It's our responsibility to cater to the needs of people who come and enjoy our work who have the same values we do. We're not trying to change the world. We're just sort of trying to deal with our specific lens of performance.
For me, choosing to perform in drag, because of all the things I enjoy about it, is a political act.
When fringe groups gather, there is power in that.
Rather than writing about my experiences with other people, 'Ugly Cherries' is the first song I've ever written about myself. It's a confrontation: an attempt to unpack my own queerness with humor and self care.
PWR BTTM isn't the only queer rock band. We've been lucky to receive a platform. If you go on Bandcamp and search for 'queer rock,' you can find 150,000 bands that you could love more than PWR BTTM.
When I started playing music, I was more of a character. Now I'm just me with a cool outfit on. I'm more comfortable being myself.
I think that our work and our music stands on its own without this knowledge about our identity around it. But I also think that we very consciously decided not to hold back that part of ourselves, but to be very vocal about who we are, kind of what experiences we've had in life, and how we identify.
I'd say, at the end of the day, you know, from a songwriting practice standpoint, you write songs to make yourself feel something true and validating, and cathartic, maybe, and then whoever responds to it is, like, out of your control.
I think the earnestness of what we're saying and what other bands like us are totally saying - or other queer bands - is 'We exist.'
You can't deny who you are, so you might as well be yourself in the most authentic way.
When you're a queer person put in the spotlight, you're supposed to have all the answers.
We're not writing songs to solve a cultural problem. The goal for us is to express what we're going through, and it's great if people find commonality in that.
I'm in a car so much on tour that I often just ask my friends to DJ and ask them what they like. That's the best way I discover music.
Ben Hopkins is a very nervous, neurotic kind of person who is afraid of not being liked by people all the time. But, Monster-Me doesn't know who those people even are.
I'm a freewheeling flower-child falling down the stairs constantly.
If you listen to PWR BTTM, or to Gloss, If you look at me on stage, it can make you feel less alone. It makes you feel like you're a queer person and you have this singular power, but it's not like we're a brand. We're just real.
There is power in organization. There is power in a community. People have always wanted to destroy communities.
Queer is invincible because people have tried everything - haven't they? What haven't they tried to do to queer people? And horrible things happened. But you never stop, because it's the truth of who you are.
The most radical thing about our lives is getting to be in a visibly filled-out queer crowd every night.
Is punk dressing up in leather jackets? No. It's having a counter-cultural perspective.
