Here's What We Have:

Summer had just begun, and it seemed the UV index was just high enough for the people of New York to embrace their long-suppressed trashiness which was disguised as patriotism—not that they’re mutually-exclusive. I showed up to Trans Pecos—a venue in Ridgewood, Queens—in a Minion bikini, a mini skirt, and a thirst for blood. I left humbled, covered in mud, and without my mini skirt. It was the second annual Great American Mud Wrestling Show, and the event truly lived up to its name. We wrestled in the mud. It was most certainly great. That adjective doesn’t nearly do it justice, and speaking of justice, it might have been the most American thing I’ve ever witnessed. I was one of the first to wrestle. It seems like my friend Catie and I had a lot of unresolved tension between us based on the way things went down in the mud that day.  We’ve both gotten dirty on my knees before, but this time it was in the name of patriotism. This time we did it for the founding fathers.  (Photos by JP Dougherty) As for who won, let me just preface this by saying Catie won a $500 cash prize from Jello wrestling at an East Village party about 6 weeks prior to this. I was not present for that, but a friend said to me “I had my money on Catie for Jello wrestling, but the only person I thought could beat Catie is you. I’m kinda shocked you didn’t win mud wrestling.” Catie, herself, even said she thought I was the only person who could beat her. I had countless people swiping up on my Instagram stories and coming up to me days after saying “there’s no way you didn’t win” and more remarks of that nature. While I was flattered by countless people's utter shock at my loss, indicating a great amount of faith in my combat-capability, I was also ashamed. I was a sore loser—both figuratively and literally. My entire body was in terrible pain for days after this (Catie’s too), but my ego was even more bruised. I searched for any rationale to in an effort to justify my loss “In my defense, I just got off work and have not eaten a single thing yet today, and I had several nip slips that I had to take care of in the ring because there were many cameras on us. That is not equity”, I took to my Instagram story to say. “I promise I am very combat-capable. In fact, I actually have training in boxing. I just didn’t want to have to use it on someone I consider a friend”…safe to say I didn’t consider her a friend after that day. (Catie’s legs the next day…our friend Elizabeth said there was something poetic about Leg murdering Catie’s legs) (Me being mature, feigning a smile, and hugging Catie after—despite harboring a lot of hatred in my heart in that moment) When Matt Weinberger showed up and began taking pictures of me, I dropped and cracked my phone. At least the pictures he took were good enough to end up on the wall in his opening gallery the next week. I shattered my entire phone but more tragically my ego after the loss. (Photo in Matt Weinberger’s gallery exhibition the following week of me holding up my cracked phone) They were selling food—hot dogs, cotton candy, and things of that nature. I am—unbeknownst to many—a vegan, so thankfully they had a vegan hot dog alternative made from carrots (please trust me on this one), loaded with toppings and a side of chips. I re-fueled and held my iPhone to my head with a screen that said  “who wants to wrestle”—in an effort to redeem myself. Nobody took me on. I truly hope this day didn’t reinforce the false stereotype that vegans are weak. My old boxing instructor would have been disappointed in me, but I truly think Catie is the only person there that could have beaten me (and I was having an off day). She’s an undefeated wrestling champion—Jello wrestling, mud wrestling, and next the WWE it seems. (Photos by Mark “The Cobrasnake” Hunter) After the mud wrestling, people attempted to clean up the aftermath—many beautiful but filthy young women used brooms and whatnot to move the mud closer to the drain. It was like Cinderella if she lived in Bushwick. Instead of being taken to the ball in a beautiful blue dress, accompanied by her Prince Charming, she would be taken to The Snow Strippers at Boiler Room, wearing Rick Owens, accompanied by her semi-clouted DJ or fashion bro boyfriend.  Many then washed down their losses with Pabst Blue Ribbons, and those who wrestled hosed themselves down just enough to not be dripping with mud when we all flocked to the inside of Trans-Pecos to dance to music. There were performances by Gun, November Girl, and Veronica, followed by a DJ set by my favorites, Itg.url. Here are some before and after comparisons: (Photo by JP Dougherty of me after mud wrestling) (Photos by Mark “The Cobrasnake” Hunter after hosing down) I’d never heard any of the bands before then, and unfortunately I missed the entirety of Gun’s set and a good portion of November Girl’s set when I was rinsing myself off and tending to my need for an outfit change, but even from the outside, I could hear the inside booming, and when I eventually made it inside, I saw what all the roars from outside were about. Though I only caught the end of November Girl’s set, it was clear from the energy of both the crowd and herself, that frontwoman Willa Rudolph does not come to play (and she’s a baddie).  When Veronica took over the stage, it was all eyes on frontwoman Sofia Zarzuela who captivated the crowd with her hypnotizing stage presence and energy, good looks, and music that made me dance so long and hard I nearly had to check if my feet were still on. Zarzuela may be tiny, but she certainly doesn’t sound like it. She got on the ground a few times, and managed to still sound (and look) incredible while lying on the stage. To say I was impressed would be an understatement.  (The inside of Trans Pecos, behind the stage) (Sofia Zarzuela of Veronica by Mark “The Cobrasnake” Hunter) After Veronica, Itg.url took over. Itg.url is a DJ duo made up of two belles, Maraya and Sarah. They’re fun, they’re hot, they pull a crowd, and they never fail to get everyone dancing. This set of theirs had me dancing on an elevated surface (what’s new?) and caused me to add the song “Combat Baby” by Metric to my Spotify playlist—which would become stuck in my head for weeks after. (Itg.url by Mark “The Cobrasnake” Hunter) All of Trans-Pecos was bursting with hedonism that day, and I truly feel like that is the meaning of freedom. These are the values in which our country was founded. Washington and Jefferson and Hamilton fought for our independence so we could mud wrestle in minimal clothing in kitty pools in the backyard of a club. I genuinely believe this event was the epitome of patriotism, and at times like these I wholeheartedly understand why the Europeans hate us.  I made it home safely and took this mirror selfie right before hopping in the shower.  I was able to wash all the mud off me, but I couldn’t wash away the disappointment I had in myself after losing. Rumor has it some of my dignity went down the drain with the remainder of the mud that day, and I was never the same.

If you told 12-year-old me that I would be co-hosting and promoting a penthouse party in Manhattan during the summertime, she would think I was extremely cool. If you told her that I would get kicked out for bringing too many people, she would think I was even cooler. My friend Lauren had been staying in the penthouse for a few weeks while she was in between apartments. It wasn’t hers, but she knew the man who owned it, and he was letting her stay in it while he was out of town. I’d been in the penthouse a few times prior to the party because that’s where we’d been working on our screenplay together. Every time the elevator doors opened at the top floor and I stepped out into the penthouse, I was in utter awe of the place. The shock never wore off. In fact, somehow I seemed to be in greater shock each time. I tried to imagine living a life like this. This amount of wealth was unfathomable to me. I came to the conclusion that it was so disgustingly large, modern, well put-together and perfectly-maintained, that I would actually feel lonely living there alone. Lauren told me the owner was in the butter business. Is that some sort of euphemism for some illegal sexual business? Or does he use this butter business as a money laundering front ? I wondered because I found it hard to believe that working in the buttery industry could lead you to afford a $6 million penthouse. Then again, everything I know about finance I learned from watching Ozark— which, I suppose, could be why my mind wandered to those possible illegal explanations. “No, he literally just owns butter factories”, Lauren told me. It’s safe to say that if all else fails, I’ll be investing in a dairy cow or a thousand (just kidding—I’m vegan). Lauren told me she was thinking about throwing a party, since she only had a few days left in the penthouse and asked if I’d be down to promote it. Of course, I said yes. After I did my fair share of promoting and Lauren did her fair share of purchasing alcohol, food, and setting up, we were ready to kiki. I showed up to the party wearing my typical amount of clothes—or lack thereof. I was wearing a denim bra top and a black mini skirt. I showed up early (when nobody other than Lauren was there), so I could be there when my friends started showing up. Slowly but surely did they start showing up. (Lauren setting up…calm before the storm. Please note that this one photo of this one part of the penthouse doesn’t nearly do it justice.) My friend Abby was one of the first to show up. She showed up with some sort of top shelf liquor—-I believe it was Absolut. My friend Jade showed up with his camera and began taking photos of everyone. My long-time internet friend Dani even showed up because she was visiting from California and wanted a Leg5 going out experience. Safe to say she wanted to move to New York after that night. People brought food and more drinks, adding to Lauren’s pre-existing array. Some people showed up, claiming they knew me and that I invited them. I had never met them before. We were about to go all Gatsby in that [redacted]—with a different ending, of course (although it would still be tragic in many ways). Soon enough, the penthouse was full of partygoers, and I brought some of them up to the roof. As a writer, it’s my job to find the words, but I am still searching for the right ones to properly capture the sensation I felt standing on that penthouse rooftop, overlooking the Manhattan skyline in the summer, surrounded by my friends, holding champagne in my hand with music playing in the background. Imagine a painter running out of colors for the image they want to paint or a filmmaker running out of film when they still have part of the story to tell. Imagine a musician running out of chords or lyrics while trying to describe a heartbreak they just went through. That’s how I feel, grasping for the right words to encapsulate the sensation I felt in that moment, standing on that rooftop. I can still see the skyline—Manhattan’s dotted complexion during hours where only sinners were still awake, reminded of if midnight had acne. When I was on the roof, I occasionally looked down through the skylight and could get a glimpse of what was going on inside the penthouse where many of the people still were. The rooftop is where I spent most of my time at the party. I danced to music with my friends, posed while Jade took photos, drank champagne, laughed and chatted and whatnot, and took in the view. It was one of those moments so amazing you almost weren’t fully able to enjoy it because you could already anticipate the feeling of missing it the next day.  (Photos by Jade Greene—@byjadegreene on Instagram) Eventually we went back inside and reconvened with the rest of the people who were still in the penthouse. That’s when Lauren informed me that the contractor had just told her she needed to evacuate everybody because the contractor told her we brought too many people. Life’s not easy being so popular and having so many friends. Since I brought these people, I decided it was my responsibility to find us somewhere else to go. My friend Isabel was hosting at Paul’s Casablanca and it was a short walk, so that’s where I brought everyone. I felt like a duck with all her little ducklings walking behind her, leading them to the gates of hedonism (like any good mother would). We got to Casa and said Isabel’s name at the door and the bounce let us in. Jackson Walker Lewis and Orson were DJing, which is how you know it was popping. I ran into a bunch of my good friends at Isabel’s table that I was happy I unexpectedly got to see. (I really love this photo I took of my friends Julia, Jeanie, and Page after running into them) Many helped themselves to alcohol from Isabel’s table, and I, of course, continued to dance. I didn’t really get many pictures from inside, which is how you know it was fun. (Dani and me dancing inside of Paul’s Casablanca) I will spare some of the details for what happened the rest of the night for two reasons—in case my mother is reading this and because I can’t say I remember them all.

I always know it was a good party when I wake up to nude photos of myself on thecobrasnake.com , half my outfit missing, and I have a gut-wrenching instinct to google “can you get a staph infection from a pool”. “Don’t go in the Le Bain pool! You can get an STD from going in there”, half of the socialites and artists who frequent the same Lower Manhattan venues as I do, took to Instagram to say. My friends, if you believe you can get a sexually-transmitted disease from a communal pool, you were most likely too busy drawing eyes on your notebook and writing the word “Chlamydia” in cursive too many times during Sex Ed to actually absorb the lesson. Also, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you believe this myth because your significant other told you they got an STD from the Le Bain pool, you have much bigger things to worry about.  Just getting into the club can be a tricky experience alone. The line on the right—where people not on any promoter’s list wait (God knows how long) often wraps around the corner of the street and is not the ideal way to go. That’s why I was thankful to have a friend hosting that night—whose name I said at the door, so I did not have to wait. After IDs are checked, they’ll bring you to the elevator that takes you up to the fun. It has kind of an eerie vibe—one that reminds me of the elevator from Tower of Terror at Disney World. However, of course, if all goes well, this one brings you straight up and lets you off right there (as opposed to the other one). For those who have never been, the club is at The Standard (in The Meatpacking District), several stories high, and is home to one of my favorite views of Manhattan at nighttime. It’s one of those views of the skyline that you picture as a child in your hometown, begging your parents to take you on a trip to NYC—the skyline’s complexion dotted with flickering lights from apartments of thousands of Manhattanites you know you’ll never get to meet. However, if you’re like me—you can still try to imagine what’s going on inside each apartment. It’s one of those views that really brings the word “sonder” to life. Yes, you get this view from inside the actual club, but it only gets better once you go up the stairs onto the roof of the club.  (Me on the roof of the club) I showed up to the club in a tiny metal bikini top (that was good while it lasted but failed to last the duration of the party), a black mini-skirt (with bikini bottoms underneath, of course), red tights, and high heels that were reminiscent of soccer cleats (if you added a 3-inch pump to them, of course).  When I got there, everybody was dancing a regular amount as the DJs spun their decks, drinking as promoters filled their cups with vodka, tequila, and chasers, but nobody was in the pool yet. That seemed like the perfect challenge for me to amp up the via and get things lively. I took off my skirt, tights, and shoes, and headed right in the pool—which, in my opinion, is always concerningly warm. Soon enough, the pool—4-feet-deep —was filled with dozens of feet of people who had decided to join me. You can call me a trend-setter if you please. Photo by Michelle Paradis (@_himynameismichelle on Instagram) Shortly thereafter, Fcukers—a New-York-Based band rapidly gaining prominence for their 1990s-esque dance music—began their set in front of the pool. They performed some of their most well-known tracks like “Bon Bon”, “Mothers”, and their newly-released single “Homie Don’t Shake”…which made the Le Bain pool feel like it did, in fact, shake from the amount of people dancing to the beat of it. While the club got down to the sound of the beautiful Shanny’s angelic voice, Mark “The Cobrasnake” Hunter, Matt Weinberger, and countless other nightlife photographers clicked away, making sure the energy of the club was accurately-documented. People got on each other’s shoulders like we were youthful, sinless middle-schoolers in the summertime again—except this time we were inebriated, lustful adults baring as much skin as possible without getting ticketed for public indecency and making sure to capture it all so it could end up on social media the next day. (Photos by Mark “The Cobrasnake” Hunter—as seen on Thecobrasnake.com ) I may as well have gotten ticketed when soon enough my top broke and I had no choice but to free the nip. At this point, the Fcukers set had ended and the pool had cleared out, but my friend still decided to join me in my toplessness—which of course, ended up on thecobrasnake.com the next day. (Photo by Mark “The Cobrasnake” Hunter) Shortly thereafter, nearly everybody that was left in the pool was topless and embracing their natural form as they danced and swam. What can I say? I can almost liken the moonlight to a drug—the way it possesses people and makes them come out of their shells, filling them with an overwhelming amount of confidence and lust. I also will not confirm or deny whether there were other substances being consumed there. Needless to say, I know it was a good night when I can’t remember exactly how I got home (but thankfully woke up safely in my own bed) with dozens of photos and videos of me on social media the next day that would probably make my grandparents roll over in their graves.

Grab your space boots and buckle up! This is not a cosmic ride-it’s a full-blown intergalactic nightmare! The Alien franchise is gold to science fiction and horror, with Ridley Scott introducing this franchise to audiences in 1979. Over the decades, the series has evolved through sequels and prequels, each expanding this terrifying universe of out-of-this-world threats and human frailty. The franchise continues to captivate fans with anticipation for this upcoming film, which promises to introduce new characters and honor the legacy of the impact of the Alien universe. In this installment, a remote, bleak, eerie planet named Romulus is where a team of explorers walk into a force with more issues than your last Hinge date. Alien Romulus ventures into new territory while paying homage to the rich legacy of the Alien franchise, expanding the universe and other intriguing twists that will satisfy new and longtime fans. The film introduces a new chapter that follows a group of explorers who encounter a mysterious alien species on the titular planet Romulus. The story balances that rich suspense and action sequences with moments of eerie quiet that build tension in true  Alien  fashion. The suspense aboard the spaceship is packed with tension that’ll make you start praying for safety.   The film’s cast delivers performances as terrifying as the interstellar adventure these characters embark on. The chemistry within the cast is strong and individually complements each other, driving the story forward with terror and anxiety. Cailee Spaney is truly a standout.  Her character, Rain, blends strength and vulnerability to draw in the audience. Spaney captures the complexity of her role and enhances the film’s emotional core. The supporting cast also excels, with everyone contributing to the film’s immersive experience. Their performances are important to the film’s ability to create a believable and tense environment that ensures the stakes feel real and immediate.  The genius behind this cosmic nightmare is Fede Alvarez, who has taken the Alien franchise and enhanced it into a rollercoaster of terror, displaying his creativity within the sci-fi action horror that makes you question every decision that led you to watch this film. His previous works, such as Evil Dead  and  Don’t Breathe, were already proof that he knows how to create a scare. However, in Alien Romulus, he raises the bar of this franchise, launches into the stratosphere, and makes sure it lands with a resounding and terrifying crash. Álaverz uses his signature flair for creating intense and immersive experiences. His direction brings a fresh and innovative way to showcase the Alien universe, efficiently combining high-stakes action scenes. The production design is striking and atmospheric. One can tell the team behind this took time to create these sets to enhance the menacing presence of the ship and its out-of-this-world inhabitants. This visually impressive entry maintains the high standards expected of the series. The film’s dark environments and suspense are a part of Álvarez’s directorial style that reflects his understanding of the genre and ability to capture this franchise in his light. Alien Romulus is a testament to his skill and creativity in reaffirming his status as a leading voice in the franchise.   This film distinguishes itself from the other installments of the Alien franchise by embracing a daring and innovative storyline that explores unfamiliar stakes in contrast to the other films, which mainly concentrate on the Xenomorphs and their unrelenting hunt for humans for their reproduction. Alien Romulus  presents a new alien race to complete with a frightening backstory. To heighten the feeling of fear and isolation, the film enhances the menacing planet Romulus. This installment offers an interesting and unpleasant experience that regenerates the series while paying tribute to its origins. It combines new and inventive storytelling with the tension that has come to define this brand.    Alien Romulus  is a massive, worthy addition to the Alien franchise. The film stays true to the core elements that fans love while introducing new concepts and seasoning the universe in new ways. The strong cast, fast-paced story, and impressive visuals make this film respect its predecessors while confidently carving out its own space in the sci-fi genre. Longtime fans and new to the series Alien Romulus are here to scare you, begging for the lights to stay on while sleeping.    Written by Daniel Rojas

On the weekend of August 9th, I had the pleasure of attending Rogue Music Festival on days one and three. A queer, female-run music festival committed to paying artists fairly (meaning with each ticket purchase, 70% goes to the artists!) With this being their second year, I was thrilled to be invited back to check out some incredible small, local (and not-so-local) bands! Working with people who care for the artists just as much as they do the art is inspiring. From the weekend, I’ve highlighted 8 artists and their musicality, stage presence, and performance. August 9th (Day 1) Koleżanka A dreamy psychedelic set filled with synthesizing keys and compelling harmonies. With experimentive lyricism and collective care in the performance, Koleżanka attracted the crowd and lulled them into a fascination of their melodic expertise. Each guitar solo shined as the harmonies between the keyboardist and lead singer beautifully meld together. Their music is something I envision myself listening to while contemplating life and journaling at a park.  AK & the Hallucinations  Lead singer Amy Klein, one of the organizers   of Rogue Music Festival, has her own band curating an expansive rock and roll sound. Her distinctive vocals drew the crowd in as the rest of her band matched her energy. From the start of the set, their stage presence charged at the crowd with raw lyricism and impressive instrumental breaks. With complex guitar solos and thundering drums, AK & the Hallucinations incorporate elements from heavy metal and rock. She introduced her song “Loser,” and as it began quiet and slow, its tempo picked up, as did the heaviness of the guitar and drums. Mint Green Starting her set strong, frontwoman Ronnica jumped into the crowd of Baby’s All Right and ran around, ultimately livening up the crowd. With catchy melodies and an exciting lead, Mint Green surpassed my expectations. Her interaction with the crowd not only made the performance more intriguing but created a connection between the audience and the band. While being upbeat and lively, Ronnica’s impressive range of vocals amazed the crowd. Their cover of “Creep” by Radiohead had the audience fully mesmerized. An unforgettable performance by Mint Green, traveling all the way from Boston! Night Spins The last band I saw on the festival's first night was Night Spins. With an eccentric lead singer and storytelling that entranced the crowd, their sound was cohesive and fun. Their performance was enticing, a genuinely emotional production with vocals that traveled throughout the venue. From exuberant dancing to the connection between the lead singer and the guitarist, the set was filled with high energy as they closed with the song "Knockin'", leaving the audience wanting more! August 11th (Day 3) Sammus As I walked in late to day three of Rogue Music Festival, Sammus was in the middle of her set, immediately reeling me in. Lead of Sammus, Dr. Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo, breath work delivering lines of poetry was not only exciting to enter in on but moving. Intricate lyrics with a heavy bass and drums to carry on, her ability to captivate the audience seemed effortless. With every verse came emotion into the microphone and moving through the crowd; it was palpable. As the set came to a close, Sammus embraced one another, showcasing the love the band had for each other and performing. Debbie Dopamine A fusion of indie pop and grungey guitar riffs curates a sound so unique to Debbie Dopamine. The engagement with one another on stage made their performance much more personal, keeping an upbeat attitude with, at times, gut-wrenching lyricism. There was a clear connection with the band members, even after stating there was a sub-in for the usual bassist. You could tell there was genuine enjoyment for being on stage together. Thundering drums, a deep bass, and exciting guitar solos tied the whole set together beautifully. Sandile An alt-rock band that keeps you on your toes, ready to move and dance around. Every aspect of this band blended so well, from the bassist to the lead guitarist to the drummer in the corner. Their collective cohesion brought out a sense of intimacy between them all. Each guitar solo shocked the audience along with the instrumental breaks of them all rocking out. Their ability to connect with the crowd through their music was something special. Di Ivories The last band I saw at Rogue Music Festival was the perfect send-off of the night. Di Ivories were as groovy and exciting as they were unique. Lead singer and keyboardist Diego Martinez had the crowd up and moving with his outgoing energy and continuous dancing. The band itself blended together in a beautiful melodic harmony with a heavy bass, an addictive guitar, and strong drums alongside the keyboard. Their performance could be described as a sonically psychedelic journey through music where indie rock experiments with sparkling pop. Written by Amy Kapel Day 1 Photographed by Merissa Blitz Day 3 Photographed  by Mariah Yvi

The anticipation could be felt in the air that evening as time ticked closer to  Summer Fling’s , the funk-rock band based out in New York City, performance on the Our Wicked Lady  stage. The excitement only intensified with each preceding act from the rocking Ok, Tyler , whose lyrics dive into themes of coming-of-age such as heartache, doubt, hope, and more, followed by Thesaurus Rex's  theatrical performance of their narrative-driven songs.   Summer Fling’s  discography, consisting of elements from funk, jazz, pop, and rock, uniquely diversified from anyone else, creating music and live sets that allow their audience to dance, sing, and liberate themselves from any worry. As soon as Summer Fling  appeared on stage, dressed in heartbreak jerseys and sailor hats, and the lead singer, Eddie Kam, wearing glitter pants, it was evident that the night would transcend all expectations.    Summer Fling  has this impressive ability to captivate the audience. The band and fans are deeply immersed in the present, making live sets feel as if they are a little world that only exists in that very moment. Even during moments when someone was not actively playing, their presence continued to electrify the stage, such as the horn section occasionally engaging in choreography. As an audience member, you can feel that every band member shares a love for music, performing, the band, and each other. All of this was clear during the specs of moments where they each had a chance to showcase their unique talents and the other members would take this time to sit on the ground to spotlight their peers further. The relationship between the band members extends beyond most, creating a remarkable balance of partnership and friendship. This dynamic is particularly evident during a bit when Kam and the horn section would mimic one another; Kam would sing a tune that the horn section would recreate, creating these fun spectacles sonically and visually. Kam’s performance as a frontman is mesmerizing, as he has this natural charisma that entices the audience, reminding me of Elton John and David Bowie with vibrant attire accompanied by an exuberant attitude as he commands the audience, making him a frontman that you truly can’t compare anyone to. Throughout the set, Kam showcases his range from low to extremely high vocals with such ease. As you watch the room, all you can observe is everyone singing every word, even the complex horn section parts demonstrating a fan base that has become dedicated to the art they are creating.  Summer Fling  goes above and beyond a typical show; they put on a performance that immerses the audience, evoking laughter, dance, and sing-alongs that have created a community amongst people, including the audience by singing covers, leaving the stage abd playing in the audience, and even creating bits that allow the audience to feel as if they are in on an insider secret that can only be achieved by going to every show. Summer Fling makes their live performance a priority, delivering sets that are unforgettable and leaving the audience eagerly anticipating the next one. Check out and follow Summer Fling's socials for more music and show announcements and stream there recent album release, Summer Fling Strikes Out ! Written and Photographed by Veronica Anaya

“I will not accept a life I do not deserve!”   I want this mantra engraved on my tombstone.  Ti West’s X trilogy refines horror with its thematic and stylistic diversity. Beginning with X , set in rural Texas, Ti West blends sudden and gruesome deaths with social commentary on sexual liberation, creating a modern slasher classic. The prequel, Pearl is set during WW1 and the Spanish influenza, shifts gears to a character driven narrative exploring ambition and isolation. Finally, Maxxxine explores 80s Hollywood through a lens of satanic panic and crime drama, offering a nostalgic yet fresh take on the era. The trilogy shows off West’s bold storytelling and thematic exploration by delivering narratives that resonate from the traditional genre boundaries,  which makes the X trilogy a campy and bloody addition to contemporary horror cinema.    In 2022 Ti West introduces the horror world to A24’s X, which follows an adult film crew set out to make a film in the middle of nowhere rural Texas but when the two elderly hosts catch them they find themselves in danger. The kills are done well and so entertaining with Ti West using his kills as very sudden and gruesome. The perfect amount of gore for this kind of movie making it a classic type of slasher that fits the period. This movie is surrounded by sexuality and sex scenes that never felt too gratuitous and separate the social commentary that is made. The juxtaposition of the film crew and actors with the judgmental, prudish old couple is commentating on the sexual liberation that happened in the 70’s and the intergenerational conflict that can still be applied to the present day.  I wanted to highlight the cast because it's one of the best things that strengthens X. Kid Cudi stars as Jackson who is the only adult film star on set, and he gives an incredible job in this role. Brittany Snow surprised me as an adult film star showing off her versatility from other horror movies and the  Pitch Perfect series. Martin Henderson is no stranger to horror as he starred in The Ring, so it was nice to see him again channeling this hard manager type. Jenna Ortega became Gen Z’s scream queen which could not be more exciting. I am so happy to see her presented with new roles and stepping out to dominate this genre. Lastly, I have to mention the standout, the ultimate star that is Mia Goth. She has such a unique look to her and fits this role because everyone around her is telling her that she has something special and manifesting stardom. Also, Mia Goth plays two roles in this, Maxine as well as the older lady Pearl, going through one hell of a transition to play her. The characters that these actors embody just make the film believable and fun.  The second installment of this trilogy, Pearl which is a prequel to X follows Pearl who is trapped on her family’s isolated farm Pearl must take care of her father along with the overbearing watch of her mother. She wants a glamorous life like she's seen in the movies. Pearl deals with her morals, ambitions, and aspirations in this origin story. This takes place during WW1 in 1918 and the time of the Spanish Influenza which is a great background to have about the Covid-19 pandemic showing masks and showing distancing. It’s weird to have two of these movies come out in 2022 with people questioning their sense of time being thrown off because a prequel in the same year as the original movie which is unheard of and takes a risk. Mia Goth and Ti West wrote the script together during a two-week required quarantine so she is credited as a writer and producer for Pearl . The cinematography, the editing, the score, and the opening credit text reflect the era this film takes place in and immerses you in that period. I love the classic transitions and the great homages to old Hollywood movies. Pearl’s technicolor world is slower pacing with less gore and more character-driven than X was. This film is all about Pearl and is a hard character study behind someone who is isolated and fights an internal battle for wanting more for herself.  Mia Goth’s performance was arguably snubbed by critics in this film. The scene at the end where Pearl has a monologue and this is done in only one take is beyond incredible, I got chills so many times and wish I could watch it for the first time again. I am not going to lie that I found myself to relate to her story in what she expresses in the monologue. Of course, I don’t agree with murder and what she does in the film but the feelings that she expresses as she covers her life story is something that audiences relate to. Wanting a better life for yourself, starving for more and living unsatisfied resonated with me. Pearl is one of my favorite horror characters that we have gotten in a long time but probably my favorite in horror media ever to be written. She is one of the most original and authentic villains that still has a heavy backstory that I have just become obsessed with. I give Pearl  10 stars all the way and I can't fault it in any way.   Maxine proves to be the most anticipated out of the three which may lead to the ratings being lower than the others because there is more room for error. When audiences have an expectation it’s easier to be disappointed, this film has been receiving mixed reviews because of the hype and critics and audiences being let down by it, however as for me, I felt the opposite where my expectations were a little low because the 80s is overdone, especially in horror. The movie shows Maxine trying to get a part in this sequel from a movie that plays into satanic panic which connects to Maxine and centers around the killings going on in the world with a serial killer on the loose and a crime going up. The first act is probably my favorite. The beginning of this movie was so fun like the song choices, the opening credits, the montage, just a great amount of exposition given. The movie is a fan service for people who enjoy crime dramas from the 80s and more so it does not replicate what horror movies were like in the 80s. This has a mystery whodunit edge while relocating the idea of what 80s Hollywood is rather than enhancing a horror from the period. I do feel like because we have many characters in this the story kind of wavered at points where I started to question the plot instead of getting into the fun horror elements that I did not feel wowed me too much. However, I love the character Maxine so much and she is truly a badass so it; 's easy to stay hyped throughout the film but it is made for fans that like this subgenre of horror crime dramas that like that style replicated instead of anything new that X  and Pearl  that brought a greater message. Overall, I think that because of the wait around this release fans of this trilogy were waiting for something grand, and although there are some surprises in this it didn't cement itself as being on the same wave as the previous film. Even after all these critics, I can’t help myself be so in awe of someone like Mia Goth who has become one of my favorite actors in the last two years and I will be following her acting. She is a threat to other actors amongst so many and her performance in Pearl  alone is just legendary. The X trilogy deserves all the recognition in an era where we do not see original movies being made to continue into something like this. Ti West has successfully created the most tonally different trilogies I’ve ever seen and made his mark in the horror genre.  Written By Daniel Rojas  Graphic By Katelynn Herrera

Longlegs is dark and atmospheric, catching me off guard from what I expected based on its marketing. It unfolds like a chilling police procedural mixed with eerie tones of Silence of the Lambs and  The Exorcist III . I am neutral regarding slow burns, but the gradual buildup of dread throughout the film is incredibly effective. Director Oz Perkins ensures every set design is hauntingly beautiful. The choice of how much of Nicholas Cage to reveal to sign empty spaces for suspense enhanced the film and had me questioning as the movie progressed. The simple camera movements with tense scores and sharp sounds made my heart race. Maika Monroe delivers my favorite performance of hers to date. Monroe portrays Lee Harker with awkwardness, fear, and determination. She's an underrated horror heroine. Nicholas Cage shines as well in this unhinged and terrifying character. It's also refreshing to see Alicia Witt in a horror role and delivering a stone-cold preference as Lee's religious mother.  In the film, a series of murders occur six days before or after the 14th of each month and coincide with a daughter's 9th birthday in each family. These killings are done by the father with no sign of an intruder but are always accompanied by a coded letter with the sign "LONGLEGS". The protagonist, Agent Lee Harker, is drawn into this disturbing pattern. Oz Perkins skillfully builds an eerie atmosphere that intensifies as Harker delves deeper into the mysteries surrounding the murders, culminating in a climax with much anxiety in the film's final act. I think Longlegs is a powerful story about family trauma, mainly how it affects children even after their family falls apart. The production design was probably my favorite thing about this film. All the walls were dark and wooden, with very gray coloring that fits the story, so each setting connects and nothing feels out of place. I enjoy how it captures rural northern America. It makes me not want to take a road trip up there, especially at night. The film is just so visceral and original with its cult religious elements that may scare audiences depending on growing up religious, which can play questioning one's upbringing and remembering fears they once had tied to religion. Even when something scary was not happening on screen, it was still palpable, and you can feel the anxiety that Lee has because you don't know where this case might lead.     This film is a meaningful addition to the horror genre. As someone who watches a lot of horror, I feel desensitized to most things, but this genuinely scared me. I felt like a weight of something indescribably sinister, dragging my body down where I had my legs up to my chest and held onto them in the theater, convincing myself to relax. What struck me most about Longlegs is how it delves into the impact that family dynamics can have on a child. The film's mechanics effectively show how often children become vessels for unresolved darkness within their families. Perkins crafts a narrative rich in atmosphere and suspense, drawing inspiration from iconic thrillers while forging its path of psychological mystery. The film's attention to detail and the unsettling characters add layers of depth, navigating themes of family and the supernatural. Longlegs  leaves a lasting impression by delving into human darkness, and the impact family bonds can have on us. Through its storytelling, standout performances, and thought-provoking themes, Longlegs lives up to the hype and invites audiences to confront an unsettling mystery of the haunting human psyche, solidifying a well-deserved place in the horror genre.  Written By Daniel Rojas

In Pittsburgh’s vibrant music scene, one artist has made waves through his Gaga-like melodies and theatrical flair. Pop Baby, recently nominated for Best Pop Artist/Group in Pittsburgh City Paper’s ongoing “Best of PGH” readers’ poll , has captivated audiences with his impressive dance moves, engaging social media persona, and iconic platinum locks. In this exclusive interview, we sit down with the rising star to discuss his journey, creative process, and what lies ahead for this homegrown talent. KRISTI YANG: Congratulations on your nomination for Best Pop Artist in Pittsburgh City Paper! How does it feel to be recognized for your contributions to the local music scene?  POP BABY: Thank you very much. It is such an honor to be recognized by my hometown for my music. I take great pride in being a Pittsburgh-native artist who has made a path in the crowded music industry.  KY: Your journey to stardom, from an aspiring artist to an iconic pop sensation, is truly inspiring. Could you share the key moments and challenges that shaped this remarkable journey?  PB: My journey has had many ups and downs. From being dropped and rejected by record labels to my first viral moment, it's been quite a rollercoaster. The biggest challenge I’ve faced so far is being an artist who doesn’t fit a mold. Standing out is not always easy, but you just gotta keep moving forward. My most favorite moment this year was playing my first headlining sold-out show at The Forge Urban Winery in Homestead. Great venue and it was a concert I will never forget. KY: Pop Baby music videos have become cultural touchstones. What's your creative process for developing these visual masterpieces? PB: I get inspired by what I’m feeling in a moment. Just like the music, the visuals need to tell a story. When I want to direct music videos, I want it to be a dramatic representation of what I’m feeling and not thinking too hard about it.  KY: Your lyrics often touch on deeply personal themes. How do you balance vulnerability with your larger-than-life stage persona? PB: I believe they go hand-in-hand. When you take moments to step outside yourself and be more open with the fans, it creates a stronger relationship, which can influence your stage presence as an artist. The fans and the art are what fuel me, and seeing their eyes light up when they hear my music puts me in a good mood. KY: Who are your biggest musical influences, and how have they shaped your unique sound? PB: I’m very artistically influenced by Lady Gaga, Kesha, and Panic! At The Disco. They all have high-fashioned, theatrical appearances and over-the-top lyrics. However, my biggest muse is Mariah Carey. She is a one-of-a-kind talent who can write, sing, produce, and perform a song with such class and poise.  KY: Your fashion choices are always bold and eye-catching. How important is image to your artistry, and who inspires your style? PB: Image is key in this business. My style, just like my music and videos, really just goes along with how I’m feeling in a certain moment. I never was hiding behind my fashion; I was screaming with my fashion. My style inspiration definitely comes from David Bowie or Elton John. I just think both of those legends have such eye-opening styles you can’t get enough of, and that’s exactly what I love to do, too. KY: This wouldn’t be a Pop Baby interview if we didn’t talk about your social media presence. It’s not just engaging—it's a testament to your connection with your fans. How do you use platforms like TikTok and Instagram to foster this strong bond? PB: I try to make my content all about them. Everything that goes into it is all about making the fans, who we call the “Classmates,” feel like they’re a part of the journey and like they are being heard for their ideas and feelings instead of it being all like, “Look at me, look at me.” KY: The song "Karen" has become an anthem for addressing challenging individuals. Is there a specific Karen who inspired this track, and how do you personally handle the Karens in your life? PB: Haha. It’s actually a funny story. Before becoming well-known, I used to work at Dunkin’ Donuts, and I dealt with difficult customers all the time. When COVID hit, the term became huge in pop culture, and I took my personal experiences and combined them with seeing viral TikToks or YouTube videos and made it into a fun little tune. Normally, with negative people, I often tune them out. Sometimes, the best thing to do when someone is giving you a hard time is to just give them silence. KY: As an artist who's redefined pop music in Pittsburgh, what advice would you give to up-and-coming local musicians? PB: Never give up because you never know what’s in store for you. Don’t be afraid of doing the work, and just stay true to who you are, people will see it. KY: You're known for your high-energy live performances. What can fans expect from your upcoming show at Mr. Smalls on July 26? PB: Lots of music, new choreography, and some fun surprises. KY: You're also playing the New Castle Music Festival on Aug. 3. How do you prepare for such a major event? PB: Rehearsals every day, hydrating, and remembering why I started to do music in the first place. KY: What's next for Pop Baby? Any hints about upcoming projects or collaborations you can share with us? PB: All I can say is… just buckle up. New music is on the horizon. As Pop Baby continues to push boundaries and redefine pop music in Pittsburgh and beyond, his journey serves him as an inspiration to aspiring artists everywhere. With his dancey tunes, high-energy performances, and strong connection to his “Classmates,” Pop Baby is not just a rising star—he’s becoming a cultural icon in Pittsburgh’s evolving music scene. From their humble beginnings at Dunkin’ Donuts to performing at renowned venues and earning nominations, the Baby of Pop’s journey is a testament to creativity, determination, and one’s ability to stay true to themselves. With new music on the horizon and upcoming performances at Mr. Smalls on July 26  and the New Castle Music Festival on Aug. 3 , the Classmates have much to look forward to. Written and Interviewed by Kristi Yang Photography by Colin Tierney and Emily Conners  Production by Mark Bluemle Special Thank You to the Pop Baby team for making this all possible!

The A Quiet Place  franchise continues to impress as this film forges new territory by taking the audience back to the beginning of the alien invasion that told the word to STFU! Much like its predecessors, A Quiet Place: Day One  is a tense thriller with much heart. This film features more dialogue than previous entries, given that it shows the hours just before a meteor shower brings the deadly predators, Death Angels. The majority of the plot and character development is advanced sans characters speaking. It is impressive how tense this movie makes sound and how well the performances of our two leads invests one in the outcome of their journey. Not connecting with the prior two movies set in remote parts of the United States, this film is set in a densely populated city with millions on the small island of Manhattan.  This creates an interesting scenario as the Death Angles are not able to leave Manhattan due to their inability to swim, as we learned in A Quiet Place II, and any living soul trapped on this island is silently screwed with all bridges down. The film shows joint star power by Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn, giving intense emotional performances and beautiful chemistry. Despite minimal dialogue and a tiny cast, they both sell terror and drama, making memorable sequences and moments that add some light humor, a natural human way to cope with all the violence throughout the film. Of course, I can't forget to mention the real star of this movie, Frodo. Frodo is a cute black-and-white bundle of joy and stress throughout the film. This cat practically steals the show, and audiences will connect to the cat just as much as our leads.   Director Michael Sarnoski had a challenging task to take from the previous films but also came up with a fresh perspective. His style is highly admirable, considering the much larger scale and in a different setting. Luckily, I was able to experience the film in IMAX and took impressive shots. The cinematography does a great job of presenting the storytelling that this series is known for. The loud projection of IMAX made the theater silent; no one got up to go to the bathroom, and no one ate loudly; it was almost like we all thought the monsters would come through the walls. Overall, I believe that is because Michale Sarnoksi can showcase an atmosphere of suspense, intensity, and death.  One theme from the film is that we don't give many things in life much thought because we take them for granted. These items make us happy and unite humans instead of focusing on individualism. It may be as easy as sharing a drink with someone, taking a walk, listening to music, or, in this case, Lupita’s character indulging in a few pieces of her favorite pizza from her childhood for the last time. It’s something she shared with her family before their demise and shows this depth of the character where the movie shines emotionally. Showing a real human narrative increases awareness of what we currently have in our lives. My take on this terrifying and dramatic story is that it makes the most of our short time on this Earth, and it focuses partially on the importance of human connection.  Written by Daniel Rojas

The independent genre-less/bending musician and producer Emmett Kai has recently released his third album, Whale Milk . Whale Milk  is a transcending 11-track album that possesses this youthful, innocent, alluring, imaginative story that was formulated out of the idea of an honest liberation of artistry. The album brings you on a sonically and visually complex listening experience from the vast layers that are heard throughout each song as it plays with production, music genres, music eras, and storytelling.  I was lucky enough to sit down as I dived deeper into Kai’s imagination and mind as we chatted about the creation process of Whale Milk .  (This interview was conducted in person and has been edited for clarity.) You recently came out with an album, Whale Milk, which has a clear and concise image throughout from the imagery, sound, and titles. I want to ask, what is Whale Milk ? How did you come up with it? What does it mean?  Whale Milk  is something that I heard in passing. I’ve always been into off-the-cuff, kind of wacky stuff. It stuck with me for a while and then I did some research and learned that there were a lot of people trying to capitalize off of whale milk from back in the late 1800s and early 1900s and trying it out because they thought it would be viable. I internalized it and thought it would be a great name for my next album because I hadn't put out an album since 2020 and I compiled all these songs and wrote all these songs and felt that it fit the music. Then the artwork came last and the artwork tied it all up.  While creating the album, did you know this was the story/ image you wanted for the album or did that come later?  Music/ anybody's creative work has this tendency to be one thing for them and then something else for other people. It takes on its own life after it's put out. I think for me there wasn't a story there except for me to capture the overall place that I was in that part of my life. For context, I was living in upstate New York, bouncing between Brooklyn and Upstate, and I was in a relationship. I had not written an album for three-plus years and I am a huge fan of Frank Zappa, Ariel Pink, and older music from the 60s and the 70s and all of this was just cultivating in its way in this studio that I had. If there was a story, that's great, but it was not intentionally put together that way and it makes me happy that somebody could feel there is. What did your writing process look like? Was it more intentional or something that flowed out of you?  I would sit down and this is where the story idea comes in because I do think of albums as albums before I write them. I think about what I would want to listen to as a listener such as asking myself how I would want the album to flow through. Even though this album is very schizophrenic and all over the place, that's where I was at the time. I was all over the place and unraveled in a lot of ways. On paper, I was grounded at the time because I had this very slow life, a very chill post-pandemic life that ultimately came back at me at the end of all of it but it is a great portrayal of where I was in my life. I sat down and I told myself “I want to write weird stuff,” I wanted to scratch that itch.  I read that with this album, you wanted to release your imagination, your creativity, and have this album be for you. What did the creation of this album look like? How was it different from your previous works since you didn’t have to think about doing it for someone else? How you ended that question is perfect because I've never been signed to a major label nor have I ever had any attention from major labels. But I think that growing up writing music throughout my 20s and thinking of it as this career and having the mentality of “I want to get followers, traction, etc.” It led me to hitting this point where I'm 31 and I've been doing this my whole life. I've had success in a lot of different ways that I feel most people don't see from the lens that you usually see success through. With Whale Milk  and this chapter of my music, I put that behind me, I was done with that. I have had a publishing deal, I work on records for other artists, and I produce a lot of music for other people who are trying to grow and capitalize off of their art. I felt as if I was in this domestic partnership where I could write music for fun, I can have fun with this, and I don't have to think about what's going to trend or I don't have to think about an intro of a song being 10 seconds for it to blow on TikTok or anything such as that. That's why the first song in the album is around six minutes long and the vocals don't come in for a minute. I could do what I wanted to do and that's where I fell on this album. Were there any moments during the process of creating this album that were memorable?  Looking back on the process of writing this album was interesting because a lot of this process went in waves, a lot of things happened in the making of this album. I pulled some songs from 2017 on this album such as the song Teenage River  which is from 2017 and the song Mastercard Lithuania  is from 2017/2018. Those songs I wrote when I had just moved to New York from California. That was around the time when I was new to New York, living in a little shoebox, and had very minimal stuff and I made those songs and sat on them for a while. Those were some of my favorite moments of writing the album. My life has changed so much since writing the album and I look back on the album almost as a necessary step to take for me to get to the next step. I'm very proud of it and I'm very proud of how it all came together.  I would say that between being able to write the whole record, except for those songs, in this beautiful remote setting in the mountains of upstate New York, I was grateful for that and grateful for my friend Anthony for renting me that cabin. I also met one of my best friends right before I started writing the album. Her name is Jordana. I had just finished producing her next record in the same room where I worked on this album and I think that there was a lot of crossover there; a lot of feeding off of her energy and feeding off of writing her album. We would write her album and then when she would leave, I would write my songs so I think there was a lot of cross-pollinating going on between those two projects. I loved being able to connect with the artist who did the artwork for the album too which meant a lot to me because he's known me since I was a kid. He's older than I am and it felt necessary for me to reconnect with him as an adult and to be able to collaborate with him on this record. The album feels defining to you, your timeline, and where you were during that point in your life such as moving to New York and then working on it in upstate New York. Do you think the environments you were in while creating this album affected the way you created the album from being from California, moving to New York, and then going to upstate New York?  I think so. The two songs that I wrote in Brooklyn in 2017, those songs captured this young-spirited energy of me feeling free, innocent, not having any baggage or anxiety, throwing caution to the wind, and writing for fun. Then when I started writing this album and then circled back to those songs when I was upstate, I thought “What a fun spirit to have,” and I wasn't in that spirit when I was writing this album or rather in that phase of my life where the album started coming together. I tried to tap into that a bit with my studio. I had this big studio and I furnished it all myself, spent all this money on all this gear, and built it out and it felt like a dream come true. It only lasted a year and I was creatively stuck and wanted to find something that felt good. I think that feeling came from writing these funny songs and having a little bit of humor in them. Not that it's a comedy album at all, but having a little bit of humor in there and having beauty in there, there's fun, there's sadness, and there's a love song. I was inspired by all these different records that I wanted to tap into that innocent nature again which hopefully I can keep going forever.  Who creatively influences you and who are the others that influenced this album? There are a lot of musicians that I look up to and listen to, that I am obsessed with, that influence my writing. I think it's much more important to say that I find a lot of my community inspiring. I think that my best friends, people who have known me since I was a kid, and who have supported me are important and inspiring to me because I've had a very unorthodox life and I chose abnormal routes in my life and I think it's incredible to me that everybody has supported me throughout that, emotionally, creatively, and sometimes even financially.  They say don't make music or art based on what people are going to think about it which I agree with, although it helps me to think about my friends, my family, and the local people from my hometown that I've become so close with while making music. A lot of the time I'll finish a song and I'll think about somebody who I love and say this song for them. I could even think about my uncle Jordy and remember how he was the one who showed me the Smiths and I’d dedicate a song to him in that regard. It helps me feel like I have some purpose in writing and it's not directionless.   There is a sense of vulnerability in your songs not just through what you’re writing about but through the people who may have inspired it, each song is attached to a time in your life or someone important in your life. Do you ever find it difficult to create/ release music that's heavily attached to who you are?  No, I don't find it difficult. My friend, Kristina Esfandiari has this project called King Woman  and has a lot of other projects but that's one of her main projects. I remember showing her some of my music before I had ever released anything and she said “Oh my God, you need to put this out” and I told her “I couldn’t. I’m not a vocalist. I’m not a singer” and she had said “Well you are now and you might as well just do it because what are you going to do? Never put it out?” I do sit on a lot of music but me being vulnerable with my music is the only thing that I have. I'm not a public speaker. I'm not a writer like I'm not going to write a book, I might one day but I'm not right now. This is all that I have which is why I want to honor it and respect the fact that I have this now. Some people don't have a way to express themselves or they spend their whole life looking for a way to express themselves and it's great that people see the vulnerable aspect of my music but I also have to recognize that my lyrics and way of storytelling is pretty avant-garde which is most fun for me.  There is a huge visual element from what you hear such as the outside noise you hear in Felta Creed Survival Camp  and even through the visual elements such as the cover art that create this journey/ path throughout the album. What was the journey you wanted to take listeners on? I think that it is visual. I believe that my music is super visual for me when I make it. The journey that I wanted to take people on is this literal audible journey of my imagination and my brain in that moment of my life as a way to capture time/time frame. I wanted it to be this phantasmal joyous trip down memory lane that feels both haunting and comfortable. I wanted it to be technical but also very simple and I wanted to play with juxtaposition with this album which is where I feel the album is at.  There are a lot of elements that come into every song that make it a complex listening experience as you keep discovering different sounds beyond the lyrics and instruments in them. Did you find any hardships in the production/ mixing process or throughout any process of creating this album?  One of the biggest hardships was when I mixed and mastered the entire album onto tape first which I thought was going to be a fantastic idea. It took me months and once I finished it, I realized I didn’t like it. Then I had to go back and redo it all, which I then finished all digitally even though a lot of the stuff on there is tape, I finished it digitally and that was my hardship. Another hardship, as I previously mentioned, when I write I envision my friends, family, and people closest to me enjoying this album and there were moments when I would slip into this mentality of feeling that nobody's going to like it, and with this album, I wanted to write this album not caring about that and I wanted it to be more for me. I had to get through that and ultimately I am proud of the album.  How did you combat that mentality? Especially since those are hard mental spaces to get out, especially as an artist/ creative.  I don't have anything to lose. I don't have a record deal. I don't have sponsorship deals. I don't have a manager. I don't have an agent. I do have a publicist, Willa but ultimately I don’t have anything to lose. With my first LP, Baby Hits! It was organic and I wrote it in Brooklyn and it was the first album that did well for being unsigned, just an independent artist in New York. It reached a lot of people and I didn’t have a team behind me. Then I did Freak Pop Novelty  which was another piece of work where I wanted to do something different. Both Freak Pop Novelty  and Baby Hits! are completely different albums and they don’t even sound like the same person except for my voice on it and then that led to Heaven in Heat  which is again different from my previous works. What's interesting is that Heaven in Heat started the idea of Whale Milk . I was originally going to put Heaven in Heat on Whale Milk  but it ended up being a disaster of a transfer. So then I did Whale Milk  separately to continue on that nostalgic throwback vintage sound that I've been loving and wanting to do. I have finished Whale Milk and now I’m into different sounds and something different than the sounds you hear in Whale Milk. I see a lot of artists do this one path marketing train throughout their whole career and I think that's fantastic but I can't do that. If I did do that I would just be starting all these other side projects because I would want to make so much and play around with different sounds.  Would you say your music evolves with you?  I think that music evolves with me. I try not to think about it too much. I try to let it happen and I don't try to fight it. Whenever I want to make something, I just try to make it. I trust my intuition that something will strike the right chord and then that could result in an album or an EP or something smaller or larger. I let my heart do the talking.  What's next for you? Are you already moving with a new sound or different direction for your future projects?  Yes, I'm working on a lot of electronic music and I don't want to speak too soon because I don't have anything super set in stone. I've been listening to a lot of music again and feeling super inspired. I've been loving Chanel Beads  and Mount Kimbie, who have always been one of my favorite projects and their new album is so good. I also moved across the country again, back to California with very limited space and I don't have a studio anymore which is why I have to make do with what I have. I'm doing the best that I can and it's limited so I'm falling back into more electronic/ computer music, not so much big studio material. You wanted to create music that was for you in an industry where that liberty is hard to gain, has working on this album changed you artistically?  Writing Whale Milk  was the first time I broke the seal of thinking about the industry while writing an album. Whether you are a new artist, a bigger artist, or a smaller artist you’ll always think about the industry and I think going against that is what is best for you. I look at people such as Charlie XCX  who went on a roller coaster of a career and has paved the way. She's pop but she has paved the way for her mind to take over the driver's seat. Yes, she has a great team behind her and a good network but the same goes for people that don't have a huge team. For example, Chanel Beads  signed with Jagjaguwar  which is great but it doesn't sound as if they did because their album sounds very avant garde which is refreshing to see an album of that style become successful in the way that it has.  What do you want people to take away from Whale Milk ?  I want people to feel like you're not always going to be in the best position to write your best work. I want people to feel free, creatively, such as if one person listens to this album and walks away from it, with their seal broken and they say “I'm going to go home and write” and they write an album from one song or the album and it inspires them to do something that they were afraid to do, would be incredible. I can't expect people to feel inspired by the album at all but it would be incredible if even one person felt inspired in that way.  Check out and follow Emmett Kai’s social media pages for more music and go stream Whale Milk !  Interviewed by Veronica Anaya  Photographed by Francisco Renteria

It's hard to find bands with such musical talent used to create eccentric story-like songs about horse girls, Julius Caesar, and the character you meet at an art-school college party weighted with relatability, creating complex listening experiences. Yet, Thesaurus Rex , the Brooklyn-based indie-rock band, does that and more with effortless charm.  Consisting of members Calvin Rezen (Lead Vocals/ Rhythm Guitar), Varun Jhunjhunwalla (Lead Guitar/ Background Vocals), Dan MacDonald (Drums), and Ethan Marsh (Bassist/ Background Vocals), come together to create captivatingly intricate lyrics that connect with so many, all while delivering the most theatrically exuberant live performances where you are bound to feel everything in one night.  I was lucky enough to sit down with Rezen, Jhunjhunwalla, and MacDonald to discuss the band's origins, live performances, multi-talented background, and so much more.  (This interview was conducted in person and has been edited for clarity.) Can you go around and introduce yourself, as well as what you do in the band?  [Calvin Rezen]: I'm Calvin Rezen. I am the lead singer and rhythm guitarist for Thesaurus Rex,  and I write most of the songs.  [Dan MacDonald]: I'm Dan. I play the drums and record us.  [Varun Jhunjhunwalla]: I'm Varun Jhunjhunwalla, and I play guitar and sing background vocals.  How did you all meet to create the band it is today?  [CR]: Thesaurus Rex was born in 2021, right before I went to grad school at Berklee in Hell's Kitchen. We had a different bassist and a different drummer, both old friends, to whom I said, “Let's start up a three-piece project.” But then I got to school and said, “Varun is the greatest guitar player I've ever met in my entire life, and he's down.” I thought it would make the project a lot better because we're very lyric heavy, and not having to lead the entire thing on guitar as well is a real load off. It allows us to do more weird avant-garde performances. So we added Varun in, and then our old drummer had to drop out because she was going on tour, so we added Dan in.  [VJ]: We went through a bunch of drummers.  [CR]: Yeah, we had Nate Wallace, and we had our friend Mendeleyve, who's so overqualified to be in a band with us. He's an incredible singer. He was on The Voice. He just went to school with us. He plays every instrument. He's the most talented, but he stood in on drums for us for a couple of gigs. He also played bass for us because Cash, our old bassist, had weird scheduling conflicts and stuff all the time.  [VJ]: Then we got Dan.  [CR]: Drumming is such an important part of the cohesion of the sound. So adding Dan was everything. We found Dan because I was in an engineering class, and they needed someone to stand in as the drummer so that they could talk about how to mic a snare drum or something. Dan was just the stand-in drummer that day, and I just said, “Whoa, that guy rips. It's so good.” So when we needed a new drummer, I reached out, and that was the final form. Then we added Ethan, who just moved into Varun's house.  [VJ]: He was living in a farm commune and decided to move to New York. He was on Facebook Marketplace, and he just ended up at our house, subletting. This guy is probably the greatest musician any of us will ever meet. He's a complete virtuoso on every instrument. [CR]: Aside from playing bass, he is an incredible guitarist, pianist, and drummer, and we initially had him come on and play fill-in stuff for bass or fill-in stuff for guitar. We just ended up jamming with him a bunch, and then we said, “All right, we're adding you as a solid member.” Where does the name Thesaurus Rex come from? You're a lyric-heavy band, so what came first, the name or the idea of the band?  [CR]: Since starting the band, I've always considered this a curation project. Some of the songs we play, I've had for seven or eight years; they're old tunes for me. I have a lot of stuff that I love that's old music that I've written that I would play under my solo project that is good but not right for Thesaurus Rex . I think a lot of our stuff is this curation project that's got this very specific point of view, sense of humor, and wordplay element. I was shopping around for band names for a long time and Thesaurus Rex  always just kind of stood out. I think there's a children's book or something called  Thesaurus Rex .  [VJ]: That's a future lawsuit. [CR]: Yeah, we're already lawyering up for that, so it's fine.  Based on this whole wordplay thing, if you guys could describe the band in one word or five words or less, how would you go about describing it?  [CR]: That means less than 15 words. So I’ll say “The.” [VJ]: “Band” [DM]: “Is” [CR]: I’m kidding. I’m kidding.  [DM]: We're all-encompassing and we sort of hit all the marks. This is a lot more than 15 words. [VJ]: Genre fluid.  [CR]: I don't know if this is in less than 15 words, although maybe that's on brand. Describe us as verbose. Our genre is not the music style; it's the point of view. [VJ]: Genre is point of view.  [CR]: There you go. Got it. Also verbose. I get one more for the irony.  What is your favorite Thesaurus Rex  line of all time?  [CR]: I would love to hear Dan and Varun’s answers.  [VJ]: I have two. I like the line A-hole in a K-hole all on Daddy's payroll . [DM]: Holy Matrimony, Batman. I feel like a dog in a CAT scan. [VJ]: That's the other one.  [DM]: That's the one that sticks out.  [CR]: Holy Matrimony, Batman. I feel like a dog in a CAT scan . I like that line too. That's one I think of as a line I'm proud of. [VJ]: What is the Caesar line?  [CR]: Caesar was a leader until they seized him with their cleavers, and they watched him bleed in seizure in a treasonous deceit.  Probably a little dense to be called a line.  [DM]: They are all like that. [VJ]: Every line has numerous meanings, and you discover them, and then you're like, “Do I agree with this?” But you've played the song 15 times already; it's too late.  [CR]: There's a lot of internal rhymes. [DM]: Her life's in a stable, condition.  [CR]: That's a good one. I like the line in The Way You Look at Me,  “ Oh, you're an artist. I'm so predictable”  because this is nerdy music-y of me, but I like that the rhyme scheme for the first two verses establishes that that would be a rhyme line and that it's the third or fourth time that you go through the form, and at that point you get, oh, you're an artist,  and it should be a rhyme, but it’s just I’m so predictable . It's unpredictable in that context.  All of these lines are so full of meaning that I just ask, “How does one come up with them?” What does your writing process look like?   [CR]: It takes a long time. I'm pretty concerted about telling people that it takes a long time because I think there's a real culture, especially with freestyle, word poets, beat poetry, and stuff about everything being special because it's kind of like off the dome. That's an insanely cool art form that I wish I could do. When I was younger, I would just kind of throw stuff on paper, and as I've gotten more developed with my style, I want it to feel like every part of it is purposeful. Every one of these songs has like four verses that didn't make the cut. It's just about being kind of deliberate with it. I have a dramatic writing background, writing plays and screenplays. You have to tell the story from the beginning, middle, and end, and ensure that the jokes and information are all hitting at the right time. For example, if Maddie gets run over by the horse at the beginning of the bridge, as opposed to the end of the bridge, it just isn’t as funny, and it just doesn't work. You have to have everything worked out. Some of the stories that you create can be taken literally, and others not as much. How do you go about creating these stories? [CR]: Maddie is a Horse Girl  is certainly not literal in the sense that there's not a person who I think got run over by a horse, but it is literal in that I did work brunch. Maddie is a Horse Girl  is a song about betraying your dreams and values, which is why the opening line to the song is “ Maddie is a Horse Girl; now she works at Morgan Stanley.” That always gets a laugh, but the reason it gets a laugh is because there's something intrinsically traitorous about someone who has this pure childish relationship with a fantasy, such as wanting to ride horses, and now they work for a giant evil hedge fund corporation. That bitterness is at the center of the song. I'm thrilled that people like that song because I think it's funny, but it's a dark song about life.  [VJ]: Kind of offensive. We played it for a group of finance bros and they loved it.  [CR]: I know. People are proud to identify with Maddie. And I'm like, “Really?” We had this gig where everybody worked at Morgan Stanley. They were like, “Yeah, Maddie!” And I'm like, “Stay away from Central Park. You're going to get clobbered.” At the root of the song, it's about that betrayal of letting go of these dreams, but how did your mind go, to “I'm going to write a song about this horse girl getting run over” to represent that?  [CR]: That's why it takes so long. The first thing that came to me from that song was the first line of the song, “Maddie is a Horse Girl, and now she works at Morgan Stanley,”  and that sat in my notes for a month and a half, two months, before I did anything with it. I just thought, “That's funny, that could be just a bit I say on stage or something. That doesn't have to be a song.” Then I wrote more of the first verse. I had the first verse finished for another whole month and asked, “Where does this go?” because the first verse is about Maddie and her life, and then the second verse introduces me as a character from the first-person point of view. That verse shows how she's being disrespectful at brunch and that was the point where I hit another wall where I said, “I don't know where this goes now.” I'm brainstorming ideas such as “I need to fall in love with Maddie, or Maddie and I need to go on an adventure together, or I've wronged Maddie, or I need to look inward.” There just has to be another third-act thing that happens, which is when I thought of her getting belligerently drunk at brunch, and she goes and finds a horse, and the horse seeks revenge on her. It's the same way you would write a play; you have to fulfill the beginning of the song with the end of the song. The same is true with The Way You Look at Me  or any of them, where the first part of The Way You Look at Me  is the zipping up your zipper and the button on your blouse, and at the end, it's talking about sexuality and what people are actually after when they're flirting with people at a party. In reality, we're all looking for someone to unzip zippers and take buttons off of blouses. There's something at the top that gets recontextualized by the whole song, and you come out at the end. The end is weird and hard, but you know it's right because it kind of fulfills the promise.  Do you take part in writing the instruments for each song?  [CR]: I write the music for the songs. There's an idea of how that should sound in a full band. I would say it's a real collaboration when we're putting together the arrangements.  [DM]: Before we record anything, we usually play for a while. When I joined, the only song that was out was The Way You Look At Me . The whole production was by Calvin.  [CR]: Which is why it's not that good.  [VJ]: Re-release coming soon!  [CR]: We're going to re-record that one. I love the song and from a personal standpoint, as a producer, it was a good learning experience for me to learn how to produce. Yet, now I'm a way better producer, and I want to have these guys on it because their input is important. I do write the songs, but it's not just my project. I want everyone to feel like they're putting part of their artistic selves into it.  [DM]: Then for the next three songs, we probably had a month or two of just playing them, and during that time we were playing so many shows. We were learning how people reacted to them and which versions that we played worked and resonated with people. So when it came time to go into the studio to record it, we just did our stuff; we set up microphones and everything, hit record, and ran out and recorded it all. We knew exactly what we were doing, and we've been carrying that forward just with the rest of the music that we're working on now.  [VJ]: It’s different from most other projects because you'll make the album and then you'll play it live, which is cool because you want to show the album to everyone and promote it, but we get really tired from playing it a hundred times, and we've tried all the different grooves, and on stage sometimes we'll improvise and come up with an idea that didn't exist. Then you go into the studio, and you can knock it out in a few days. It feels authentic.  [CR]: Personally, I've been so bad at recording for so long. I've wanted to make recorded music for myself since I was 13 or 14 years old and was completely and utterly ill-informed and unable to figure out how to do it. It got to the point where the judgment of whether a song is finished is not whether or not I have a recorded version of it, but instead, a song is finished when I can play it right now. If someone were to ask, “What's that song?” I could play it on an acoustic guitar. The mark of whether a song is ready to go is if it's ready to be put in front of an audience, as opposed to being ready to be sent out to Spotify or something. What does collaboration look like for the band? How do you go about implementing different influences?  [CR]: Varun and Ethan have this give-and-take in the stuff that they add to the songs, such as background vocals.  [VJ]: Dan and Calvin listen to similar music, I would say. A lot of the references they make musically kind of go over Ethan and my head. Ethan and I listen to completely different stuff; he's deep into jazz, and I like jam bandy stuff and some jazz. There's a lot of finding a middle ground. Like, are we adding chord changes and lines to make it complex for no reason? Or is there a way it can blend with the music and have a purpose within the context of the song? For example, in Maddie's a Horse Girl , Maddie gets killed by the horse, and then it's free jazz for a few minutes. Or we've played Spain  by Chick Corea  in a moment that makes sense. Our influences are very different, and I think they've come together well because there'll be moments of something weird happening musically or something interesting happening musically, but there's that familiarity and respect for the genre. Adhering to a genre that we're in for a specific song.  [DM]: All that stuff comes out of all of our massive Venn diagrams, sort of coming into that center point. We all love Chick Corea,  and we find those bands–not that we want to cover, but to take inspiration from to implement in the production of a song. Sometimes it can sway one way or another, and it will take some convincing from one of us to another.  [CR]: We would ask, “Is this cool? Or are we doing this for us? Are we doing this for the audience?” Sometimes there's give and take on that too, because sometimes it's fun to spite your audience and do the me channel theme because it's fun to do the me channel theme or something like that.  [VJ]: The other thing is, Ethan lived in my house for a while, and we lived right next to each other. Often, when we're just hanging out, we try to add harmonies to songs that didn't exist. I think over the last year, we've stacked up a vocal section behind Calvin as well, which has been fun. It's a new color because a four-piece band is great. A lot of the classic bands do that, but then when you add the harmonies with the lyrics that are already so complex, it's just layers on layers.  [CR]: I think the background vocals are one of the more important things about the sound because background vocals add a layer of complexity and beauty, but they also add this cheesy element, which is right in the sweet spot, you know? We want things to feel a little fake. The aesthetic of the band is very earnest until it kind of reaches up against this thing that's not entirely earnest or is a little cynical or bitter.  [VJ]: We're pro-cheese.  [CR]: Yeah, we're pro-cheese. We love cheese.  The background vocals add a different element that I didn't think it needed. They add that more story-esque/campfire quality to the songs.  [CR]: I was just going to say a lot of our influences; we're all Beatles  fans, and they're a background vocal band. I'm a huge fan of Dr. Dog , they've got some of the most beautiful background vocal arrangements ever. There is a lot of crossover, and there's so much stuff that they know that I've never heard of, and vice versa. I grew up in the emo indie world, and that's something Ethan doesn't have a connection to, and neither does Varun. Dan's got more hardcore influences from psych, such as psych pop. This is why we are more about the performances and the point of view of the songs, as opposed to exclusively being an indie-rock band.  Who are some of the influences you have individually?  [VJ]: It's hard to say.  [CR]: He loves Guns N' Roses .  [VJ]: I don't love Guns N' Roses . As a child, I loved Guns N' Roses  deeply.  [CR]: I have an appreciation for Guns N' Roses .  [VJ]: In India, it was a big band. It didn't have the same connotation as it does over here.  [CR]: No, but I love that too because it's apparent in your playing because Slash  is a great guitar player. In modern American culture, they're a dad rock band, but it makes sense that in other places in the world, they would just be like Zeppelin ; they're a seriously well-appreciated band.  [VJ]: Aside from Guns N' Roses . I think Pink Floyd , definitely. Grateful Dead recently. The Beatles are an all-time favorite. For guitar playing,  John Mayer  is cool and then there is a lot of miscellaneous jazz/ and recently a lot of experimental stuff has been nice, and a lot of Indian music is in the back of my mind. [DM]: I grew up playing drums to Nirvana , Foo Fighters , and Zeppelin . Then, as I started making music, I got into Tame Impala  and  Boards of Canada . Turnstyle  has great records when I make a hardcore poppy song. All sorts of things. Lots of Electronica and Vaporwave too. I try to pull from everything and just listen to everything and get something from it.  [CR]: I'm a pretty big Bowie  fan. I was in a Bowie  tribute band when I was 20 years old. I’m a huge Dylan  fan, and I love The Beatles, and a lot of this is classic 60s stuff, The Who . As for modern stuff, Dr. Dog . I love the  Arctic Monkeys . I think Alex Turner  is an insanely good writer and a great storyteller. The Flaming Lips  are insane. I'm from Jersey, and there are a lot of Jersey Pride bands that are from our area, like Vampire Weekend , Pine Grove,  and The Front Bottoms . There's some good indie music that has come out of Jersey in the last 20 years that you're very proud of as a high school kid to be like, “Damn straight, that's coming out of my area.”  I haven't touched on your live performances yet, which is a huge element of this band that is important. What is your favorite part of performing and live music?  [CR]: I like pulling out the rubber chicken on stage. That's fun.  [DM]: Favorite parts of playing? I like getting sweaty and playing loud.  [CR]: We like getting sweaty and playing loud. [DM]: The sweatier the show, the better it is. We played Hartbar, and that was by far the grimiest, sweatiest show, and it was insane. It was disgusting. I was soaking wet outside for, like, an hour and a half or something.  [CR]: Last summer was so hot, and we had a show there, but we also had a show at Rockwood, and they had like zero air conditioning. Even in a well-chilled room, you're putting your all into playing. You're like, “I'm soup right now.” Besides that, I love the in-between song bits. I'm relatively proud of it because I have an improv background and have done some comedy stuff. So getting access to be in front of an audience and playing around with the crowd a little is the best. I feel much more confident on stage in a lot of ways than I do off-stage. When you're up there and people are in it, you can kind of push. [VJ]: Initially, I enjoyed us locking in over the first six months and having a super tight set. Nowadays, when we do things that are not planned, it has been a lot of fun. Such as the free jazz, when someone's taking a solo and you mess it up, or Calvin and I playing each other's guitar at the same time. Now that the set is so locked in, it's more about the unpredictable, unplanned things that are doing it for me.  Do you guys enter a mindset on stage? Or do you guys have a persona you try to emulate? Because you all have an incredible stage presence that makes it difficult to just look at one member.  [CR]: I don't want to speak for Ethan, but it was an important thing when we were thinking about adding him to the band. He's an incredible bassist; will he dance, though? And he does; he dances so much, but we're thankful for that because so many bassists will just stand there and I need this to feel exciting. It shouldn't feel as if we're all just showing up here to play this song.  [VJ]: I know the mindset he gets into. He's playing jazz gigs every day and playing the most complex music, and then he comes to play with us, and it's not, not complex but it's so much easier than that. I don't even think he's thinking about the instrument. He's just in the zone, he is one with his body. He's dancing, and he happens to be playing bass at the same time.  [CR]: I wonder what he was thinking when he broke the strings at Our Wicked Lady .  [VJ]: He broke the bass strings. It makes no sense. I don't know if it's ever been done. [CR]: It doesn't happen. He didn't break a string. He broke two strings, which are the thickest bass strings, they're made of steel. He ripped two pieces of steel in half in the process of playing, so yeah, he's got great stage presence.  [CR]: I have a theater background and I take stage presence super seriously. I wouldn't have asked these guys to be in the band if they weren't showing up with it. We think about the live show first before we think about the recording process. Recording is so much easier than it used to be, where people think about doing music as this quiet thing that you do in your bedroom, and then you have to figure out how to translate it into a live event. My mentality is that the music is the live event that is the experience of seeing Thesaurus Rex . We have a theme song. We're here to create an incredible experience for people to have–that's a full, multifaceted artistic experience. Dan also plays harder than any drummer in New York City. [DM]: Trademark it.  [VJ]: I'm honestly still working on the stage presence thing, but it helps to look behind and see Dan's cymbals flying off the kit, and then you have Ethan just fully dancing and fully doing a choreographed dance on one side.  [DM]: It's insane. These venues have to start getting wingnuts for their cymbals because they keep falling off.  [CR]: One of the biggest issues we're coming through as a band is our unintentional destruction of material. Nirvana  and The Who  would go in and smash guitars, but that was very deliberate. I would describe us more as kind of klutzy.  [VJ]: It's like Dan's hand is bleeding all over the place.  [DM]: I go to the sound tech, and I go, I'm sorry.  [CR]: We played a show in Vermont where, after the show, we looked at Dan's snare drum and it was covered in blood, like so much blood. It happened to me too when we played The Woods . I just ripped a cuticle or something, but when you're moving your hand, your blood is pumping, and I didn't see it. I didn't notice until three or four days later, when I opened up my guitar case, and there was blood all over the front of my guitar and I was just petrified.  So much goes into your performances, so are there any pre-show or after-show rituals that you have?  [DM]: Before this month, I would always make sure I went on stage with a beer or water and an energy drink or something. I got everything: I can have some fun, I can get hydrated, and I can get a little hyper. Everything I need, it's there.  [CR]: I don't drink on stage anymore because I've started burping in the middle of shows like I'll be in the middle of a song and I'm like, “Here's the big line I have to deliver and I'm like, oh no, I should not have had the second modello.” So mostly water but we don't have rituals. We sometimes will do a little pre-show, like, “Let's get out there kind of thing.” But we don't have anything. [VJ]: I carry water on stage because it gets hot and it gets dry. We don't do much.  [CR]: I feel as if the show has a real kind of opening ritual and a real closing ritual to the show, which is getting more and more developed because we have this theme song and I'm writing an ending song for us right now, spoiler alert. The show feels like it's got a shape to it; as opposed to just being a series of songs, a lot of that stuff ends up coming out on stage.  What are your favorite songs to perform?  [DM]: Bachelor’s Wife  is pretty fun; you get to ride that groove through the whole thing. You just get to ride that the whole time. Dumpster Fire  is super fun; it can get pretty unhinged and go off the rails.  [VJ]: I like Fad . The funk is nice to have in the middle of the set. I Won't Hold My Breath  is good; you can kind of go crazy on that. It's like the loudest one. [CR]: I think Fad  is fun. Horse Girl  is fun because the audience loves it, but it's a different kind of fun. In the sense that it's like I'm telling a joke that I've told a lot of times at some point. Fad  is intrinsically a dance tune. I like doing The Way You Look At Me because that's a joke I like to tell and because they all get to take solos, and I like getting to see them play around. That one's always a little different or something. There's an improv element to it, which is cool.  I can't ignore it. You guys just released a new single, I Won't Hold My Breath , and you spoke about how you perform it a lot before even recording it. How did you go about choosing that song to record and release next?  [CR]: It's the only one that was good. No, no, no, I'm joking.  [VJ]: It's just progress. We're working on so many songs at the same time, and then some just feel more ready. I feel like the other songs are more complex in their production than I Won't Hold My Breath . We just happened to meet on a certain day, and we managed to get a lot of the parts done that day. We were just feeling the inspiration for it, and I think that's why I just took the lead.  [CR]: Before, we were working on a series of singles, and we've been working on this EP, which is going to be released as a series of singles, for the last six months. We're getting to the point where it's ready. So I Won't Hold My Breath  is the first of a series of songs that we're going to do this proper rollout of. Mostly because we're learning how to do rollouts, which is a huge thing. I mean, this has been nothing crazy or special, but for us, it has been relatively successful. Normally it would take a couple of weeks or a couple of months to get past that thousand listens on the Spotify threshold, but we just hit 2000 in a week. We're very proud of the fact that, from our Instagram following and from the people who have been showing enthusiasm about the band, it's mostly people who have seen us play live, and there's just something about that that feels communal and grassroots. Like, we're not an internet band. We’ve played with a lot of people who we love but who are definitely into the TikTok thing or are trying to make algorithm-y stuff.  [DM]: There's super-tapped in online. We're like, How do you do that?  [CR]: And we're figuring out that; it's a whole science. It's very different from the live aspect, but having people that are following us, messaging us, and coming out to see us multiple times, it's so cool that we've got return customers and people who want to be part of the grassroots of it all. I Won't Hold My Breath  was just ready to come out.  Can we expect anything new in the next month or so? Or is it not planned?  [CR]: Dumpster Fire  is coming out soon. We're thinking it's probably going to come in July. We're making a music video with my brother. We're trying to make a lot of music videos right now because the big thing is just getting visuals to go along with these songs. We're waiting on Horse Girl , mostly because-  [VJ]: Horses are expensive. [DM]: We need to figure out a way to get the horse into the studio. It's a small elevator.  [VJ]: Compress the horse and upload it. It's a whole thing.  [CR]: We've been trying to do the Horse Girl  thing through Google Drive, but we were talking to the guy from Google, and he can't get a horse into Google Drive because it's too many gigs.  [VJ]: Too much horsepower.  That's a good one. Okay, last question before my spitfire questions. Where is Thesaurus Rex  going? Where is the band going? What's next?  [CR]: We're going to the top, baby!  [VJ]: As long as we get to play Coachella once, I'm okay with leaving the band.  [CR]: I'm leaving the band after Bonnaroo.  [CR]: Our plan this year was to play less in the city and play more outside the city, but we've failed fantastically at that plan, and we play in the city all the time now. We talked to some people who have given us some advice, and Brooklyn is huge, and there's still a whole untapped market of people to get there who we think would love our stuff. We've got a lot of New York stuff in our songs too, so our stuff does pretty well here. So I think we're trying to become a pretty good little mainstay here in the city.  [VJ]: We've been playing in the park. That's been lovely.  [CR]: We're playing in the park on the weekends. At one point in my life, I would have been like, “Oh no, we're going to become a park band.” But now, with the ethos, I'm like, we get to be a park band because it's a treat. We're trying to become a little staple in the old community. It's been great. I don't know what it is–if it's just us having some push or if it's just because it's been long enough since COVID or something–but it feels like there's a lot of bands in the area right now that are rock bands that just feel like there's a lot of small world stuff all of a sudden. I think it's because maybe a lot of bands broke up right before or during COVID, and now all of the bands have been around for like two years, and that's long enough to kind of foster a little bit of a community. We've got tons of sister bands, friends, and people we love and trust around us. So we're going wherever they go.  It's true, I even discovered you guys because one of the members from Boys Go To Jupiter  said, “ Thesaurus Rex  are some of the sweetest guys I’ve ever met,” and that's why I went to the following show.  [CR]: Boys Go to Jupiter  is our official. We have not officially written down this contract, but it is the case. They are our official best friend band. The rule is, and you can put this– [DM]: Make sure this gets transcribed correctly.  [CR]: Yeah, this is important because this will be the actual living document. The rule is that if any member of Boys Go to Jupiter , which is saying something because that's a lot of people, is at any Thesaurus Rex  show or vice versa and we happen to have a small percussion instrument, like a tambourine or a cowbell or something, we are legally allowed to go up on stage for one song and play said instrument.  Spitfire questions, What is on repeat for you guys right now? What are you obsessed with at the moment?  [CR]: We're just listening to Justice , which is so awesome.  [VJ]: Golden Ladies, Stevie Wonder.   [CR]: I'm on a Pine Grove  kick again, because it's that time of year when I'm feeling sentimental again because the seasons are changing. I'm like, “I got to listen to Aphasia  by Pine Grove .”  [DM]: E-Pro  by Beck .  [VJ]:  Finally Alone by Mac DeMarco  is very nice. I'm in a Mac DeMarco  phase of my life.  [CR]: Obviously, the new Vampire Weekend  album. It's one of my favorite things ever.  [DM]: You just put that album on, and every song is amazing.  [CR]: Their production is so good. It's such a good example of simple, old-school songwriting that they've added interesting modern elements to it.  [VJ]: I heard Grace  by Jeff Buckley  for the first time, and I think I played it at least 200 times in the past two weeks. It was probably one of the best things I've heard. What's your favorite show you've ever played?  [CR]: I liked playing Brooklyn Made. That was probably one of our most fun shows. The crowd was incredible. A couple of those Our Wicked Lady  shows were also great.  [DM]: That whole stretch of shows between Our Wicked Lady and then the Brooklyn Made shows. The Our Wicked Lady  shows were great because we were playing the best we've ever had and doing that week by week. It's like each week we play our best set ever. [CR]: It was a battle of the bands. We got asked to do it at the last minute for the first round. Varun and Ethan were in India. It was just me and Dan, and we got Luke from Boys Go to Jupiter  to fill in on bass, and our friend Jordan to fill in on guitar. Then we added Ethan the next week, and then we added Varun the following week, and we were getting stronger. It was heroic.  [VJ]: I enjoyed Canary Club, Unplugged . I think that was one of the coolest things. It was a small show, but it was just so exciting because it was fresh and new stuff. It was a cool sound, I’m sure people think we sound better unplugged than plugged.  [DM]: A lot of people heard us there for the first time. I would do more of those banjo sets.  [CR]: Every time we've played Sultan Room , it's been fun. I just love the room, they're cool, and it's a cool place. Some of the old shows too. The first show we played with Dan was the craziest show ever because the drum kit almost fell off the stage and the people we were playing said, “I'll help hold it on stage.” [VJ]: So he sat on the kick drum, and Dan’s playing super loud.  [CR]: I was like, You're gonna blow your ears out.  Is there a song you wish you wrote or created? [CR]: I wish I had written the Rembrandts, I'll Be There For You , so I would have made a million dollars. That's what Taylor Swift said. Put this in writing: I'm taking her down right now. She got asked that question, and they were like, “What's a song you wish you wrote?” And she's said, “I wish I wrote the theme song to Friends, so I would have made a million dollars.” You're already a billionaire, lady. Just say a good song by Carol King  or James Taylor .  [DM]: Virtual Insanity . If I could be in that music video and be Jamiroquai  and run around in a moving room, that would be super sick.  [VJ]: I'm going to jump in on that.  [DM]: Sabotage  by the Beastie Boys  would be sick. [CR]: There's a billion Beatles  songs I wish I wrote.  [VJ]: Across the Universe  by the Beatles .  [CR]:  I think The Breeze  by Dr. Dog  is one of my favorite songs, and I wish I had written that one. Favorite musician or band of all time?  [DM]: Zach Hill . Crazy drummer.  [VJ]: Beatles, George Harrison . It's kind of cheesy, but him.  [CR]: If I could only listen to one, I'd have to say the Beatles  too. It feels silly to say that, but I couldn't give it up.  [VJ]: They just played every song there is, and now all songs since then are variations of Beatles  songs.  [CR]: It's kind of lame too, but for like four years running, my top Spotify artist was the Beatles, and every year I'd be like, “Come on, Calvin, be more original,” but they invented the genre; they're the best.  If you could force everyone in the world to listen to one album for the rest of their lives, what would that be?  [CR]: Grace  by Jeff Buckley .  [VJ]: Whoa, that's a good answer. Dark Side of the Moon by  Pink Floyd .  [DM]: Random Access Memories comes to mind, Daft Punk . It has everything great about Daft Punk , and then even more. Daft Punk  is one of my favorite groups ever, or Discovery , if you watch Interstellar 5555 . It's an anime with Discovery  as a soundtrack, and it is track by track with insane visuals. [CR]: I'd say Hunky Dory  by David Bowie . I like that album because he's a super young songwriter, and you can kind of tell, and it's a bit of a roadmap as to how to put together a creative process. I love that album.  Be on the lookout for Thesaurus Rex's new single, Dumpster Fire , set to release next month! Check out and follow their social media pages for show announcements! Interviewed by Veronica Anaya  Photographed by Amanda Whitely (Photo #1), Niko Stycos (Photo #2), and No Exit Fiction (Photo #3)