Q&A: Hayley and the Crushers Take “Unsubscribe From The Underground” on the Road

MusicQ&A

Feb 5

Written By The Luna Collective

INTERVIEW

☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆

HAYLEY AND THE CRUSHERS ARE STEPPING INTO THEIR NEXT ERA WITH INTENT —

louder, sharper and more self-assured than ever. The Detroit-based surf-punk outfit are heading out on a Spring 2026 tour behind their latest EP, Unsubscribe From The Underground. Living in that perfect sweet spot between surf-punk, power pop, and garage rock, The Crushers have always known how to weaponize a hook. But in this current era, frontwoman Hayley Cain cuts even deeper, slicing through modern burnout, digital overload, and the identity crises that come with trying to exist and create in a hyper-online world.

That tension explodes onstage. The Crushers’ live show has become a cathartic release valve, where Hayley and the Crushers will bring that energy to cities across the East Coast and Midwest, including a run of high-profile dates opening for punk legends Screeching Weasel and The Queers, alongside select headline shows in Louisville and Indianapolis.

“Unsubscribe From The Underground was about blending gritty Detroit energy with melodic West Coast sparkle,” Cain says. “That evolution has unlocked a whole new live intensity — you can feel it onstage. In 2026, we’re keeping the energy high while writing a fun, fierce new record, and we couldn’t ask for better inspiration than opening for pop-punk legends.”

At its core, the EP wrestles with what it means to be a new creative voice stepping into an established scene

“A lot of the EP explores the insecurities of a new, creative person coming into an established music scene,” she says to Luna. “Unsubscribe From The Underground is my projection of the old heads looking down at the new people coming in, which is so universal.”

That universality is exactly what’s drawing younger audiences toward The Crushers, and it’s something Cain thinks about intentionally as the band hits the road. This tour, she hopes visibility is at the forefront for younger women in their audiences.

“With this run, I really want young girls in the audience to look at the stage and go, ‘I see myself in some part of this band,’” Cain says.

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 inspires your artistic style and sound?

HAYLEY: Every artist is diverse within themselves and it's hard to be self aware at times, to know exactly where it all comes from. I would say it's some combination of forces, like growing up in Southern California and the Central Coast and being by the beach and in the sun, and having that whole culture, as well as being very intense and emotional and sensitive mixed with the oldies music I listened to as a kid that was on the radio on K-EARTH 101, and the going record shopping with my big sister. It was the early-to-mid 90s, and records were already old and dusty at the time, but feeling like this oldies sound was so vibrant and within me. A huge influence is also my teenage years being a wild punk rock girl in LA and roaming the streets with my girl gang and my girl band. I think I have a female point of view that is still lacking in music, in some ways it's very much my point of view, but I also hope that through the songs, which are often about women and often about universal feelings that women go through, that it's about all of us. It's always hard to answer that question, but if you want to really break it down, it's definitely my guitar teachers as a young person giving me burned punk CDs that really did it.

LUNA: What kind of atmosphere or emotional space do you aim to create for your listeners?

HAYLEY: We deemed ourselves poolside glitter trash or poolside glitter punk. That's been a really fun genre to claim, because when people ask, it's all the stuff that you would find at the bottom of a pool after a really good raging pool party. Maybe there's lipstick, maybe there's a lighter, maybe there's somebody's sock that they're gonna miss tomorrow, and all the scuzz and all the glitter, and that grit and glitter vibe is what we're going for. There's a celebratory and exploratory vibe that I want to bring to the world, and I think the world is just too boring on its own. That's kind of the poolside glitter trash or poolside glitter punk. I would like people to come away feeling like they unabashedly enjoyed themselves.

LUNA: It’s been over a year since the release of your EP Unsubscribe From The Underground. How has it felt to watch listeners connect with the EP over time?

HAYLEY: We are a California band that moved to Detroit, so it's the first release we've put out since we've cross country moved to Detroit. I think it absolutely straddles the line between living in Detroit, feeling that city recording in our guitars, and the partnership we have in LA with Kitten Robot Records and Josie Cotton, who's this new wave icon, and her producer, Paul Roessler, who works with us. He's a founding member of the band The Screamers from LA, and he's a punk producer. To have both those worlds combined for this album, I feel like this EP is very much where we are right now.

A lot of the EP explores the insecurities of a new, creative person coming into an established music scene. Unsubscribe From The Underground is my projection of the old heads looking down at the new people coming in, which is so universal, like we all experience that. It may also be magnified by our move and also the EP is wildly eclectic, because we are an eclectic band. There's a song on there that sounds 60s girl group-esque that has pedal steel on it. There's a song that's straight up pop-punk that's inspired by my days drinking in an alley by the Knitting Factory in Hollywood with my friends.

We have this small, loyal group of people that are just following along on the ride. It's a small but mighty crew. When I was in my early twenties, I was in a punk band locally that was kind of the hometown hero band, and was very popular, and we got to open for all these legends. It just felt so easy. Sometimes when I was starting The Crushers, I felt like I wanted that again. As I've grown into myself and this project has reached almost 10 years, I'm so grateful for our crew and our Crushers. That's what Unsubscribe From The Underground is all about. It's not about pandering. It's just about being exactly who you are.

LUNA: Looking back at Unsubscribe From The Underground, how do you think you’ve matured as an artist and storyteller since its release?

HAYLEY: The core of the band is me and my husband, Dr. Cain ESQ. We have had a very interesting relationship from the get go, because we were bandmates first and we've reached this state where it probably took us over a decade to get to this point where our different songwriting gifts and attributes can come together without too much conflict or too much of this is a Hayley song or this is Dr. Cain song, because we both share songwriting duties. We've come to this place as a core of the band, we've reached this harmoniousness where I'm very poetic and he's very literal. He'll come up with riffs, and I can go take it on a journey. I think because we have come to this place creatively, just him and I, it has made the storytelling and the emotions,

I feel like there's a lot of emotion that comes out in this EP, that there is an ease to it that has been hard won and taken a while. We’ve been trying to find the thing inside us that we’re feeling, and really trying to poke it until we're getting to what is the universal thing, and that's also growing up. I think that just the core of the band is so solid right now, the songwriting and storytelling is showing that. I think it's a really good sign that wherever we go in the country, I feel like we have musicians that are here to meet us, and we do have musicians in different areas that we're able to work with that's a unique feature of the band. We have a lineup here in California, we have a lineup in the Midwest, we have a guy in Colorado. We're creating an army.

LUNA: You’re heading out on a Spring 2026 tour behind Unsubscribe From The Underground. Opening for Screeching Weasel and The Queers puts you in front of a multigenerational punk audience. What excites you most about sharing a stage with such iconic bands?

HAYLEY: That's such a gut answer because it's every show with them. This is our second run with them that we're going to be doing. We did 10 dates with them in 2025. It's older punk dads and their cool 14-year-old daughters. I couldn't ask for a better demographic. I love the energy, because it's this amazing nostalgia coming from the dudes and these are older dudes that appreciated Weasel in the 90s, and grew up on that first wave of pop-punk. Then the daughters, it's these really cool, quirky girls that are in between childhood and teenager, and they're resonating with the music with us.

I love that we're bringing something to this run where these young girls can look to and go, ‘I see myself in some part of this band,’ not even just that I'm a woman or that I'm playing a guitar or whatever, but just in the energy, the welcomingness, the feeling of it's okay. This is family-oriented. I know that sounds crazy, but that's how I see pop-punk. It's very irreverent and wink and a nod and there's songs that are a big fuck you. I just love that it’s multi-generational, and we're all here together. We're having a good time, and that we can also represent a female fronted band that is enjoying themselves, having fun and not taking themselves too seriously.

LUNA: You’ve said this era unlocked a new live intensity. What’s changed about the way you physically perform or command the stage during this tour?

HAYLEY: That's a wonderful question. I really hope that my answer would reach out to any artist that feels like they have insecurities or they can't reach that next level, because there's something in themselves stopping them. I mean in terms of what I bring, everyone else brings what they bring, and they have their own stories of how they've handled these larger stages and larger audiences, because this is a big step up for us, but for me, it's trying to use the in-ear monitors that felt intimidating. I thought those were only for big artists. I am getting over those feelings of inadequacy in myself, and that has unleashed a new level of confidence.

Screeching Weasel has encouraged me to step up my game, both in songwriting and in my live performance, having good gear, having your in-ear monitors, having your ducks in a row, knowing the breadth of the stage and how far you got to reach out to fill the stage and to step onto it and own the stage. That has been such a learning curve. I've made mistakes. I've had to really learn to step up and look at myself first and ask where am I not rising to the occasion? I feel like that for me, has been the biggest catalyst in bringing my performance to the next level. As a 38-year-old woman who has been doing this since my early twenties, in some capacity, I'm just really starting to embrace what could be a bigger theatrical Crushers vibe, and that's been really explosive and fun, and requires a lot more dancing, sweating, jumping and being present in the moment.

LUNA: Touring can be both exhilarating and exhausting. How do you personally stay grounded while traveling through so many cities in a short stretch?

HAYLEY: I've been alcohol free for three years. A couple years ago, Suzi Moon — who's a great, powerful female rock n’roll goddess — I asked her how she performs the way she does. I am so impressed with her stage performance and energy. She said she doesn't drink anymore, and a lot of people in my band don't drink anymore. As you get older, and you're touring, and you're playing every night, you're already putting so much stress on your nervous system. We don't drink. We try to eat healthy on the road, it's all the boring stuff that you never want to think about. For this next tour I want to really have a touring diary to be able to have a place to go after because as you are exposed to more and more people and more and more energy, I think of being on stage as being like a tuning fork, and you're you're holding your own energy, but you're also tuning the crowd. I can see why so many people take that and they internalize it and just freak the fuck out.

I think having those grounding exercises is important and, because I'm not journaling right now, it's more listening to podcasts, making sure that before I play that I'm stretching, making sure I'm doing my vocal exercises and telling people that I need to be alone. It's just protecting that inner quiet so that you can get loud. I think we think of people playing rock music as being explosive and loud. And so often they're just so introverted, and they retain so much energy throughout their days, so that they can be these explosive people on stage. I've been learning that about myself, and I hope to continue to get better at it, because I'm certainly not perfect.

LUNA: What do you hope someone seeing Hayley and the Crushers for the first time on this tour walks away feeling?

HAYLEY: I hope that they feel like we're not cool, and if there's any part of them that doesn't feel cool, that they feel seen and that they also can take up space on the stage, do whatever they do well and with joy. I remember seeing Joan Jett at the Mid-State Fair on the free stage when I was 12. I remember seeing this woman. It was more than just the music. It was more than just her cute leather outfit, although that was pretty cool. It was the sense of this female coming forward and seeing herself, owning her power and then sharing that with everybody else in the room. I would hope to be able to do that for little girls. I think every little girl should get an electric guitar on the day of their first period. I'll put it out there. I want to start that foundation. I think that would make the world a better place.

LUNA: What is fueling your fire right now that’s pushing you into this next chapter in your career?

HAYLEY: Water coloring and aqua aerobics. I think we sometimes, as artists, get focused on whatever medium that we're grinding at. We really want to show that we're good and we want everything to be about getting better at X, Y and Z. It's been a real learning experience for me to delve into a medium I don't know anything about, and that's what's so beautiful about it is that it allows you to stay playful, creative and humble. I'm working on my watercolor game, and then aqua aerobics. My mom just turned 70, and she got me into it. The way I feel when I'm floating in the pool and doing these aqua aerobics to music is very much how I feel on stage. Those two things have been giving me a lot of joy and allowing me to disengage from some of that feeling of I need to be posting all the time or I need to be writing. We're writing a new album right now and you can get in your own head, so it's really just been diverting my attention away from music when it needs to go in a different direction.

LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like that you would like to share with Luna?

HAYLEY: I feel excited to finish this record. I feel grateful for this new life that we've been able to create in Detroit, and that it's been able to hold hands with our life in California in this beautiful way. I feel optimistic about, not necessarily the world, but about the fact that I see DIY artists are continuing to get up every day and keep going. I want to be part of that, because I know that when I look around and I see others, despite everything going on in the world, continuing to bring joy and bring color into the world. The rest of the year is working on this record, hopefully. After this tour with Weasel, we have a couple headlining dates, and that's new for us. We're still quite a small baby band. More headline shows. More shows that we bring the spectacle. I'd love to go to the south as well, so if anyone is interested in booking us there, I would love to try that out.