inspired by whatever you said to them.”

After wrapping up with Nicole, I made my way into the audience to catch the first act of the night, Pinky Lemon. Hailing from DC and Philly, they have long been stalwarts of the scene. Every chance I get to see them is a treat, and this occasion was no different.

One set later, Hit Like A Girl took the stage, and Nicole spoke with more passion and care than anyone else I met this weekend. It came out in their set, and it came out through the way they so fiercely advocated for the work No More Dysphoria is doing. They invited Miri Tyler and Mel Bleker from Pretty Bitter on stage to join the band for “Are You In Love.” Their set wrapped with “Dismay” from their hardcore EP Becoming, marking the second time today a group suddenly became a hardcore band right before my eyes. Nicole threw themselves into the crowd as the crowdkilling switch in my head was suddenly flipped. Before I knew it, my arms and limbs were flying around me in a whirlwind with no care for who may be near me. Maybe this is liberation.

Pretty Bitter took the stage shortly after Hit Like a Girl for what promised to be a triumphal performance. As was shared by one of the front people, Miri, in an interview shortly after, “this is our last DC show for a little bit. We are moving to Chicago in early July. And it is really, really powerful how much love and energy exists in the city and exists in this very, very special scene.”

The energy in the crowd made it apparent that Pretty Bitter are truly hometown heroes, and heroes to trans people across the entire East Coast. During their final song, “The Damn Thing Is Cursed,” I found myself next to July Brown from Crush Fund, screaming the words at each other. Mel and Miri simply radiate energy from the stage, while guitarist Kira Campbell and drummer Jason Hayes are two of the most effortlessly cool and talented people I have ever seen. Pretty Bitter exuded confidence, but they were feeling much more than just confidence. As Mel shared, “I started the set in tears. By the end of it, I was feeling so much love and joy that it was still tears, but it wasn't sad tears.”

Punctuating the set was a moment at the end of “The Damn Thing is Cursed” when Mel announced a special guest was coming on stage. I saw peering out of the corner of my eye, none other than Bailey “thisdogllhunt” Payne. On bringing up Bailey, Mel shared, “If there is anyone that we could pass the proverbial torch to, it is this woman. We got to meet her through the scene. We snuck her into a show we were playing in Baltimore because she wanted to take photos and didn't have a ticket, so we snuck her in the back of a church, and then we just became best friends. She became one of the most important people in my life, but also she is so infinitely important to this city and to the scene, so when we were talking about who to bring up, it was no question.”

As Mel announced their special guest, Bailey stormed onto the stage, wrapping Mel in the warmest of embraces before Mel leaped into the crowd to finish singing the final chorus, Bailey dancing around, eventually welcoming Mel back with a warm embrace, both in tears. I always tell people that DC's scene is tight-knit, that we always love each other and show up for one another. I don’t think there is clearer evidence than this.

I asked Miri what the DC scene can do for bands, and she shared, “I think that this scene lifts up its members and shares resources. All the things we are able to do, it's all because bands were nice to us when we first started out, and bands gave us invaluable information about how to do this thing.”

No set during the weekend felt more “liberatory” to me than the firestorm that Pretty Bitter unleashed that Sunday night. The pure love displayed on stage made me truly proud to be a Washingtonian, to be a musician, and to be a trans woman. They also used their time to share genuinely radical positions on liberation, proclaiming, “Material aid makes our lives better. It lets us be safe. Talk about trans people in rooms that trans people aren’t in. Money doesn’t fix everything, but it does fix a lot of things.”

After their set, Mel and Miri would share with me that they have “been in situations where we have used No More Dysphoria to make sure that we did not lose our housing.” It can be sobering remembering how many of us are constantly living on the razor’s edge. We are often in unsafe situations financially, physically, and emotionally. It’s why Mel believes liberation is “Safety. Trans liberation means that all of my friends, all of my family, are safe, supported, and not in distress.” Miri added, “It's the safety to just exist as who you are and not having to explain yourself and not having to feel like you're going to be ridiculed for it on the street, in any public space, or even private space. All those things are the groundwork for happiness.”

Echoing sentiments shared by Max on Saturday, Miri continued, adding, “trans liberation doesn't happen without black liberation. It doesn't happen without Palestinian liberation. It doesn't happen without the liberation of all working-class people. It's all tied in because the fascists only want one thing, and that's all of us dead.”

To get to this liberation, Mel believes that if “you bring people into a room, I think that you associate liberation with freedom and with happiness, and you act like you're already there because here you are. It's a good way to collectively imagine the world that we could all share together in the future. Miri added, “In a much more sort of material way, it introduces people to organizations and mutual aid funds and efforts that are happening in their community that they might not have known about.”

“Trans liberation doesn't happen without black liberation. It doesn't happen without Palestinian liberation. It doesn't happen without the liberation of all working-class people”

– Miri Tyler

With this being their final hometown show for the foreseeable future, I wanted to know if these hometown heroes have any lessons to leave for the scene. “Be excellent to each other.” Perfectly put, Mel. “If you have a chance to share and lift someone else up, you should take every single opportunity that you have, because you might meet some of your best friends by doing that.”

As for Miri’s lesson, “I think the thing that makes this scene so cool is that a lot of these bands in this city don't feel like we're in competition with each other – we're in collaboration with each other. I think just keep that in mind, don't feel like you have to compete, you know? Just be collaborative.”

Following Pretty Bitter was the brilliant Pom Pom Squad, who vacillated between sweet bubble-punk and delicate ballads. One moment, front woman Mia Berrin would be dancing with cheerleader pom poms, and the next be on her knees, screaming to the heavens.

Ezra Furman took the stage next, and while I sadly missed most of the set while talking to Miri and Mel, what I caught was excellent. Her soft touch transforms the pain of transness into something romantic and grandiose. She closed with the song “Book of Our Names,” which she has described as a protest song against an empire that wants us dead. It is triumphant and defiant, calling for trans people to be known and remembered by our chosen names. She demonstrates that power and righteousness don’t necessarily have to be accompanied by overdriven guitars and pounding drums.

Finally, it was time for Pool Kids with the last set of the night. They closed out the festival with “Conscious Uncoupling,” the raucous opener from their 2022 self-titled. I started cutting through the crowd, a speeding car weaving through traffic as I made my way to the front of the stage. I locked eyes with Mel from Pretty Bitter as we screamed the lyrics with each other. The signs at Black Cat might have said no stage diving or crowd surfing, but I had no interest in listening to this sign during the final song of the festival. Neither Mel nor Nicole had respected it, so why should I? So I swung my leg up onto the stage, launching myself first up, then out into the awaiting crowd.

I was floating. Screaming my head off, held aloft by my trans brothers and sisters. An eternity passed. By the time I finally hit the ground, my legs were vibrating, adrenaline coursing through my veins, my heart a redlining engine. I felt invincible. I believe I was. If that wasn’t liberation, I don’t know what is.

Caroline Liaupsin is a DC area radio host and musician. She’s live every other Tuesday from 2–4 PM EST on WOWD-LP bringing you the hottest new DIY tracks, interviews with artists, show previews, and features on the world of DIY in DC and beyond. When she’s not too busy she writes biweekly DIY show previews and other things on her substack. She also plays bass for a trans cowpunk band called thisdogllhunt.

April 27, 2026

Quippy in Queens: An Interview with Nick Zander of Equipment

April 27, 2026/ Taylor Grimes

When Samuel and I show up at Two Worlds Recording Studio in Queens, New York, we happen to be approaching the front door right as studio owner Billy Mannino and Equipment frontman Nick Zander are stepping out to the street. The two of them were making a quick run to the market across the street for some toiletries, and the two of us were happy to tag along to get a further taste of the Whitestone neighborhood. This funny timing is the latest in a long series of serendipities that had to fall into place for this interview to happen. On my end, I happened to be in New York at the same time as the group, photographer Samuel Leon happened to be available to snap some pics, and the band was kind enough to let the two of us into the studio as they were putting together their forthcoming third LP.

We joined the pair as they selected items from the store’s rear wall, where illuminated cooler shelves had been repurposed to house a wide array of cleaning supplies and laundry detergents. We shot the shit as they checked out and returned to Two Worlds, which sits at the end of a long, liminal hallway of similar studio spaces.

If it wasn’t clear immediately upon entering, Two Worlds Studio is hallowed emo ground. Framed on the wall are vinyl LPs from local legends like Oso Oso and Macseal, as well as more recent additions to the Emo Canon like String Theory by TRSH and That’s What Friends Are For, the three-way split from saturdays at your place, Summerbruise, and SHOPLIFTER. On nearby shelves sit more yet-to-be-framed recent releases from Kerosene Heights and red sun. Equipment are already among these ranks; over the last couple of years, they recorded their two Drink Singles “tequila redbull” and “espresso lemonade” with Mannino, as well as last year’s surprise EP First time using slang.

Under the watchful eye of a crocheted Mr. Met figurine and surrounded by cases of Yerba Mate cans, I picked Nick’s brain about Equipment’s mindset going into this new record, how the last few years have treated them, and what it’s like scaling their touring operation from DIY spaces to larger rooms.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

SWIM: First off, thanks for having us in the studio. I’ve loved the Drink Singles and First time using slang. It seems like the response to those has been great. Has dropping those smaller one-offs helped shape this new album in any way?

NICK: I would say those are the two extremes. There’s poppy Equipment, I would say “tequila redbull” and “espresso lemonade” is that, and then it got pretty weird on our last EP. I think some people were like, ‘I don’t know about this version of Equipment,’ and I’m okay with that because I don’t think it’s representative of the band as a whole. All the pieces of Equipment’s past are gonna be in the next record. I do think it is the weirdest one so far, but hopefully should flow the best.

SWIM: That’s awesome. I was curious if there were any genres that you’re hoping people start ascribing to the band with this new LP, or any new sounds that y’all are trying to pull through a little bit more? I mean, I don’t even think it’s fair to say Equipment has been “full emo” for the last few years. There’s pop-punk and indie stuff, but is there anything that you guys are consciously trying to pull in that feels new genre-wise or influence-wise?

BILLY: There’s so little emo on this record.

SWIM: I would say, as an arc, that you guys have been pointed that way for a while.

BILLY: Equipment is an indie rock band.

NICK: Yeah. I think it goes quite a few places on this album that are like… I dunno about “more emotional,” but the thing is, most music genres have emotion in them. If someone were to look up ‘Midwest emo playlist,’ I think there’s like one, maybe two songs on this record that would fit, and even then, it’d be fake emo.

SWIM: As coined by Summerbruise. Yeah. No, that’s great.

NICK: I’m trying to think of what songs they would even be. There are a few tap riffs here and there, but mainly, we were like, ‘How do we make guitars sound cool and have it be catchy?’ How do we trick people into thinking something is catchy when it’s written like brain vomit?

This is maybe the worst news to certain people, but more like 2000s Indie. There’s even a song that’s like MGMT vibes a little bit, which is kind of crazy. There is more synth on this record, but it’s not like delving into actual pop music necessarily; it’s more like we’re trying to keep that catchy side that people who like Equipment like.

SWIM: Who’s playing synth?

NICK: We haven’t laid down any yet. There’s a scratch in there, but it’ll just be me on the record. We don’t know what we’re gonna do in concert yet.

SWIM: Okay. That’s exciting.

NICK: Penny [Guarantee] is flying in on Friday, and we’ll be back-and-forth doing guitars. There aren’t defined lead or rhythm parts. It’s just like, ‘Penny, do you wanna do this part?’ or Penny will be like, ‘Nick, I don’t want to record this part, but here’s my idea.’ We’re sort of just like a committee of guitar.

SWIM: I feel like even live, y’all trade off pretty well. I think the last time I saw Equipment (other than the Swarmyard acoustic set) was at Fauxchella, and you were both locked in. It was a lot of fun to see the guitar trade-off, and Penny adds so much to the shredding and stage presence. I think that’s cool that comes through on the record too.

NICK: Yeah, and live who’s to say who’s actually gonna play what? There are many parts I recorded that Penny now plays and vice versa. Penny actually played bass on Alt. Account, ‘cause they were still the bassist at the time, but everything since “tequila redbull” has been full-band.

Jake [Pachasa] is our drummer, who already recorded drums in July. He’s running sound for Mat Kerekes’ band right now on tour, so he’s doing his thing. It’s just a super busy time because we’re doing this record, Jake’s on tour, then we’re going on tour with Wonder Years, and then right after that we’re touring with Dear Maryanne. Then, after I get back from that tour, we are moving from Denver to Cleveland.

SWIM: That’s awesome. Good for y’all.

NICK: A lot of shit going on. Not a lot of money coming in at the moment, but that’s okay.

SWIM: Well, hopefully tour swings things back a little. Maybe the new album will help, but yeah, a lot of logistics and moving parts. That’s very cool, though.

SWIM: What was on your mind most going into this record? I’m thinking about Alt. Account, and I feel like that was such a concerted effort to do “a record” in contrast to Ruthless Sun, so what would you say is the biggest thing that you’re keeping in your head?

NICK: I think we wanted to wait until we had enough energy to not half-ass it. I feel the same way about how the album is presented after it’s recorded, too. I think that is equally important to recording it and writing. I think a lot of what made Alt. Account special was our relationship with our listeners at that point, the album art, the singles we picked, the music videos, the whole concept.

SWIM: Yeah. Very intentional.

NICK: I think I was getting lost in the noise a little bit. I was thinking about what people might want or what might get us more listeners, and I’m glad I haven’t really compromised any of that. Instead of scratching Equipment and moving on to, not a different band necessarily, but like a different version of Equipment, I’ve just decided that we should take what we already have and let our weaknesses be our strengths, you know? Like people saying, “this isn’t emo!” Now I’m just sort of saying I don’t care anymore.

You know, we’re in the emo scene, but I don’t feel like I need to be whinier in the songs. I don’t feel like I need to get better at guitar tapping; everyone’s already really good at guitar tapping. I feel like people like Equipment because of the lyrics and the choruses and the chemistry in the band and the spirit. I don’t think we need to conform; if anything, we should just keep going, and if it doesn’t work, then I guess it just doesn’t work, you know?

SWIM: Yeah. I love that.

NICK: But you know, it’s a risk.

SWIM: Yeah, I’m picking up what you’re putting down. That’s cool.

SWIM: Billy, I guess you'd better close your ears for this one. I view Equipment very much as existing on a spectrum. I have a playlist of y’all’s songs that remind me of Death Cab for one reason or another, including those covers, and, to me, there’s a spectrum for this band with blink-182 on one side and Death Cab on the other.

If you got the chance to do the next record or next EP or a one-off single with Chris Walla or someone from blink’s camp, who would you pick?

NICK: Definitely not fucking Travis Barker. Are you kidding me?

SWIM: [Laughs] You could do Mark Hoppus if you want, he does some production stuff.

NICK: He did produce Motion City soundtrack…

SWIM: Yeah. So that’s kind of up Quippy’s alley.

NICK: I don’t think either of them really know anything anymore. Which is okay, they did what they needed to do.

SWIM: But if they reached out and were like, ‘I love your stuff. I wanna record something’ you’d just stick to what you’re doing, which is cool.

NICK: Well, that’s really tough, ‘cause obviously the dollar signs are working with blink-182.

SWIM: Yeah, yeah. You could be opening for MGK next tour, for all you know…

NICK: [Laughs] Ugh, true. I think MGK has more money than Ratboys, I would argue, so if I wanted more money… That’s tough, but actually it’s not really.

SWIM: Well, it sounds like your answer would be neither, so that’s totally fair.

NICK: No, I would work with Chris Walla for sure.

BILLY: I bring that up more than anybody that you should bring Chris Walla into the studio.

NICK: Yeah, Billy wants a collab.

SWIM: Get him in here!

BILLY: I wanna do an Equipment co-production with Chris Walla so bad.

SWIM: I think that would rock.

NICK: That’s the one thing that would bring Billy to Seattle for five months.

BILLY: No, I won’t.

NICK: Just kidding. I dunno if that would get him off the East Coast. And bring Chris from, uh, Norway.

No, I don’t think I would really like… Okay. Don’t– Travis Barker’s gonna see this now. Let me rephrase my answer… I think for our future music, I see Chris Walla as a more appropriate option.

SWIM: [Laughs] Okay. That’s a very, uh, political answer.

NICK: [Laughs] That’s gonna be the most boring answer.

SWIM: I swear I’m not doing this to make you look bad; this isn’t Gotcha DIY journalism.

NICK: It just came to mind how Travis Barker apparently sometimes does reach out to bands.

SWIM: Really?

NICK: Watch him see this and be like ‘fuck these people.’

SWIM: He does seem like he follows some stuff, but also he’s married to a Kardashian and busy and probably working on, like, a Vitaminwater collab, so I don’t think he’s fully with it like that. But you never know.

NICK: That’s a good spectrum, though. We always talk about that in the studio. I think I would say the two ends are like… yeah, blink and Death Cab are great. Somewhere in the middle is like Weezer and Elliot Smith.

SWIM: Okay, yeah. We’ll get a full grid going by the end of this like a political spectrum.

BILLY: That’s honestly such a large part of the conversation here is trying to figure that out.

SWIM: Well, I hear a ton of Death Cab, but I’m from Portland too, so I just feel like I’m drawn to that kind of cloudiness. I think that was all over the last EP, specifically. I could just hear that a ton, especially the last song, which I loved. Are you guys cooking up any more seven-minute tracks?

NICK: No, this is all pop music now.

SWIM: [Laughs] Okay. All right. Cool, cool.

NICK: Just kidding. But, yeah, I would say that this song that we’re about to record might be the most pop-punk on the record, but there’s absolutely more Death Cabby moments than ever throughout the whole album.

SWIM: Cool. Love that.

SWIM: Going back to the two Drink Singles, you have said that you just planned to do those two, but was there ever a third beverage concoction that you guys had in mind, or one that people had pitched to you?

NICK: I’ve heard some good ones pitched. The funniest one I can’t even remember if we came up with or not, but I think it was “Malort root beer” or something. “Root beer reposado,” but that’s tequila as well. But no, we didn’t really have any plans to do another drink song.

BILLY: It was just those two, and then you’re done.

NICK: Within the band, I had thought about striking while the iron was hot, like I could write a full Blue Album vibe of drink songs, and we could just put it out. Then, within the band, I think Jake specifically was like, ‘You know, we got a record being written right now, we should probably just focus on that.’ But I’m always like, ‘oh, what if we did this type of album to transition into doing that kind of album.’

I mean, it’s still in the running that we could do just a power pop 30-minute banger that is like the drink songs, but I don’t think we have any plans to. In fact, “espresso lemonade” wasn’t even the plan; that kind of came in later. There was gonna be a B-side to “tequila redbull,” but that B-side is actually now gonna be on this record.

SWIM: What city are you talking about in “espresso lemonade”? Was there a specific place in mind? It’s pretty visual, so I was just wondering what you’re tapping into.

NICK: There’s definitely vibes of New York, because, I mean…

SWIM: It’s expensive.

NICK: Recording here is kind of fun, just going into Manhattan and basically living that espresso lemonade lifestyle. We had moved to Denver shortly before. I had been living in Denver for a decent amount of time before that song was fully written, but it was pretty inspired by that. Denver’s such a cushy place; it’s expensive, but it’s very much that kind of vibe.

SWIM: Yeah. A little off-putting.

NICK: With some of the lyrics, I was trying to reference specific parks or whatever, and the rhymes wouldn’t work out. I did find a coffee shop by a park called Eleanor Park in Houston, or something, and I almost said “spot by Eleanor,” but I feel like that wasn't as forward a lyric as “on Eleanor.”

Now it’s funny because, I won’t specify who, but there is an Eleanor [street] that a very close friend lives on, so I’m there often, and it’s funny because they’re the spot on Eleanor now. So it’s an amalgamation to answer your question.

SWIM: Cool. Yeah, that’s sick.

NICK: I hope to give another three-page answer for the next question.

SWIM: For First time using slang, you had alluded to that EP essentially being a writing exercise based on the album art, which was originally just a picture someone just had sent you guys, but then you went and turned it into those three songs, including the three-act structure of that last one. How did that materialize?

NICK: I’m a fan of people who fully embrace the fact that we live in a time where bands can interact with their fans instantly online. I think a lot of bands either pretend not to see it at all, or they do it too much, but I like doing it just enough. I think, considering Equipment’s sort of like, uh, cult… community? I don’t wanna say “following,” it’s community. But because of that, I’m able to post something, and people interact with it; there’s no mystery there, but it’s rarely intersected with the actual releases so far. Kind of on the same train, Death Grips has done stuff like that in their heyday, just subverting expectations.

When we first saw that picture that became the cover art, we shared it and were just like “lol,” but we knew that no one was gonna expect us to write a whole EP about it, including the person who took the photo. I was like, ‘You know, I have all these random ideas in my head right now, and I kind of think that I just need somewhere for them to go while I’m writing this record.’

SWIM: Yeah. That’s cool.

NICK: And you know, I really like EPs in general, that’s how Equipment kind of got our footing. It’s fun approaching an EP as if it’s a record, ‘cause you can fully flesh it out. I would say First time using slang has its own vibe. Even though all the songs are a little bit different, you can kind of tell it’s us just trying stuff.

SWIM: Yeah. It felt a little more spur-of-the-moment. That’s cool.

NICK: And it was fun—just such a weird album cover, tracklist on the front. I always like that, I think it’s interesting when bands do that.

SWIM: Yeah. I’m sure the person who took that photo was geeked to be immortalized in that way.

NICK: Yeah. They were pretty stoked. I don’t even know their name. I asked how to credit them, and they just told me the name of their band, which is little field.

SWIM: Last year, I caught about two hours of your three-hour all-request acoustic set and thought that rocked. It was cool seeing you, Penny, and Ellie [Hart] reinterpret those songs. Would y’all ever do a full-on acoustic album, or is that too pop-punk to be doing acoustic renditions of stuff?

NICK: This sounds so jaded, but I think it’s just realistic. If we were more popular by now, I would highly consider it, but I think it’s kind of bad to rest on your laurels when you’re still a growing band.

I think of this tour we’re about to go on with The Wonder Years, and every single night we’re gonna be a new band to like a thousand people. So for them to go to your Spotify and the first thing they see is an acoustic album of old songs, which could be weird and bad for growing.

However, I have toyed with doing an album tentatively titled “Versions For Grandma.” Because I think the core of Equipment songs is actually pretty palatable. Just making really pleasant Sufjan Stevens-esque versions of all the songs could be pretty fire, but I don’t know if that’d come out as Equipment or a Nick solo thing. I would probably just want to live in those arrangements and do it all… not myself, but I could see it as more of a solo endeavor, even if it would be like an Equipment release. Or we would do it all as a unit. We don’t really have any plans. I will say I have thought more and more about acoustic touring between bigger tours.

SWIM: I mean, it’s cool to see those songs done that way, and that’s how the band started more or less too. But yeah, that makes sense, you don’t wanna return to the well that early.

NICK: I would love to eventually.

SWIM: Equipment has been on some pretty mega tour lineups in the last few years: Free Throw, Cloud Nothings, The Wonder Years. What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned from touring at that scale? Are there any things you saw and balked at and affirmed your decision to keep things at a more DIY scale?

NICK: I’m grateful that, up until this point, we haven’t had to pay a merch cut. I think that’s about to change in less than a month, unfortunately, but hopefully, a lot of venues will look the other way for the support acts.

I think one of the most intimidating tours was Cloud Nothings, not because there would be so many people there, they were all well-attended shows, but it wasn’t like, “oh my God, I’m nervous, all these people,” it’s more that they take the artistry of their music very seriously. I’m not saying any other band that we’ve toured with doesn’t do that, but one thing that the emo scene has going for it is a lack of pretentiousness. No one in Cloud Nothings is pretentious; they’re just writing the music they feel like at any given moment. It just so happens to be more indie-leaning than emo-leaning. It’s a little bit of a darker shade than if you go see a band like Equipment at Faux, where we are like making jokes on stage and leaning into that sort of blink-182 energy we talked about earlier.

It’s hard to be the chameleon that tries to fit in with each sort of band that we’re opening for. I think a good example of synergy with that sort of silly energy was when we toured with Origami Angel because a lot of the ethos of their songs is more carefree, youthful, and nostalgic. Then on the flip side, when we toured the whole country with Mat Kerekes last year, we had a song or two in the setlist that, in hindsight, didn’t make that much sense considering the bill, and I think hurt us more than helped us. So it’s almost like deciding what side of yourself to show is the real puzzle when opening for bigger bands.

SWIM: That was actually a perfect segue, ‘cause the last thing I was gonna ask is tied to what you mentioned earlier about this Wonder Years tour and thinking about how this is the first time all these people are seeing the band potentially. Safe to assume that’s most of the crowd, so how are y’all approaching the set list? It sounds like you’re pretty aware of your perception and the shades of indie rock and pop-punk. I think that Equipment fits into a lot of those buckets super nicely, so how do y’all play that up or decide what’s gonna be part of the set list?

NICK: I think, thankfully, with the Wonder Years, we won’t be punished for playing into our pop-punk side. We were considering cutting “Raptured Trax, pt. 2” from our set list relatively permanently just because we don’t know how representative it is of us going forward, but we figured this is a popular song, and this is probably the crowd that would like the song more than any other tour we’ve opened for, so that got added back in.

I think it would be a mistake to treat our next tour as the promo tour for First time using slang because it is such a niche release in our catalog, so we’re actually just pulling what we view as the best songs from our whole discography. Just a good in-between of what’s popular, what we like to play, and what we think we sound best playing.

SWIM: I’m trying to think of a suitable way to end this that’s not just spilling the beans on the new album or just ‘come catch us on tour,’ but just a way to point towards the future a little bit and what y’all are gearing up for in 2026.

NICK: We’re being pretty transparent about the album, or at least as much as we know. I can say that we’re gonna wait until it feels right to release it and, you know, the vision of the album, when all that stuff that explains everything is ready, that’s when it’ll come out.

I really do understand people who think first time using slang or even “tequila red bull” are a downgrade from our other stuff. I think that’s subjective, but I think everything we’ve gone through as a band has led up to this record. For now, I can say that anyone who thinks that this album is worse than any of our old albums, I would say this will be the wrongest they’ve been about that opinion.

March 18, 2026

An Interview… But it’s Midwest Emo: A Conversation with the Founders of Emocon

March 18, 2026/ Braden Allmond

I’m always a little embarrassed to tell people I listen to emo music. Normally, I just prefer to say a few band names that I’ve been listening to lately and bury the lead until I know I can start saying things like “midwest emo revival,” “twinkledaddies,” or “Senff-Core.” Outside of college campuses, emo is often flattened into a 2000s genre primarily meant for tweens who wear black jeans, which seems pretty silly to obsess about.

Since its inception in the mid-80s, emo has had a bit of a credibility issue. As a relatively new genre with an ever-broadening sound, people seem to prefer to treat emo music and its surrounding culture as a flavor of punk or alternative. This fails to acknowledge unique aspects of the genre and prevents deeper cultural understanding and scholarship.

This year, Varun Chandrasekhar (Washington University in St. Louis) and Patrick Mitchell (University of Cincinnati) are changing that. Together, they masterminded a first-of-its-kind conference at WashU in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 10th and 11th, dubbed “A Conference… but It’s Midwest(ern) Emo” or Emocon for short. With the help of nearly 40 researchers from across the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Czech Republic, they are changing the game for emo scholarship in academia. They’ve also secured two incredible keynote speakers for the conference: Dan Ozzi, author of SELLOUT: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994-2007), and Steve Lamos, the drummer and trumpet player for American Football, who is also an associate professor of writing and rhetoric at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

I was lucky enough to chat with Varun and Patrick to learn how they met, what they think emo is—beyond music—and how they put this conference together. We also touch on topics in academia, such as topical timeliness, overcoming credibility gaps, dealing with missing data, and removing barriers to access.

The full interview is provided below, edited down for length and clarity.

SWIM: Thank you both so much for agreeing to sit down to talk about this upcoming conference. To get started, could you each say a little bit about yourselves and how the two of you met?

PATRICK: I’ve been doing graduate work at the University of Cincinnati for five years. I did my master’s work here at UC, and I’m currently a PhD candidate at CCM [College-Conservatory of Music at UC].

VARUN: I’m a fifth-year PhD candidate in music theory at Washington University in St. Louis, [Missouri], where the conference will be hosted.

PATRICK: I knew Varun as like a micro-celebrity in the pop music scholarship world on Twitter before I knew him in person. Back when Twitter was still hanging on to any threads of relevance. But yeah, I met Varun at a Q&A for one of my papers at a conference in Minneapolis. We just hit it off, and it was at that conference that we jokingly pitched the idea of Emocon.

VARUN: Yeah, we met each other at the International Association for the Study of Popular Music Conference (IASPM). What we were talking about then was this generation of people who grew up with bands like Fall Out Boy, Dashboard Confessional, Paramore—or emo revival and fourth wave to some extent—now sort of being the age to have a PhD or be writing a dissertation.

This is something that really means a lot to me and I think is really important, so we had just been trying to plant a seed to get this conference to happen, and then a couple of grants came back favorably, and, uh, here we are.

SWIM: When was this conference that you’re talking about in Minneapolis?

PATRICK: Summer of ’23, I believe.

SWIM: Wow, okay. So this idea has been in the works.

VARUN: We had been thinking about it for a while. IASPM, the US chapter, had a couple of calls for funding ideas, and we had tried them, and we struck out twice. Then WashU had what they call a “Redefining Doctoral Education” grant that was provided on behalf of the Mellon Foundation, and we were very fortunate to get that.

SWIM: That’s amazing. Thank you guys for continuing to try at it. Can you say the name of your conference? I’m going to ask you to elaborate on the title for those of us who might not be so online.

VARUN: So the conference is called “A Conference… but It’s Midwest(ern) Emo.” If you’re not familiar—well, first off, in the Midwestern emo tradition especially, often what you will get is a band taking a clip from a show and then playing what people often refer to as a “twinkle riff” underneath it. A really foundational one is the Mom Jeans one with Bob’s Burgers. What people do on the internet then is, they’ll take these clips, often of very sad moments from TV shows or movies, and they’ll play a twinkly Midwest emo riff underneath it. It’s sort of this comedic mismatch and context collapse. They’re very funny, they’re on the internet, and there are a million of ’em you can find.

@benquadok Can u hear the second guitar I dubbed in? #midwestemo #emo #fifthwaveemo #diyemo #poppunk #mathrock #telecaster #guitar #riff ♬ original sound - benquadok

SWIM: Nice. And you thought naming the conference in this format would be… good? [laughing] for its reach?

VARUN: We thought it would get the people who we wanted to come, to come.

SWIM: Oh, definitely, I think it hits the right audience. So, you’re both music researchers. Can I ask what your working dissertation titles are—if you have one—and how does emo specifically fit into them?

PATRICK: Sooo, working dissertation title… [laughs] My dissertation is on emo, and—this is not a unique stance at all but—I’m looking at third-wave emo in the context of post-9/11 US. But what I’m really interested in are the contradictions and displays of counterculture in a post-subcultural music industry.

SWIM: [confused eyebrows]

PATRICK: So, you know, counterculture and mainstream culture are essentially the same after the ’90s. So, I am looking at how third-wave emo used its mainstream platform to speak back to the status quo, but also at how it used the status quo for its own corporate and commercial gains.

SWIM: I gotcha. So this conference slots right in there.

PATRICK: Oh yeah. And we’re so lucky to have so many papers that talk about emo and 9/11. I think this is a great opportunity for music studies to get into post-9/11 studies, which is a really, really robust academic field that is now 25 years after the attacks. We can now really treat this time period with the academic vigor that it needs.

I don’t necessarily remember 9/11, just my age, I thought it was a tornado drill. So I didn’t necessarily understand the cultural significance at the time, but I lived in that world afterwards, and I think emo is a great avenue to study this really consequential decade, which not only had a paradigm shift in the US, but a global paradigm shift that just completely rewrote the way we interact with the rest of the world.

SWIM: Yeah, absolutely. And, Varun, what about you? What’s your thesis title?

VARUN: My thesis title is Being in Jazz: An Existential Analysis of Charles Mingus. So, that reads the life and music of Charles Mingus through the lens of Sartre and existentialism to discuss the way that the often racialized, commercialized, and urbanized gaze of jazz bands on jazz musicians limited their freedoms, and how that speaks to discourses of freedom in a post-World-War-II America. So, very little to do with emo. [Laughter]

Although I do maintain Charles Mingus would like emo, and I’m happy to talk about why that is the case. But, yeah, I’d also been pursuing this idea of, what can I say about emo music in my other projects, class essays, and doing some conference presentations about it, so it’s sort of morphed into these two scholarly fields that I was pursuing.

SWIM: I gotcha. Really interesting. Since we’re talking about emo a lot and since a lot of people have different definitions, even for the same genre, can I ask each of you to just give a quick boilerplate definition of emo and any bands you might point to as an example?

VARUN: … you’re gonna get people mad at us.

PATRICK: Well, what I think is fascinating about emo is that it’s difficult to define sonically because the waves are so disparate. You know… [exasperated sigh]

SWIM: What I’m asking is really like a positionality statement. I think the issue with emo discourse is that a lot of people don’t say what they think emo is, and then they argue with other people, and they don’t even have a baseline that they agree on. So I’m asking, what is your baseline definition of emo? And you’re right, sonically, it’s really difficult to say anything, but I imagine there are some other interesting things.

VARUN: I would say Matthew Carillo-Vincent provides probably the best understanding of it in his article “Wallflower Masculinities and the Peripheral Politics of Emo” (2013) where he says emo is defined as a normative critique of normativity that uses performances of non-hegemonic masculinity to challenge hegemonic masculinity, but while still embracing hegemonic identities—you know, your sort of straight, upper-middle-class white man. It often reflects as a critique of sub-hegemonic cultures, such as hardcore cultures.

And so I think that is probably the social position of emo, and why a lot of people will say things like, “Everything is emo now; your grandmother’s emo.” That’s one category of it. I think there are some roots in the hardcore tradition that have to be present. I would say there is a certain vocal styling: the sort of whiny, nasally, upper register. And then a certain alt-rock, loud-soft dynamic. I think those are probably getting most everything there. I don’t know, Patrick, what would you say?

PATRICK: Yeah, I think you’re spot on with the voice. And—not that blink-182 is necessarily emo—but when people make a caricature of the emo voice, they often think of Tom DeLonge’s voice. And I think especially of vocal drawls, like the over-pronunciation of certain words or the under-pronunciation of certain words, is really a clear indicator of the genre. If that vocal drawl isn’t necessarily present in a song that could go either way, you lean towards emo, so I think the voice is a huge, huge part of that.

VARUN: And to that, Patrick—I’ve thought about this, and Braden, you might have an opinion too—what band do you think if you asked everyone who self-identified as an emo fan, “is this band emo?” would get the most votes, assuming that person knows the band.

SWIM: Yeah, this is a really tricky thing with selection bias because—I mean, MCR, Fall Out Boy, Paramore, the big three—obviously everyone knows those are “emo.” But part of the aesthetic and actual social impact of emo bands is that they’re countercultural. They’re undercurrents. They’re DIY. They’re not played on the radio. It’s not something your mom has ever heard.

So, this metric of “what is emo? Oh, it’s the thing that everyone calls emo.” That’s not the most stable because emo is scene-specific. I think that’s also how you get waves and amazing things like Florida-specific emo bands. Like, Hot Water Music was doing its own little thing for years, and eventually it rose up into the rest of the United States. I don’t know if I want to say that Hot Water Music is emo, but they’re influential within the emo scene.

*FROM TOM MULLEN’S WEBSITE “IS THIS BAND EMO?*”

VARUN: Well, that’s the interesting thing, ‘cause—speaking of Florida bands—Dashboard Confessional might be the most [emo]. If you liked that music in the early two thousands, you probably knew “Hands Down” or “Vindicated.” If you’re really into the hardcore scene and like the emo outgrowth of it, you probably respect Chris Carrabba having at least some tie sonically to that scene. But also saying “Dashboard Confessional is the quintessential emo band,” I don’t know if that sits right with me—and I love Dashboard Confessional.

PATRICK: Reading through early music critics, when it was really clear to them that emo was not just a flash in the pan but was going to be a lasting youth subcultural phenomena, the two quintessential emo bands they identified were Dashboard Confessional and The Get Up Kids.

VARUN: Really?

PATRICK: When we think of these “genre-defining” groups [like MCR, FOB, Paramore], they really hadn’t burst onto the scene yet. In the early 2000s, when you thought about emo, you thought about Dashboard Confessional and The Get Up Kids.

The Get Up Kids were a band that I didn’t really know when I was an emo fan growing up. It was one of those that I feel was submerged underneath the mainstream craze of third-wave emo. That could also be a time period thing; at the turn of the century, you have the lingering effects of Midwest emo and the beginnings of third-wave as well.

VARUN: It’s interesting ‘cause I thought you were going to say Jimmy Eat World, but that’s also somewhat of a reconstruction because, from what I understand of the late 90s/early-2000 scenes, people weren’t really considering Jimmy Eat World an emo band, and now I don’t know if anyone contests that.

SWIM: Yeah, and Jimmy Eat World is also an interesting example because their two chart-toppers are hits that my mom does actually know. And that album is also a 9/11 thing—it was going to be titled Bleed American, but then it was titled Jimmy Eat World, and then they changed the title back several months later.

And a lot of emo people that I talk to are like “yeah, that album’s great, but you should really listen to Clarity,” which came out several years before. That album has a foot in the door of second wave, whereas their thing that brought them to the mainstream is actually closer to third wave. Not necessarily vocally, but just its proximity. It’s more related to those bands that you hear playing in the mall or you would’ve heard in 2008.

VARUN: The production is so crisp. The first time you listen to Clarity, you’re like, “Wow, this is just a little rough around the edges, but these are great songs.” Then Bleed American is peak loudness wars and has really pristine guitar production. Although the best Jimmy Eat World record, in my opinion, is Futures, and no one agrees with me on that, but it’s peak Jimmy Eat World for me.

SWIM: Yeah, I’ve honestly never heard Futures, so I’ll have to look into it right after this. I’m so glad for all this discourse, which makes this next question a lot easier to answer. Why take the effort to organize a conference and engage more researchers on emo in particular?

PATRICK: I can think of a few reasons, but one I really like and might punt to Varun. The papers about third-wave emo mostly wanted to talk about “emo,” the cultural phenomenon, but Varun brought something up when we were reviewing the abstracts, which is that emo is affect, with the second-wave emo bands. We weren’t expecting the intellectual diversity that we have [with Emocon], it’s not just, “Okay, well here are 40 papers on MCR, 9/11, and masculinity.” We certainly have some papers that touch on that, but the amount of creativity that some of our presenters have brought to the table has been astounding, and that was an unexpected result of hosting this conference.

VARUN: Yeah. And, to maybe go towards the cultural side, if Kurt Cobain is sort of the figurehead of Gen X—or at least like the underground of Gen X—I don’t think you can make any claim about that with Patrick Stump or someone similar. This idea that if you aren’t represented by Drake or Taylor Swift or Beyonce—and I don’t say that to demean those artists in any way—but like the countercultural identity of the millennial generation really did coalesce around this emo identity.

When we think about the people who are showing their young kids the music of their youth or the definition of what it meant to be against the grain in 2005 and 2008, it’s very much tied to pop-punk and emo. There were definitely people who are more about the DIY scene, or a little more hardcore or whatever, but I think the thing that most crystallized in the popular imagination really is emo, and that’s what comes through in the conference really clearly.

We are talking about 9/11, and we’re talking about queerness and finding a queer identity. We’re talking about gender, affect, and all of these things that are so central to understanding this. The thing that we are really proud of is that, even if you aren’t really concerned about emo that much, you would still get a lot out of this conference just because it demonstrates a very vivid picture of what the cultural terrain was like in the mid- to late-2000s, and up to our current moment.

PATRICK: Exactly. I hate to be hyperbolic—but again, going back to the old music criticism of the 2000’s—the amount of times I’ve read emo critics concede that although they criticized this genre initially for being a flash in the pan, that it had become the voice—I hate to say—the voice of a generation for a lot of suburban white kids and a lot of suburban kids in general.

Varun hit the nail right on the head. We have enough historical distance from it now, where this is almost like the ideal time to be diving into this because it’s hardest to historicize the present. I think, especially with emo revival bands, we can see what it is about this subculture that has made it have such a lasting impact on adults and new fans, too.

*A MAP SHOWING US CITIES SENDING A PRESENTER TO EMOCON*

SWIM: So I’ve read quite a few of the abstracts that are already on the site. I’m trying to make it through all of them before the conference. You said you were surprised about some of the ones you received, so I have two questions. How many abstracts did you receive? And how did the paneling procedure go where you’re grouping these things together? Was that difficult, or were there a bunch of topics that neatly worked out?

VARUN: Yeah, I think we got 55 or 56 abstracts in total, somewhere a little under 60. The selection was just courtesy of me and Patrick, so if you want to send some hate mail, we are the two people to send it to. But we found it actually just fell into place pretty naturally. There are 12 total panels, and maybe 9 of them were pretty obvious. I don’t think we really even had to stretch that much to add more. I think that just speaks to the equally distributed care that people have for this genre.

You know, one of the stereotypes of emo is that it is a place for a very specific type of white man to voice their complaints about women. And these panels are something that really shows that’s not the case, man. One of the abstracts was about finding queer identity in Modern Baseball. And as someone who loves Modern Baseball, but who’s not queer, I was like, “Wow, you know, I’m kind of surprised about that.” Then I was talking to a queer friend of mine, and they said, “Oh yeah, that makes sense, and I think like actually a lot of MoBo fans would agree.” It’s exposing us to this diversity of thought about emo that exists even beyond the realms of someone who’s very immersed in these discourses.

PATRICK: And Varun, to his credit, was a mastermind at looking at the large picture. It took a very short amount of time because I feel like he could zoom out and see the conference, and it was just a matter of putting all the abstracts together. It was really, really incredible. I think we had graded the abstracts and also put together the panels that evening.

So it was really like a matter of puzzle pieces, which is not always the case. As pop music scholars—unless it’s a pop music panel—you are oftentimes shoved into a session that has nothing to do with your topic. You’re trying to find some methodological correlations or some theoretical similarities there, and there’s nothing. But—not to toot our own horn—I think we did a great job with putting like-minded or similar-focused talks in the same sessions, but not necessarily much overlap on topic or content, if that makes sense.

I feel like there are focused sessions, but also a good amount of diversity within them.

SWIM: Yeah, reading through them, I absolutely agree. And two things—the one thing that bums me out about the conference is I won’t be able to go to every single talk. All of them seem so interesting to be at. The other thing is, you two are students. I am a student myself, and I would be terrified to organize a conference. So, it’s just that much more incredible that you’ve pulled this off and you have this thing that’s going ahead, and I think it’s going to be a real big hit for the genre, the audience attending, and probably all the scholarship after.

There will be “before Emocon” and “after,” that’s what I think. And this gets into my next question. We’ve sort of talked before about emo having a credibility problem and there being a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem with the research itself. People don’t do the research because it’s not taken seriously as a genre, and because of that, there’s very little scholarship to even pursue further research. Do you think that’s been a problem with other genres in the past? Is that unique to emo, and do you think a conference—just one—can change that?

PATRICK: I have a very short answer. I think it’s unique to emo in the fact that it has a subcultural complexion to it. Most subcultures, especially musical subcultures, academics really love to get into it. Like, one of the most famous academic studies on punk, Dick Hebdige’s Subcultures, was published a few months after the Sex Pistols broke up in 1979.

So that just shows you that most subcultures get immediate academic attention and immediate robust academic attention. They still have their own fights for credibility, but even amongst scholars who study subcultural music, I got the sense that emo wasn’t necessarily taken seriously.

I’m trying to think of other genres that have that difficulty; a few come to mind, but not necessarily genres. Taylor Swift studies are picking up quite a bit, and I have heard significant pushback, though I would say quietly, behind closed doors. I’ve not heard anyone go to Taylor Swift panels and talk about how “this is trashy music,” but I don’t know if they’re struggling for validity, because there are a number of books coming out–both monographs and edited collections.

VARUN: Shouts out to Paula Harper and Kate Galloway. I think what Patrick is touching on a bit is that this is a longstanding issue. To give a very quick gloss of it, mass culture became a thing around 1900, and by even the 1920s, 1930s, what you have is the Frankfurt School saying, “this is actually a sign of cultural decay. This is all bad. This is just reproducing capitalist hegemony. Yada, yada, yada.” But then what happened in England in the 50s and 60s—what’s termed the Birmingham School with people like Stuart Hall—are saying “Well, regardless of what you think about these sorts of youth cultures and subcultures, they do reflect important things about society.”

A lot of those authors were saying things like, “The Beatles do have to be taken seriously.” So these are calls going up in the 60s and 70s, and it’s this sort of constant terrain because you don’t want to be writing about the Harlem Shake two years after it happened, waiting another year for your article to get published, and everyone going, “what is that?” You don’t want to be saying something about the meaning of something that’s changed pretty significantly recently.

I just taught Drake in a class, and I can imagine the way my students would’ve responded to Drake four years ago versus the way they responded to Drake post-Kendrick Lamar beef is very different. You want to have an accurate, full picture of it, and yet at the same time, there is no time like the present, you know?

We have a couple of these panels about emo in the archive, and how do you preserve cultural memory, and how do you preserve things like zines and whatever. So you’re always fighting this tension. The people who do it really well are the people who can speak the language of an established scholarship, convincing them why these things are going to matter, both in the moment and in the long term, as a critical reflection. I think that’s an age-old problem that has existed as long as the modern view of academia has.

PATRICK: You bring up emo in the archive—I wonder if digitization has anything to do with preservation as well. Low-hanging fruit—punk has historically received a lot of academic attention, and so these zines are almost seen as preservations of cultural artifacts. I’m thinking of the punk archive at UCLA. But with emo, were there necessarily people with hard drives full of show videos, or grassroots interviews with scene bands? I don’t think so.

We’re seeing now that it’s incredibly difficult to navigate the popularity of the genre, but also the local significance of it, too. And the local significance: because of digitization, either there haven’t been effective modes of categorizing it, or a lot of these things just don’t exist, or it’s on someone’s camcorder in their mom’s basement, just waiting to be plugged in and downloaded. So I think there’s a little bit of dismissal of it, but also a lot of the artifacts themselves were not necessarily physical.

VARUN: And to that point, the digital side introduces this view of temporality that can really reconfigure things. I think there’s a very real timeline where “Never Meant” doesn’t take off on the internet around 2015, and Steve Lamos then is a professor who tries to tell his kids, “No, trust me, we were this big deal,” versus the world now, where we are so honored to have this living legend.

Which is not to dismiss American Football, but I mean the internet really grabbed a hold of this thing that was so important as not just a touchstone of what was happening in Urbana-Champaign at the turn of the century, but as a thing that really spoke to people across areas and generations, and a thing that the internet demonstrates its power and its ability to construct that.

SWIM: Absolutely. These keynotes that you two got for this conference are both incredible, Steve Lamos and Dan Ozzi. How did you make that happen? Were you just cold emailing and crossing your fingers? What was it like getting them on board?

PATRICK: Hail Mary.

VARUN: Hail Mary. Having a fair amount of funding doesn’t hurt either. We hope we’ve set them up at a nice hotel and they’re leaving with a bit of pocket cash. But, also, I think—I don’t want to speak for Steve—but I saw recently a clip of a guy saying, “I was just talking with Steve and he was talking about how they had made this thing that matters to so many people, and he felt like it was his duty to sort of preserve and care for that fact.” And I imagine Dan feels similarly. Again, this is all conjecture on my end, but I hope, to some extent, they feel that this conference is, in many ways, a high point in demonstrating what caring for the genre looks like.

PATRICK: Yeah, and to their credit, it was such an honor to receive those responses. I think Varun texted me, and he was like, “Oh my God, did you see the Gmail?” Because both of them were so immediately down and so excited. I think Steve said, “This is a great idea. I can’t wait to do it. Let’s talk details immediately.” And likewise with Dan.

That was also validation on our part as well. Some of my colleagues were like, “You’re doing a conference on emo? That’s crazy. All right, man. Good luck.” Then, to get these keynotes was a validation of the conference, but also just an incredible, incredible honor. And yeah, we hope that they view it as an honor as well, because we’re so incredibly excited to have them both.

SWIM: Yeah, I’m super excited to see the keynotes, and it’s a great example of how a good idea sometimes takes a couple of years. I’m glad you two persevered with this thing, got the funding, and you got these awesome keynotes.

You mentioned earlier that emo doesn't necessarily have icons the same way other genres do. I think of the Kinsellas as second wave icons, but even then I would break it up by wave. I don’t know what the layperson thinks, if they have an idea of an icon in emo. But yeah, it’s incredible that these people are on board.

PATRICK: Yeah, they’re the closest to icons, actually. Yeah, that’s a great point.

VARUN: Maybe, Soupy [Dan Campbell] from the Wonder Years? I feel like he’s kind of got that aura. Gerard Way, maybe. [DEFINITELY]

SWIM: Yeah, emo has a huge multiplicity of people. Which is something that—I’m not so into other genres, this is kind of my life—but I don’t get the sense that it’s the same in other spaces. There’s just a ton of people you have to know in emo, and they all know each other, and they all are inspired by each other.

VARUN: And that’s part of the DIY thing. Like, my favorite band recorded one and a half albums, and they came to my town four times and they hung out with me. That’s not happening with Mick Jagger. If you want to idolize Mick Jagger, you’ve got to know like 70 records, and if he sees you, he’d probably spit on you. [Laughter]

PATRICK: But I think that speaks to the scene origins of the genre, too. A lot of these guys are used to just shooting the shit, bumming cigs behind a venue, and just talking it out while sweating after a show at a shitty dive bar. I think that it speaks to the origins of the community that you feel in a local scene. And when those artists get bigger, some of them don’t maintain those same origins, but many do.

They’re just regular old people. I know Real Friends used to go to my friend’s Starbucks in Illinois, and they’re just guys. They’re really cool, and most people didn’t recognize ’em, so it was like doubly fun.

SWIM: Yeah. So our conversations, like we’re having here, there are specific questions I’m asking, but also we’re going a little off script, and just talking because it’s so much fun to talk about emo. Are these the types of things you expect to be doing at the conference in between panels? Are there people you really want to meet with and ask specific questions about your research? What are you hoping to get out of the conference, if anything specific?

PATRICK: I’m personally looking forward to a lot of the autoethnographic presentations. Like, a scholar’s experience, that’s their framing methodology. That’s what I’m most excited about, the post-paper chats.

SWIM: And is that something that you think will be relevant to your research and dissertation, or is it more just personally interesting?

PATRICK: I mean, no information’s bad information, but it’s a type of scholarship that I am always really taken by. I think that it takes a lot of courage to not only put yourself out there and give a conference presentation, but it’s also framed by your own experience. And a lot of these topics you have to have a great deal of sensitivity to deal with, too. So, it almost speaks to the emo-ness maybe of the methodology. It’s mostly just of interest, and shows what Varun was talking about, the diversity of impact, too.

VARUN: Yeah, and like for me personally, I think these hangs are so important. In the same way that in order to build a scene, you really do have to work, making community a thing is work. Academia can sometimes be a little hostile to community building. On one hand, because everyone’s fighting for a really small slice of a really small pie. On the other hand, it’s like, “I need to go up into my room, and I need to read 300 books, and I need to do that to write two sentences. Please don’t bother me.”

We all live across the country, and there are only so many people really committed to the academic life. To whatever degree being an emo scholar means doing justice to emo as a concept, that means taking those ethoses of DIY and community building and bringing them to the academy as much as we can. So much of this was about, like, who are the people who are actually writing and thinking about this? And what are the things that they care about? And how can we position them so we know each other’s work and support it?

So, Janessa Williams, Francesca Sobande, Isabel Felix Gonzales, Steve [Lamos] himself, and I have all published essays about emo or pop-punk. Patrick is writing a dissertation. Our friend Peter wrote a dissertation on emo, and at least three or four other people coming to the conference are currently writing dissertations about emo, and I didn’t know about these publications. I didn’t really know about these dissertations [before], and how am I supposed to show up for these people if I don’t even know that they exist?

That’s really the thing that I want to come out of this, is that feeling like we’ve got each other’s backs and we can really support each other growing to make this a viable academic study. So no one’s advisor says, “I don’t know. Should you write an emo dissertation? What’s that going to do for you?”

SWIM: Yeah, building a network is 100% necessary to real scholarship. Maybe 200 years ago you could have been the first person to think about something and write it down, but nowadays, with how connected the entire world is, if you have an idea, someone else has already had it, and they might have even already written about it. You shouldn’t view that as meaning your idea and your thoughts about it aren’t worthwhile; you need to view that as a source that you can use to inform and interrogate whatever it is you’re trying to get out on paper.

And yeah, 100% agree: a huge thing that should happen at this conference is that people should all exchange information, try to support each other, and read each other’s stuff. Just since learning about this conference, I’ve been more engaged, trying to read rigorous research, buying books, and going through them with a more serious, formal approach to the genre. As opposed to just scrolling through Spotify playlists and thinking, “Oh, this person doesn’t actually know what Midwest emo is.” [Laughter]

That’s really informal. I think that’s still important, but it’s also really important to read entire books and cite them.

VARUN: Yeah. Shout out to Judith Fathallah, Emo: How Fans Defined a Subculture… A subculture, or a genre?

PATRICK: [pulls out a copy of the book and holds it up to the screen] “Emo: How Fans Defined a Subculture.”

SWIM: To this point of community and accessibility, whose idea was the livestream? I’ve been to livestreamed conferences, but I thought that was kind of normal for really big international events. Is that the standard in music things? Was that something you guys wanted to do specifically for this?

PATRICK: Varun, I think that was your initial idea.

VARUN: Yeah, part of it is, I think we’re only dipping our toes into the livestream water because Zoom introduces infinite complexities. But I’m pretty committed to being a public intellectual. I think scholarship should be available and open to as many people who want to engage with it as possible.

And at WashU, these rooms are already set up. Setting up the Zoom call requires clicking a couple of links, hitting a few buttons, and then giving people some mics. If that’s all it takes and someone wants to spend their Saturday afternoon watching these talks, I certainly don’t want to keep them from that. In fact, I want them to come here because I think the things we are saying about emo as a collective matter to people’s lives and help elucidate the individual’s relationship to society at large.

If we can make that happen with a little bit of work, I think that’s our responsibility to do it.

PATRICK: Exactly. What Varun said—especially dealing with a genre that has such popular significance—it really is. And Varun’s position, I’m sure you know, Braden, is not a widely taken position in the academy. I still run into faculty who say, “Well, the whole point of scholarship is so it’s inaccessible.” And they love the idea of the—I don’t want to use the word echo chamber, but for lack of a better word—echo chamber. When Varun posted the conference to r/emo, that was like the epitome of reaching out to the broader fan base beyond scholarship.

We hope to get some of those folks in the Zoom rooms. And also, it’s not that Dan Ozzi is just a really famous author; it’s also a public event, the final keynote. We should probably make a plug about that at some point.

VARUN: Dan Ozzi will not be livestreamed, though, because that was one where it’s like at a venue, and so that just introduces other problems… But Steve [Lamos] is, you know, how many people love American Football? And we’re getting people in from the community. If you’re in the St. Louis metro area or like surrounding it, and you wanna come down, parking’s free on the weekend.

SWIM: I super appreciate that you two both feel so strongly about the responsibility to open these academic barriers. I come from a different side of this. On the science/STEM side of things, as soon as you submit to a journal—if you do an analysis, you make a new detector or whatever—and you submit that to a journal, what’s common in science is also to submit that to a site called arXiv. Where the pre-print you submitted to the journal, that exact same paper, is just completely free and accessible on the internet to the public, and literally anyone can go on arXiv and send you comments.

Of course, people aren’t obligated to respond, but if it’s someone from a neighboring collaboration, it’s a great way to get additional feedback and to break down these echo chambers, and to really say in a public way, “We’re doing this scholarship openly. We invite everyone to take a look at this.” That way, there isn’t even the possible perception that it’s happening behind closed doors, because it’s not. It’s so public-facing, and that’s how it is in a lot of science, and I appreciate that you guys are doing the legwork to make it a similar thing in this realm of scholarship.

PATRICK: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame does that as well. They invite academics to speak at public talks. There are some folks that knock it out of the park and others that, you know, maybe get a little too nitty-gritty. But that’s something I’ve always been incredibly moved by, that public-facing work, especially with popular music.

VARUN: And part of that is humanities has a bit more of—you’ve got to have the secret code to get access to it. But, it’s a thing that we should [do], because when we speak in this time of a decaying trust in academia and science and medicine and things that I personally don’t think are good for society, even if some of those critiques may have a certain kernel of truth to them. I think the solution is really just to say, “Wait, we’re a bunch of academic nerds. Trust me, we don’t have anything up our sleeves. I would kind of just like a publication, please.”

PATRICK: Exactly. Exactly. And especially when the academy has just come under incredible scrutiny from both the public and from elected officials. And that’s like what Varun said. Although there might be a kernel of truth to it, what we shouldn’t do is retreat back into the ivory tower. You know what I’m saying? To show a sense of earnestness with our work. Not that I think that inspired the livestream, but it speaks to a broader conversation.

SWIM: Yeah, no, any way to make scholarship publicly available, and maybe an emphasis on communication as well. Because sometimes people use words that are jargon for whatever topic, but a really good educator and a really good communicator takes the time to say, “This is jargon. This is something I’m going to be using a lot, so I’m going to explain it this way.” And that doesn’t just make the scholarship better, it makes people better. It makes conversations better, it makes it more fun to be friends with these people. And it helps you go further, not just in the field but honestly in life, just to be a better communicator. So, yeah, I’m really glad the livestream is happening.

We kind of mentioned it, but at the end of the conference, there’s actually a post-conference show, which is amazing. It’s great for an emo conference to have some emo bands playing at the end. Would either of you be able to talk about the set list? Is that something you’d want to reveal at this time? And, if it’s possible, how do I get “Catalina Fight Song” added to the set list?

VARUN: Well, we do “Catalina,” and then we go straight into “Constant Headache.”

SWIM: That’s beautiful.

VARUN: For those who don’t know, Patrick’s group, Girl Gordon, will be playing; they’ll be doing about 40 minutes of originals. Then my group, the “Silly Little Emo Band,” which does emo and pop-punk covers, will close out the night, and we will be sucking titty by the ocean.

SWIM: Nice. Did you two have any closing thoughts you wanted on the record before we conclude? We’ve covered a lot of ground. We’ve been talking for about an hour, so no worries if not.

PATRICK: I’m trying to think. We did cover a lot of ground. I’m not coming up with anything. Varun?

VARUN: Reiterating, go to www.emocon2026.com if you would like to sign up to attend either virtually or in person. If you follow us @emocon2026 on Instagram, we’re there. And we’re really thankful for this opportunity from Swim to come here and talk about it. We’re really grateful that this conference is happening. There’s just been overwhelming support from the emo community, to whatever extent we are known in the emo community, and that’s something that we really appreciate and honor, and we don’t take lightly.

PATRICK: Exactly. Yeah.

SWIM: Awesome. Well, yeah, thank you both so much for this opportunity to talk and put some things down on the record. And also for putting this whole thing together. I think it’s gonna be a smash hit, and I’m really looking forward to the impending explosion of emo scholarship.

VARUN: Trust me, those damn walls are breaking soon.

For more information about Emocon, you can look up abstracts and panel times at the official site. If you liked that, you should also check out this previous interview Varun did on Dan Dipiero’s podcast Cry Baby, where he talks about his forthcoming article dissecting Hot Mulligan’s “BKYRD” through the lens of neoliberal politics.

Braden Allmond is a particle physicist and emo music enthusiast. He anticipates graduating from KSU in August with his PhD in experimental high energy physics. When he isn’t writing his thesis, he’s data-scraping articles and books about emo music, making tables and graphs to interrogate and understand the genre.

March 02, 2026

Radicalizing Self-Love: An Interview with JER

March 02, 2026/ Ciara Rhiannon

Over the last several years, Jeremy “Jer” Hunter has become a prolific fixture in the New Tone ska movement. They have been a viral sensation countless times, racking up nearly 40 million views across YouTube and TikTok for crafting ska covers of popular songs under the moniker Skatune Network. A true multi-hyphenate and one-person band, in the average Skatune video, you can see Jer playing trombone, trumpet, guitar, bass, sax, and singing – to list a handful of their proficiencies.

Jer has wielded these talents on numerous records and on stage for acts such as Jeff Rosenstock, Fishbone, We Are The Union, The Bruce Lee Band, and many other notable names in the ska and punk scenes. In recent years, Jer has begun putting out their own original music as JER – releasing their first LP, BOTHERED/UNBOTHERED, in May of 2022 and their sophomore album, Death of the Heart, in August of 2025.

Jer capped off the end of last year not only with the release of their new album, but with plenty of touring to keep their hands full. This recent bout of time on the road included a jaunt to Japan, as well as stops at FEST in Jer’s home state of Florida, No Earbuds Fest in Southern California, and MAGfest up in Maryland earlier this year. Now that they’re back from trotting the globe, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jer to chat about these enthralling live shows before thoroughly delving into the creation, inspirations, and broader meaning behind their thought-provoking and politically-charged new album, Death of the Heart.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

SWIM: How has touring, MAGFest, FEST, and coming back from all that been?

JER: It's been really good, the back half of 2025 was very eventful. We went to Japan again, and this was the first time for the JER band. Those shows gave me a new reason to play music live. The love and the energy was so revitalizing. Then FEST had the same energy. So many people that I love from across the music industry, the music world, all the music scenes, typically they're at FEST.

So, to feel that love again, it fueled me. We ended our year in SoCal at No Earbuds Fest, and SoCal showed up. It was just banger, after banger, after banger. All the touring has been great, but that last run of shows in particular, the energy was through the roof.

Earlier this year, there was MAGFest with Rebecca Sugar. Steven Universe is such an important show to me – especially the music. I probably wouldn't be doing Skatune Network if it weren't for Steven Universe. What Aivi and Surasshu were doing on that show inspired me to open Logic and start making music, so that full-circle moment was very cathartic.

SWIM: Crazy full circle. My friends Sierra and Carina went to MAGFest too, and they were sending me videos of the Rebecca Sugar show, and I was like, “Oh, there's Jer in the back on the Trombone!”

JER: I didn't really talk about it a lot, because I got doxxed around the same week that they announced that. Far-right Twitter was having a field day. I think if I announced that I'm performing with the creator of the Gay Space Rocks show as far-right Twitter was dogpiling on me, that might just add fuel to their fire. I kind of just didn't post about it, and then I went on tour and realized I'd never posted about it, so that was a surprise to a lot of people.

SWIM: ‘Joke’s on you. I'm literally never home!’ [Laughs]

JER: Yeah, right. Good luck showing up at my door, no one’s here!

SWIM: My friend Avery was in a couple bands that were at No Earbuds Fest, and that seemed really cool.

Something I also never thought about until the last several years was how big ska is in Japan and how many ska bands there are, like ORESKABAND. It's so cool that it's such a big pocket in Japanese music culture.

JER: Yeah. I've gone twice now: once in October 2024 with the Bruce Lee Band, and then this past October again with the JER band. Japan feels like it is almost 20 years behind when it comes to pop culture. The best way I can describe it is how there's a bunch of people who are nostalgic for the 80s, but they were literally born in the 90s, so they have this nostalgia for the 80s through seeing 80s media. I feel like Japan's the same way: they're seeing ska, punk, and alternative through the media's gaze, and now they're recreating it years later.

They consume so much American culture, and they might not understand all of the reasons why that American culture happened, but they're still recreating it in their own way. On top of that, their culture just values music and art way more; it's more accessible there. It's the perfect combination of those factors that have allowed Japanese ska to be so big, but also alternative music in general.

SWIM: Absolutely. That's how I've always felt about K-pop, too, where it's a mirror reflection that keeps going back and forth between Korea and America. If you look at J-pop, Hikaru Utada’s career, their 2000s stuff sounds like the 90s. It's just a cool pattern.

Something I’ve always admired about you is how prolific you are and how much stamina you have to put out content, be in so many different bands, and do the marching band. Where do you feel that initiative to do all of those things comes from?

JER: Part of it is a love for the craft. It's that mantra that's capitalist propaganda of "Find a job you love, and you'll never work another day in your life,” when the reality is, it is work. I love music, and I'm more inspired to create a ska cover, play music, or teach marching band than I ever was to flip bacon at Waffle House. It's easier for me to get out of bed knowing I can make music than it is to make meat as someone who's vegan. [Laughs]

It's a very volatile and uncertain profession. I'm grateful people back me up and support me with Patreon and buying my music and merch. That is the only reason I'm able to do this. Even if I'm not feeling motivated, it helps knowing that people love it when I share a cover, or seeing the comments from people really hyped on it. Whether it's people telling me at shows or people showing up to concerts, anything like that, those are the things that make me want to keep creating.

Sometimes there are days when I'm not really feeling it. It might take me a little longer to get it done, but there's also the time constraint: I have a month before I go on tour, and I need to get X, Y, and Z done. Sometimes the pressure of that just forces me to get things done. There always comes a point in every cover, even if it feels like I’m dragging my feet, where I have to get this done. By the time I'm halfway through the process, I start getting hyped on it. ‘Oh, this sounds really cool, and I know people are going to really dig this!’

The other work that I do are kind of my anchors. Every summer I'm doing band camp, every fall I'm doing marching band competitions, and every October is FEST. Those things ground my life into some sort of reality where, during all the time in between, I could probably make three months’ worth of covers, and then I'm not making covers when I'm on the road. It’s a lifestyle where you have to be adaptable. I once saw someone say that they gave up their 9-to-5 to work 24/7, and damn, that's so true.

The Undertale cover record I did was purely out of passion, but then [Toby Fox] used it for a stream. I did not make money on that at all. Even after selling records, I only broke even because I paid the artists to record on it and the people who made the art. I wasn't expecting them to compensate me for making that cover record. I really didn't make money off of it, and then two years later, that money came back.

There are some months where I worked all day, every day, for months at a time, and I made very little money. Then there are other months where I can go on tour, and that work I put in is still sustained. If I'm not posting, the Patreon does go down gradually. If I'm posting, it goes up gradually. So, there still is a consistency that needs to be there. There's a give-and-take with it.

SWIM: Exactly. One of the things I think that you’re known for in the music industry and in general is how outspoken you are about social media and the algorithm. Being a content creator and a musician while under the constantly changing social media culture we're in right now, what is your general approach to tackling that uncertainty?

JER: My whole philosophy lately for myself and what I try to internalize is moving back to logging off, unplugging, the same way that there are people who are ditching Spotify and streaming altogether. People are starting to buy CD players again and build up their physical collection. I just bought a DVD player, because I went to watch Steven Universe, only to find out it's not on HBO Max, it's on Disney+, which is ridiculous. I just want to watch my show and don't want to give Disney any money. I just bought the DVD boxset, and now this can never be taken away from me, unless I lose it or something. It's something I've been meaning to do, but how do I translate that to music?

I've been building an email list since last year, basically harassing anyone who joins my TikTok live streams to sign up. We announced this tour, and ticket sales have been better than any tour we've done so far. Some people say they don't want to join the email list because they get so many emails. I have multiple email accounts, so when I'm looking for this information, I'm not digging through spam. I'm encouraging people to really lean into that; being intentional about the content that they're taking in, especially in an era of AI slop on the rise.

Social media feeds are so overwhelming, and I don't blame people who might see me, but then see like 500 more posts that day. I can't even remember the last three posts I saw on social media. I have to treat everyone like that. Someone might've seen my tour announcement, someone might've seen my new record, someone might've seen my last cover, but they probably saw a million posts after that and forgot about it. You don't forget going out to a show, unless you're blackout drunk, then you forget. [Laughs]

If you're going out to a show and you're actively engaging, you're not going to forget that. If you go up to the merch table and meet the artist, you're not going to forget that. An email with very specific information that you'll only see on that email list. So for me, it’s finding the quality people within the quantity; find the people who want to be there and reach out to them. The people who see all my posts, who constantly see me repeating the same things – for every one person like that, there's a thousand people who may have followed me for years, and they've never heard that I make my own music, or that I'm on tour, or that I have a new cover. I've been touring, and it's not even your fault; you just haven't seen it because I've been pushed out of the algorithm, not because the algorithm is evil, but because there's an oversaturation of content. On top of the algorithm being evil. [Laughs]

SWIM: Absolutely. I'm stoked to hear that you're getting so much love for the Seattle date of the Bad Time tour. I'm glad people are seeing that and buying tickets because, like you've said in your videos, we are the farthest away from you right now. So that means people are talking about it, sharing it, and actually seeing that information.

JER: No, Seattle's been great. Honestly, most of the more remote places, like Denver, have been great. The Northwest is not used to bands making it through as much as Chicago, New York, or Philly. Those cities are also doing great, but Seattle, by far, is the best one. Also, a lot of my videos do well there. When I checked the top cities, Seattle has always been one of those. We played Seattle on the Fishbone tour, and that was by far the best show of the tour for us. I'm really thankful for that.

SWIM: You mentioned AI when you were talking about the algorithm, and I was curious, as an artist who is so vocally anti-AI, what's getting you through this AI slop era we’re in?

JER: Yeah, the whole AI thing is really annoying in general. Even most of the time, it's just slop in every sense of the word. It looks bad, it sounds bad, but it's gotten to the point where it's indistinguishable. It's still slop, it's just slop that looks better. The point of it being slop isn't that it looks bad; it’s that no effort went into creating it. What makes art cool is that somebody couldn't express something that they were feeling, so they developed the skill to express that thing. With AI, somebody felt something, but instead of developing any sort of skill, they just made a computer do it.

It's getting to the point where more people reject AI than not, but these algorithms are just shoving it down our throats whether we want it or not. Bandcamp announced that they're banning AI, and I haven't seen a single person say that's a bad thing. Moves like that are starting to show that there is a market for it. I see a future where you might start seeing indie artists selling DVDs. I've seen some Kickstarters where they offer that as a perk, but you might see more of a push. I already see it on TikTok, where artists are really pushing CDs and CD players. Vinyl is coming back for all the people who didn't know that it never went away. Bands have been selling records forever, but CDs are also getting a huge push right now. I think people will move more towards physical media and become more intentional about what they consume.

If every TikTok or Instagram Reel or YouTube short is a minute, you can at most watch 60 of them an hour, and that's assuming you dedicate a full hour to doing that. So, how much content is going to get on there to the point where you can't even watch stuff? You can just get offline and go directly towards who you follow to find out about stuff. I think that's where the future is moving. I can already see that happening with people deleting or getting off of Instagram and signing up for email lists.

SWIM: When I deactivated Twitter, I had that nostalgia of “This is where I met so many of my music friends and this has offered me so many opportunities,” but now it's this soulless reflection of something I used to like, and it's not even serving me anymore. So that made it easier for me to push it away. The same thing is happening on Instagram right now. The same thing's happening on TikTok.

pulses. is a band I always bring up, but they just released a dual-CD/DVD for their 10th-anniversary show from last year. When I was talking to Kevin about that last year, he said, “You know, I don't know if we're going to be able to do it. It's hard, and I'm figuring it out all by myself, and I don't know if we're going to make money off of it, but we're going to put it out there for people.” People need to be taking that risk and offering that, so people have shit to put on their shelves and in their collections.

JER: I agree, 100%.

SWIM: Death of the Heart has been out for months now. How's the reception been?

JER: It's been great! Death of the Heart came out in August of 2025, and especially in the back half of the year, I feel like every week there were banger records coming out. Pool Kids dropped their record the same day as Death of the Heart. Kerosene Heights dropped their record that day as well. We went on tour with The Bouncing Souls over to Japan and back to FEST. By the time we got back to FEST, people were singing the new songs more. Even going to California in December, people knew the new songs more than the older ones. The general consensus is that people have really latched onto Death of the Heart a lot quicker, which is really cool.

It wasn't a record that took over the world, but I think it's really dope that, within the following, people are really loving it. Bands often put out a second record and people say they like the first one better, but I'm finding a lot of fans saying it's been a step up. People who are finding me through Death of the Heart are now finding BOTHERED / UNBOTHERED retroactively. Death of the Heart has been, without a doubt, more successful on social media. Every time I post a video that does well on Instagram or TikTok, I gain a lot of followers, but I also attract a lot of other cool people. Topaz Jones is a rapper I found a couple years ago, and he followed my page, which is cool. I'm noticing a lot of rappers, hip-hop artists, R&B singers, and jazz artists are finding it. I think it's a testament to how good music is good music. People are really resonating with that.

It's also been 100% DIY; I'm not really getting a publication push from the music industry. I'm not getting features on huge podcasts or reviews. It's literally word of mouth. The fact that the social media push and the word of mouth have gone this far has been really cool. There's so much room to grow with the record. People might come out to the Bad Time tour, and they might not have listened to the record yet, but then they're going to see the band absolutely tear it up, because the JER band rips. I'm excited for people to hear these new songs and see the band’s energy.

SWIM: That's awesome. I think all DIY and smaller artists are feeling that inundation of music. If you're someone who tries to follow music as much as possible, the weekly deluge of new albums, EPs, and singles can be disheartening if your mindset is to be on top of everything as it's released. Something I try to tell artists when they're feeling discouraged is that their music isn't going anywhere. Just because a week has passed since it was released, people go back and find records literally all the time. Don’t be so focused on, “I have this finite amount of time to release my music and talk about it. Otherwise, it'll never be heard.”

JER: Yeah, the music industry is just like that. “You need a new record in two years.” I put out the record six months ago. I'm supposed to be 25% through this whole era before I put out the next record. I don't think a record's coming in the next year and a half, but there's nothing wrong with that.

There's this one bit from Family Guy: it's some dude in jail watching TV, and he’s like, “If I haven't seen it, it's new to me.” I'm pretty sure you know exactly what scene I'm talking about. [Laughs]

SWIM: Yeah. That's so funny, I have that Family Guy vocal stim, I could recite the inflection verbatim. [Laughs]

JER: But it’s so true! I see videos that went viral on Tumblr and Facebook 15 years ago going viral on Instagram now. That song “Chinese New Year” is another great example. That band, SALES, put out a five-song EP, they toured a little bit, they weren't going anywhere, they broke up. Five years later, Chinese New Year went viral on TikTok, they went up to 3 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and then that band literally came back. They weren't on TikTok posting, that was just organic.

Someone with 10 million subscribers on YouTube could find and talk about Death of the Heart, and then as a creator and as an artist, it's my job to always be ready. That's what I've learned after 10 years of doing Skatune Network. I could wake up tomorrow with an influx of followers, but are they seeing what I want them to see? Are they seeing my tour dates? My new music? Is it easy for them to find? You never know what the future's going to be.

SWIM: What are some of the musical or non-musical media influences that went into Death of the Heart?

JER: Normally, I always have these references sitting around, but Death of the Heart ended up not having any. That's just naturally what happened. When I first started doing JER, “R/Edgelord” uses a sample from Arthur with Buster being like, “You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?" If you didn't grow up on Arthur, that's something that wouldn't necessarily be on your zeitgeist. “Say Gay or Say Goodnight” sampled the series finale of The Owl House. Most people my age weren't watching that show unless you were really into animation. Going into Death of the Heart, that record was formed at a time when I was finding a lot more real-life influences. At the end of “What Will You Do?” there is a sample from a two-hour news report about the MOVE bombing, with the citizens of that neighborhood airing their grievances about how the police handled that whole situation.

While writing this record, I was doing a lot of reading, learning, growing, and expanding. There’s that Jamie Baldwin quote where the record's name comes from. There are more nuanced, subtle influences. I believe it’s “Cult of the Lonely” talking about love being a contraband. That's an Assata Shakur quote. “Claim Yr True Feelings, Wounded Child” is actually a paraphrased Bell Hooks quote, talking about love and the action of love being a verb and not a noun. There are six pillars that she talks about, like respect, communication, care, and nurture. “The death of the heart” is the absence of love, and with things like racism and sexism, bigotry, and transphobia, you cannot be a loving person and hold those in your heart, because you're doing the active opposite of love. The action of love, of caring and respecting and communicating with people.

The flip side of “the death of the heart” is not allowing yourself to grow. That's where the record ends. You can't say you're about growth and care if you're not allowing yourself or others around you the space to learn, grow, and care. That's what revolution is. That's what being radical is. It's recognizing that we have been raised by a system of harm and doing the work to unlearn that harm and repair it with love, care, accountability, and healing. If you're not willing to allow that to happen, then that is “the death of the heart.”

I took a sample from The Truman Show, which I think is the only actual media reference. The whole movie is about how Truman is in a TV show, and everyone knows about it except him. He's having a nervous breakdown, because he's been made into a product against his consent. He's trying to figure out what's going on, and people know, but they don't care because they just want to be famous and want money. His wife in the show is like, ‘You seem stressed! Product placement!’

SWIM: That was one of my favorite memes for a while. The world is burning around you, but all of these content creators are putting up the Mococoa drink, and he’s like, “What are you talking about? Who are you talking to?”

JER: I thought it'd be cool to splice that up over a beat, because the whole front half of the record is, “The world is burning and this person is just promoting a product and acting like nothing's wrong and there very clearly is something wrong.” I first got the idea when I was watching that movie again, I heard the “Do something!” and I needed that to be how that sample ends. In the movie, she's calling out for the film crew to do something to save her. In reality, we collectively need to do something.

SWIM: BOTHERED / UNBOTHERED came out square in the middle of the Biden presidency. We shift into this complacency mode when there's a liberal president, but when we have a sitting dictator president, people are angrier. Do you feel like Death of the Heart is a heavier record, especially with the Omnigone feature and the themes? Where is that coming from?

JER: It definitely is a much heavier record, both in its tone and the actual music itself. Hardcore and heavy music has always been an influence of mine; I just wasn't really writing in that style quite yet with BOTHERED / UNBOTHERED. That record was also me figuring out my own sound. One of the first tracks I demoed on Death of the Heart was “What Will You Do?” and I was like, “There's no way this could be a JER song, it's way too heavy.” I was listening to a bunch of Gouge Away, Turnstile, and Soul Glo. As the record started coming together, it felt almost like a disservice to leave it out. At a certain point, I was like, “I'm Jer, so if I write it, it's the JER sound.” It's my music.

I remember when Biden won, I made a post saying, “If we treat this like a victory and celebrate, we're going to be saying good morning to President Trump or President DeSantis in 2025.” Especially being a Floridian, watching Florida go through what we've gone through, everything that's happening everywhere has been happening to Black America for so long.

People are already making the parallels now. The ICE raids, they're slave patrols. They're doing what slave catchers were doing. Black people have been saying this. That's where “What Will You Do?" came from, speaking of that song and where the record starts getting heavier. That song was inspired in October of 2023, when I was posting a lot about Palestine, and somebody was like, “You know, you're really worried about the Palestinian struggle, but why aren't you posting like this about the Black struggle? Shouldn't you be focusing on the people in your own backyard who are your people instead of this other entity?” My response is: that is the Black struggle. That person asked me, “What are you going to do when they do what they're doing to Palestine in America? You're so focused on Palestine, but you're not worrying about America.” I said, “Dude, do you not realize when I see Palestine being bombed, I see the MOVE bombing. When I see ICE detaining people and throwing them in prisons and tearing families apart, I see the slave patrols who tore families apart and auctioned children off to be sold into slavery. When you see the prison industrial complex, you see chattel slavery. Anything that is happening to any marginalized group of people, it happened to Black people first. That's something that became a core tenet of Death of the Heart.

Even amongst progressive people, if it happened to a marginalized non-Black person, it's being spun as if it's never happened to Black people. When Black people have talked about this, they're reprimanded for their anger. People who are supposed to be in our scene and on our side, progressives, will say that I'm aggressive for being angry at systemic injustices, but then, when those same systemic injustices happen to other groups of people, they speak out with that same anger. The non-Black people who do that are suddenly rewarded for their bravery and their courage. This is why I wanted to write a record that represents not only my queer and Black identity, but also the queer and Black plight. They have to be interconnected, and anti-Blackness is the root of it all. That's where the theme of the record started shifting towards how we can't have an honest conversation about the injustices and pain and the suffering and everything about the system that we're in if we're not going to talk about the fact that it is rooted in anti-Blackness.

The first couple of songs on the record talk about the problem being there, but not being able to identify it. The assumption of “Couldn't Be Me,” where that song quite literally was written about these things. There are people who are asking, “How is ICE doing this now?” What do you mean now? It's always been fuck ICE, it's just that it’s only affecting you now. These things have always affected Black people. The whole chorus, “Did you lose your safety?” Black people never had safety in this country. “Guaranteed by the roots of the family tree.” Your family tree, being a white person, allowed you to feel safe up until the point where fascism got too far. “Based on the fruits of the labor of Ebony bodies.” Black people built this country. The decaying fruits of our labor are what created the fertile soil for those white family trees to grow to the point where they are. Now fascism has risen to the point where it's affecting everybody. Now you have white people getting shot by officers. Now you have a bunch of white people who are scared. We've been trying to tell y'all this entire time. The writing's been on the wall. That's the angle that I chose with this record. I think for a lot of people it resonates, because it gets to the root of it.

I'm not impressed when a band says, “Capitalism is bad.” Tell me why it's bad. There are bands who will say, “Fuck ICE” on stage, but then that's where it ends. You're not giving a solution; you're just saying a thing that's already stating the obvious. I knew with this record, I didn't just want to say “Conservatives are bad,” I wanted to explain why it's part of upholding a system that is racist and transphobic and how that harms people.

Then there's the back half of the record, the part about restorative justice and accountability. Understanding that we're all victims of this system that we live in. “Claim Yr True Feelings, Wounded Child" is a great example. I often get misgendered a lot and don't get included when talking about queer people in ska, because people have a very specific idea of what it means to be queer and non-binary. That song in particular is about reckoning with the fact that I identify as non-binary and I'm a queer person, but that doesn't change the fact that I was raised in this society as a man, through toxic masculinity. That whole song is about how men are taught not to feel their feelings. This heavily affects Black men. This is a very Black song, and it's also a very queer song. The intersection of those things is so important, and that song is not seen as either of those things for the same reasons. Men are taught to shove their feelings down, and that is what causes a lot of harm to be perpetuated. You are taught not to process your feelings. You are reprimanded for processing your feelings, and then you repeat the system of harm. Recognizing that and learning to feel again and knowing it's important to feel, but also to recognize that I could identify as non-binary or queer, but that doesn't mean that the masculinity that has been instilled in me is gone.

In the same way, if somebody is raised in a conservative household, they're probably going to have some racist microaggressions, whether they realize it or not. It's not bad that you do it; it's that you recognize it so you can learn not to do it. That goes for everything. That song, again, was inspired by Bell Hooks, somebody who truly believes in the abolition of prisons. She said, “You can't abolish prisons if you're going to treat everybody like cops and punish people for making mistakes and never giving them that room to grow. Assuming that everyone always has malicious intentions and assuming that people can't make mistakes.” That's the whole point of that song and Death of the Heart in general.

I wanted “Death of the Heart” and “Claim Yr True Feelings, Wounded Child” to be the songs next to each other. “Death of the Heart” being the title track where I'm screaming, the time signature is asymmetrical, getting really heavy in the record. It ends with this big moment, and then it goes into the lightest and purest and most vulnerable moment of the record, musically speaking. Thematically, that's the moment of the record where there's recognition of the pain and, instead of ignoring that pain, you're embracing it. You're learning to feel those feelings and how to move forward with that.

The record getting heavier with each song was very intentional. Starting in the typical JER sound of ska punk, but then growing into “Capitalism Breeds Devastation,” which gets darker. Then “What Will You Do?” gets heavier, and then “Cult of the Lonely” gets heavier, then “Death of the Heart.” Then you get to this moment of “Claim Yr True Feelings, Wounded Child,” which is the first moment of relief, musically. That lack of tension leads through the rest of the record, which has a much more hopeful sound. The music, to me as a composer, is so important too. Where you start getting a lot more of those denser chords, like seven chords, nine chords, with the song “Grow Through What We Go Through.”

To me, life isn't black and white. It's not major – happy, minor – sad. You could have a major seven chord, which has the qualities of minor and major, because life and everything that we go through is a lot denser than just happy or sad, good or bad. Whether it is the Republican next door who might be flying a Trump flag or the other queer person in your scene.

I have found, especially in the last couple of years, that I have an easier time conversing with middle-of-the-road conservatives and talking to them as people and we can find some middle ground. I realized if you don't use the scary buzzwords like “communism” and “socialism,” you can meet in the middle better than some progressive people. “The death of the heart” is demonizing these people for the way they think, but you're not learning about why they think that way. That was the entire arc of the record.

SWIM: Absolutely. That is what’s so lasting and refreshing about your music, and especially Death of the Heart. Not only are people under the impression that ska went somewhere, but that the last place it was was third-wave ska with the mozzarella stick memes and ska punk and Bosstones and Less Than Jake. Both thematically and musically, that version of ska didn't have those heavier roots, wasn't talking about workers' rights and race relations, or any of those core elements of ska, and the music got diluted and pigeonholed.

Even right now, there are a lot of ska bands in the scene that just want to sound like Less Than Jake, and that's the biggest impression they want to leave. Something so great about Death of the Heart is how it starts somewhere familiar, and people can latch onto that – “This is JER” – and then as they're listening to it, you're pulling apart the layers thematically. Getting people into different genres and exploring new types of music and ska can feel different and look different and sound different and still be ska.

JER: Yeah, there was a period on the record where I was trying to hone it in and have a consistent sound. I wrote “Claim Yr True Feelings, Wounded Child” in the American Football tuning, like Midwest emo. I wrote “What Will You Do?” like a heavy-ass song and these songs that just kept not fitting. “Log Off” is like an R&B track. At a certain point, it's a disservice to me as an artist to try to limit my sound. In a sense, one of the most punk rock things that you can do is stand on your shit, regardless of whether people are expecting you to sound or look a certain way.

One of the most fun things we've been doing at our shows is we get four or five songs into the setlist, hit them with “What Will You Do?”, and watching the whiplash in the audience. Especially people at No Earbuds Fest, where many of them have not seen a ska band before, and they have this preconceived idea of what a ska band is going to be. Then I start screaming and there's breakdowns and shit. All of the bartenders just stopped and put their stuff down and looked up at once. Then I see them engaged through the rest of the set. A genre of music that you didn't think you were going to like, by the end of the set, they're so stoked on it. That's been the theme of the JER band. We finished these sets, and the workers at the venues are always so hyped on it. The security guy is running over, trying to buy some merch real quick. I don't know if other bands experience this, but at every show we play, there are four or five people on staff at the venue who buy merch from us. People who work at venues probably buy merch all the time, but they're really invested, and I think that's the power of good music.

There wasn't a Less Than Jake before Less Than Jake. They heard Operation Ivy, and they heard a ska punk band that might've been active before that, but they also heard The Descendants and those types of bands, and they just started playing the music they liked together, and that's why it was so special. There was no Op Ivy before Op Ivy. Tim Armstrong saw Dance Craze and was like, “I want to do that, but I also play hardcore punk,” and that's how Op Ivy was formed. There was no Two-tone ska before The Specials. They saw what their peers were listening to, like Studio One Jamaican ska, and they wanted to do that. Then they mixed that with their influences. That's how great music has always happened. They weren't focused on creating the new sound. That's less of a ska problem, even though it is a big problem in modern ska. It’s more that capitalism has made genres into identities.

In the 90s, 80s, 70s, and 60s, they were just playing music that they loved, and that's what created something special. Then, in the 2000s, you have these industries that are selling emo as an aesthetic. If you can hone in on an aesthetic, you can go to Hot Topic and get all your emo shit, you can go to Warped Tour, you can get your band tees, and you just created an archetype of person that is profitable. Whereas ska never was particularly profitable, which is why it fell off in the industry. Now people have to be this archetype and wear the fedora and the checkerboard everything, but I'm dressing like I'm in a '90s hip-hop music video, and I love to pull influences from Gouge Away, A Tribe Called Quest, and The Specials all in one song, because that's who I am. That's exactly what all the great, legendary bands have done, and it's what has created success. They focused on writing a good song. They didn't focus on, “How can I sound like a ska band, a punk band, a metal band?” I think focusing on just being good at your instrument and writing a good song is all you need to do and the rest will flow.

SWIM: Super well put. That's always how I feel about Blink. There was no Blink sound before them. Current, contemporary pop-punk is so fucking boring because all they're trying to do is sound like Blink. Blink’s biggest influence was the fucking Cure. They created their own thing that was then copied and done to death.

Earlier, you mentioned having less time for Skatune Network and that JER is your main focus now. How has it been for you, shifting gears like that?

JER: It's been all over the place, honestly. It depends on who you're asking. It's really funny that my biggest focus for Death of the Heart was to create branding and an identifiable look for the record. I created a whole aesthetic chart, because Skatune Network is always going to be there. That's what I make most of my money through; it's my stability, so it's not necessarily going to go away, and it's not necessarily a bad thing either. There are things I love about Skatune Network, but I don't want to just be recognized as the person who has the ska covers; my artistry goes so much further than that.

I get some sort of validation whenever I make a post on my friends-only TikTok, and I'll get a response from one of my mutuals who just talks about pre-historic dinosaur facts. They’re a very special interest autistic person who has no business about music, but they liked one of my covers, and they'll always respond, “Why are people confused? Isn't JER your original music and Skatune Network is your covers?” Thank you, random TikTok person who's not in the music scene, because some people make it sound like building the two brands is the most confusing thing in the world. This rollout with Death of the Heart and the JER band has been very strong, and people are starting to really latch on. People from other music scenes are finding me through JER. Skatune Network reaches people who have nostalgia for whatever I'm covering, but it doesn't go much further than that. JER music is reaching people where the message resonates with them.

I found a new creator who talks a lot about communist stuff, and they're following the band page, not Skatune Network. The first 40,000 or so followers didn't follow Skatune Network. People don't believe me when I say that, but they are two very different followings. Sometimes they'll be following some Bad Time Records bands, but most likely it's bands like Scowl, Turnstile, or Pinkshift. They'll maybe follow Doechii and Kendrick Lamar, then a bunch of leftist creators. My music is reaching this audience of people who may not normally go to shows and may not be into the music scene we're into, but that's been the core JER following for a little while.

When we played Minneapolis with the JER band, I asked the audience who was at the Bad Time Records show not even a year ago, and maybe 15 people raised their hands. That's crazy, because the Bad Time show also sold 500 tickets in Minneapolis. It was mostly people who are into ska and punk. Definitely a different audience, but I expected more than 15 people to raise their hands. From the outset, the JER audience has been very different from the Bad Time shows. Part of that is probably because I tour with bands both in and out of the ska scene, so I'm bringing in different groups. People find me through TikTok, and that's how they show up. I'm at the merch table, and a lot of my TikTok mutuals who make content not geared toward music are the ones coming out to shows, and they are still the ones who come out to shows multiple times. I'm finding people who don’t have a regular show-goer background, but they're getting into shows and live music because of that.

In the last year, especially with Death of the Heart, a lot of people in ska are starting to get hip. There was also a moment I noticed that happened a lot, where I'd be at a show, and people are like, “Oh, you're coming through New York?” I would say, “Yeah, I'm playing with We Are The Union, but also I have my own project, and I'm coming through here,” and people would straight up say, “I'd rather just see We Are The Union.” That was part of why I stepped away from playing with other bands, because it wasn't just We Are The Union; people were saying things like, “I saw you when you were playing on tour with Catbite!” I hopped up for a song or two, but I wasn’t a member of Catbite. I didn't even announce I was going on stage; you just went to the show and you saw me on stage.

It got to the point where, until people understand, I need to make it clear online and through social media that the JER band is the thing. I also do covers, but Skatune Networks is not a band. If you want to see me live, go see the JER band. That's my main focus. Over the last year, especially with the new record, I think that has been achieved.

SWIM: Hell yeah. What's up next for the JER band? Anything that you want people to know?

JER: The Bad Time tour, round two. 2026. We're doing the full U.S. West Coast, East Coast, and Midwest. Sorry, Texas, we're going to get back there as soon as we can. We were supposed to play Texas last year, but I was in a bad financial spot and had to drop off those shows. If I forced those shows to happen, it probably would've left me in a worse financial spot, which would've made it where I had to drop off the Bad Time tour. I'd rather save energy, recover more, and be able to do the Bad Time tour in a much healthier spot. Especially with the way shows are selling now, if those shows do well, my goal is to play some more in the back half of the year.

I've been demoing and writing lyrics. I know I said earlier that I probably won't put out a record in the next year and a half, but anything could happen. My main focus is the Bad Time tour. It might just be a little touring hiatus after that.

SWIM: Well, I'm excited to see you in Seattle. That'll be a lot of fun.

JER: Yeah, I'm so excited for that show in particular.

SWIM: Any lasting thoughts or impressions about the album?

JER: Thanks for having me. This record wasn't getting any sort of press push, so whenever people like you want to talk about this record or show up to shows, any sort of love or support is so appreciated from the bottom of my heart. Shouts out to y'all as well as the people who make the band possible. The JER band, in particular, the musicians who have dedicated so much to this band. Mike, for putting the record out. It takes a village. If it were just me, I'd be in my room playing songs to nobody. What makes it special is the people who listen, the people who connect, the people who care to be there. That's what makes this shit dope. So thank y'all.

SWIM: Absolutely. Thanks so much.

Ciara Rhiannon (she/her) is a pathological music lover writing out of a nebulous location somewhere in the Pacific Northwest within close proximity of her two cats. She consistently appears on most socials as @rhiannon_comma, and you can read more of her musical musings over at rhiannoncomma.substack.com.

February 12, 2026

A Dive Into The Deep End With Pool Kids

February 12, 2026/ David Williams

The art of being a showstopper is not something that is easily quantifiable. There’s no math equation or magic formula you can use to determine when an artist attains this mythical status, but you probably know it when you see it. In a world where inflation has hit concert ticket prices harder than a Mike Tyson hook to the ribcage, fans have to pick and choose which shows they attend now more than ever. People are looking for a reason to leave their house, and when they do, they want to have an experience. That’s where the showstopper comes in, giving the audience an uncompromising performance that’s unmatched by their peers. The audience wants something memorable that they can tell their friends about — something they didn’t know they needed, maybe something they didn’t even know was possible.

That’s where Christine Goodwyne, Caden Clinton, Andy Anaya, and Nicolette Alvarez enter the conversation. The quartet hailing from Tallahassee, Florida, make up the rock band Pool Kids. I had my head blown off seeing them perform their latest record, Easier Said Than Done, on their headlining tour this past fall. I can confirm that a song like “Leona Street,” with its pop-flair chorus, hits just as hard in person as it does on the record. In comparison to their first two albums, which leaned into the group’s mathy emo tendencies, I get the sense that Pool Kids allowed themselves more freedom on Easier Said Than Done, which also means they had new avenues to go absolutely batshit on stage.

In concert, the band elevates their music in the best way possible, bringing an unlimited amount of energy to the stage and demanding it in return from the crowd. This was a throwback type of performance from a band that is clearly a master of their craft and fan engagement. Goodwyne had the fans in the palm of her hand as she crowd surfed and made her way to the middle of the room, essentially singing in the eye of the storm. All the while, Anaya was gesturing to his ears for more noise from the fans, like he was mid-80s Hulk Hogan hyping up the crowd.

Even with their fierce and precise instrumentation, there’s an unpredictability with Pool Kids that makes them worth the price of admission. At the show I went to, Christine Goodwyne got engaged on stage with her now-fiancé. If that isn’t unpredictable, then I don’t know what is.

Last fall, before their sold-out show at Lincoln Hall in Chicago, I got a chance to have a photoshoot around the venue with Pool Kids. Christine Goodwyne responded to my questions via email about everything from their approach to live shows to dream bands to tour with and getting engaged on stage.

SWIM: What's the last show you saw that lit a competitive spirit and made you want to practice harder for the next time you went to the studio?

GOODWYNE: I don't know that I feel “competitive” in those situations; I see it more as feeling inspired. I love it when I go to a show and find myself feeling inspired and motivated to get home and work. I definitely felt that way watching Foxing at Thalia Hall, which was literally the last show we played. I always say that I feel inspired by so many of the bands we play with, but I really do mean it in a literal sense. I see other people’s ideas and the way they do things then it makes me feel excited to go back home and work on ways to make our show better.

SWIM: Is how you approach creating music today different than how you approached your debut record in 2018?

GOODWYNE: Definitely. For our debut record, I was trying to finish it as quickly as possible and didn't really know how to pick a song apart or experiment with structure and presentation. I would just kind of write random guitar parts and smash them together, which I think gave that record a more math-rock feel that some people like. I also wrote most of the vocals after figuring out the guitars. Now I figure out vocals as I’m fleshing out the guitar and general structure. I also tinker with the songs a lot more before deciding on what to bring to the band, and then we have fun tinkering even more as a full band. But yeah, the biggest difference is definitely that it’s not just Caden and me anymore, so there’s a lot more insight and input and exploration with all four of us once we get in a room together.

SWIM: Easier Said Than Done has countless fun, sing-along choruses, with the standout for me being "Leona Street." Are there any bands you listened to growing up that influenced how you create a fun pop song?

GOODWYNE: I didn’t really start getting into pop music until my adult life, I would say, a few years after starting the band. I had a lot of catching up to do, I got really into Charli XCX and Lady Gaga, and now I can appreciate a lot of Taylor Swift, too. But when I started getting into that kind of music, that’s definitely when I started to pay more attention to song structure and writing an actual chorus, and what makes a chorus or a hook “catchy.”

SWIM: Can you tell me about your vision going into making Easier Said Than Done: the topics you wanted to approach and how you wanted the songs to sound sonically?

GOODWYNE: I don’t know that I’ve ever sat down before writing a record and decided ahead of time what topics I want to approach. I feel like I’m just always slowly writing songs, and whichever ones aren’t ready in time for the studio on the current record just get carried over to the next. As far as subject matter, not to get all Rick Rubin or spiritual about it, but I sort of feel like I don’t have much of a choice in what ideas come to me. I’m kind of just at the mercy of whatever lyric ideas pop into my head, and then I just have to take that and run with it. I never in a million years would have planned to write a song like “Dani,” which is about a childhood friend’s trauma, but the lyrics just started coming to me, so I was like “welp, here we go I guess.”

SWIM: Your live show is an incredibly fun experience worth the price of admission alone. In this day and age, shows are about stage presence and keeping the fans engaged, which you all seem to be students of the game in that regard. How did you all develop your stage presence? Is it something that happened naturally, or did it take time to develop?

GOODWYNE: That’s a great question. We actually used to be super stiff on stage, and I remember the moment where that really changed. We were going on one of our first tours with Mom Jeans, and a friend who had also toured with them was like, “You just have to go absolutely crazy on stage to keep their attention. They see you as a barrier standing in between them and who they really want to see, so you just have to go absolutely crazy.” We all sort of looked at each other before going on stage and were like, “fuck it, who cares if we look stupid, let’s just go fucking crazy.” Andy already had a great stage presence at that point because he had been touring for a long time before that, but I remember that show being sort of a breakthrough for Nicolette and I. We realized how much better it made the show, and we just started doing that every time.

SWIM: Who is on your dream list of bands you would love to tour with in the future?

GOODWYNE: I’ll spare you the list of 100 bands, but ones we’ve been talking about more recently have definitely been Wet Leg, Mannequin Pussy, HAIM, Amyl and the Sniffers, Japanese Breakfast, and Wednesday… there are so many more, though.

SWIM: Biopics seem to be the latest rage recently from movies about Bob Dylan, Pavement and now Bruce Springsteen in the past year. What's your favorite music biopic film and why?

GOODWYNE: I sort of live under a rock and don’t think I’ve seen any true biopics, but we definitely love a good music doc. We LOVE Some Kind of Monster, as well as Mistaken for Strangers, both of which were shown to us by Andy.

SWIM: Lastly, congratulations to Christine on getting engaged at the Chicago show! What an amazing moment that must have been. Can you describe to me the emotions you were going through up there on stage while everything was happening? Did you have a heads-up that something was up, or were you totally in shock?

GOODWYNE: Me AND THE BAND both had no idea it was going to happen, haha. He didn’t want there to be any secrets in the van because he knew I would grill everyone if I sensed something was up, so he really kept it a secret. I did know to expect a proposal within the year or so, and I had even dropped hints about wanting an on-stage proposal… but for whatever reason, it just did NOT cross my mind to expect it that day. I was watching him sing and dance for the whole set, and then he disappeared for like the last three songs. I asked the crowd, “Where is Nick??!” and when he walked up onto the stage, I thought he was just showing me ‘here I am, babe!’ but right before he grabbed the mic, I saw that his facial expression was very focused instead of funny, and that’s when I realized what was happening haha. He nailed it.

David is a content mercenary based in Chicago. He’s also a freelance writer specializing in music, movies, and culture. His hidden talents are his mid-range jump shot and the ability to always be able to tell when someone is uncomfortable at a party. You can find him scrolling away on Instagram @davidmwill89, Twitter @Cobretti24, or Medium @davidmwms.

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April 23: The Unofficial Liberation Weekend preshow in which Caroline watches the trans girls of DC two step to folk music

April 24th – Day 1: In which Caroline meets her heroes, has a cheerleading squad, and thinks about God

April 25th – Day 2: In which Caroline aids the downfall of capitalism, rediscovers her inner child, and guesses which band member has hemorrhoids

April 26th – Day 3: In which Caroline learns about the South, wishes she could dodge parking tickets, and takes flight

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Home Page
Main Feed
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About
Merch
Logos
Search
Archive

This Week’s
Swim Select

Explore by Category
Reviews
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Roundups
Retrospectives
Food
Video
End of Year