Q&A: Beauty School Dropout Redefine Rock’s Next Wave on Explosive Debut Album
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
Photography Credit: Natasha Austrich
CATCH THE FEVER — LA rock band Beauty School Dropout are turning up the volume and stepping into their boldest chapter yet with the announcement of their anticipated debut full-length album, WHERE DID ALL THE BUTTERFLIES GO?out September 5. Produced by the legendary Neal Avron, the record marks a seismic moment in BSD’s fast-rising career—and signals a thrilling new direction for modern rock.
To celebrate the album announcement, BSD have unleashed their latest single, “FEVER,” an explosive, guitar-fueled anthem that pulses with high energy. From the very beginning, “FEVER” has been the band’s creative anchor for the record—what they call their “North Star.”
“Going into this project, we simply wanted to create a soundtrack that makes rock music fun and exciting again,” the band shares. “Something you could play in the clubs and people will get just as hyped hearing guitars as they do hearing 808’s. For us at least, this is that song.”
Consisting of Cole Hutzler, Brent Burdett, and Bardo Novotny, BSD’s rise has been swift and loud, with each release sharpening their voice and solidifying their place in the next wave of rock trailblazers. With their full-length debut on the horizon, they're gearing up to bring their music to massive stages, joining blink-182 and Alkaline Trio on tour later this summer.
“A big theme for this record was really trying to achieve the same energy and tenacity and rebellion that I grew up with, at least in the rock n’ roll world,” Cole says, “and trying to apply it into a more modern space like ours, which is the emo and Warped Tour crowds. I think we've always leaned more towards the emotional side of music, but we just got to a point where we felt this space was getting a little redundant. We wanted to add a new flair to it and make it exciting, electric, and fun—something that you can drive to just as much as you can cry to.”
WHERE DID ALL THE BUTTERFLIES GO? promises to be more than a debut—it’s a manifesto. BSD are not just reviving rock for a new generation; they’re redefining it.
Photography Credit: Natasha Austrich
LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what kind of atmosphere or sonic world do you aim to create for your listeners?
BRENT: Party rock is what we've been leaning into a lot lately. I think we're just trying to bring the fun back to rock as a whole. Rock n’ roll used to stand for something so exciting and a little dangerous, and I think that's just our goal, is to bring it back into the place where you want to party to rock music again.
LUNA: Your newest single release “FEVER” opens up your third record. You mentioned that “FEVER” was the first song written for the record and became a kind of North Star. What was it about that song that shaped the sonic and emotional tone for WHERE DID ALL THE BUTTERFLIES GO?
COLE: I think at this point we already had the ethos in mind of what we were trying to achieve, and this was the first track that sonically matched the energy of what we were trying to get to. So from there, we just realized that was the North Star, and that was what we're using as the map for achieving these new sounds for all the future sessions and everything that we wrote thereafter.
LUNA: “FEVER” is accompanied by a music video. What was the creative vision behind it, and how does it tie into the larger themes of the album?
COLE: A big theme for this record was really trying to achieve the same energy and tenacity and rebellion that I grew up with, at least in the rock n’ roll world, and trying to apply it into a more modern space like ours, which is the emo and Warped Tour crowds. I think we've always leaned more towards the emotional side of music, but we just got to a point where we felt this space was getting a little redundant. We wanted to add a new flair to it and make it exciting, electric, and fun, something that you can drive to just as much as you can cry to.
LUNA: BEAUTY SCHOOLS DROPOUT is about to release its third album WHERE DID ALL THE BUTTERFLIES GO? later this fall and huge congratulations! I love how it pushes new sonic boundaries. What are some central themes or inspirations that you wanted to explore while bringing the album to fruition?
BRENT: I think something that was really important to us for this album, we were working with Neal Avron and he has just so much under his belt as a producer and a mixer, that we wanted to lean on him and really get that live sound out of it, because we call our live shows our superpower. I feel like this album is the first time we've actually been able to bring that energy into the actual recording. I think that ethos was super important to us to translate to the listener. Even if you don't know what we look like or have never seen us, you know what we're about by just listening to our songs.
LUNA: What was it like working with Neal Avron on the album? How did his production style help elevate or push your sound?
BARDO: He’s just dope. He’s OG. It honestly was a weirdly slow process. He taught us a lot of patience in making an album that was at least what I got from it. We're so used to instantaneous, amp tones, instantaneous good mixes. You can do it so quickly these days with technology, that's something we've become really accustomed to, so this is the first time we're forced to really sit back and spend an hour tweaking a guitar tone, because you're plugged into a real amp and the smallest things can affect the result. You're touching these knobs and changing these things. It was really cool to get to have that really patient experience, and then have to then commit to something, knowing you can't change it. It was kind of this weird, cathartic experience. If nothing else, I'm glad we got to do it for the history of it.
COLE: The funniest thing is, we're really good at starting to bring something from the 80 yard line to the 100 yard line. The last 20% is the hardest part for us. I think a lot of that really becomes more the executive decisions on details, because when it comes to writing the songs, I feel like oftentimes we get exactly what we want out of the first four to six hours in a session, and then after the fact, everything usually becomes us tweaking things and going back to the original version, or spending hours on ideas just to be like, no, never mind. I think through that, we end up just following our intuition, which is where it all starts.
LUNA: Do you have a personal favorite song on the album—one that feels closest to your heart or most revealing of where BEAUTY SCHOOL DROPOUT is right now? Brent, colie, bardo
What are you most excited for listeners to experience when they hear WHERE DID ALL THE BUTTERFLIES GO? in its entirety?
BRENT: I would say right now I'm really leaning into “LMFTA.” It's angsty and angry.
COLE: “FEVER” has been my driver. I love that song so much.
BARDO: “Madonna” is my favorite. That was always a cool one we made. It's funny how that was not my favorite when we wrote everything, and then it has evolved. It's taking on a new life. I'm excited for everyone to hear the album.
LUNA: What are you most excited for your listeners to experience when they hear the album in its entirety?
BRENT: I think that I'm excited for our fans to digest us in a way that they haven't yet, because it's the first time we're dropping 14 songs as a whole project. I think there was a lot of intention in how we placed everything throughout the album, and the diversity of the songs that we were able to put into a 14 song album. There's everything from fast and driving to a little bit heavy. We have our little buckets. We call it the sexy bucket because for the first time, we dove into a slower, softer side that I don't think we've ever actually dove head first into some new outlets for our fans to discover about us.
LUNA: You're set to hit the road with blink-182 and Alkaline Trio—massive names in punk and alt-rock. How do you stay grounded and connected to your creative drive while on the road?
COLE: A big mission with this album was making it so that we didn't have to. The last album that we put out was very much, we were also on tour with Blink when this was happening, but there was so much pressure to get this music done and finished. We've done some really cool stuff as a band, but we're not necessarily that big yet and have all the amenities necessary to be able to produce on the road comfortably while we're traveling through all these cities and handling all these responsibilities. I think through having dealt with that, we really wanted to emphasize we're going to stay home and really get this album finished, so that when we go back on tour, we have all that bandwidth just to focus on the performance side and allowing that to be where we express creativity versus trying to cut it in half.
LUNA: Do you have any pre-show or post-show rituals or regimens that you do to
BRENT: Every day, when we wake up, we try to go on a walk to find a really dank coffee shop. That's our band ritual for sure. Starts the day off right.
COLE: Green room. I get nerves. I don't get mental anxiety, but very physical. I get cold. I'll start yawning and get tired, so I usually will just pass out an hour before.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like for you that you would like to share with Luna?
BRENT: I'm just excited and nervous. Excited because I feel like for the first time, we’re laying it all out there, not that we haven't put everything into our music up until this point, but this is the first time we sank literally a year and a half into our life into a singular project. No one's really heard anything up until now that stuff is dropping, and just to put all of our eggs in this basket and just wholeheartedly believe that this is the album I think that is going to change our life. It's scary, but thrilling.
Photography Credit: Natasha Austrich
