Acclaimed by Alternative Press as “reinventing indie rock”, late night drive home are bringing their roots of growing up in a small town outside of El Paso around the world. Starting in 2019, singer Andre Portillo and guitarist Juan “Ockz” Vargas learned how to play their instruments while simultaneously learning how to produce music. When 2020 hit, the two best friends spent their time together uploading their work on SoundCloud. As they started to gain momentum online, Ockz recruited his cousin Freddy Baca on the bass (who learned how to play the bass in order to join the band) and their long time friend, Brian Dolan on drums. On one fateful day in 2021, they released their hit song “Stress Relief” on all streaming platforms, their lives were forever changed.
Lurking in the dark corners of the internet rap underground toward the tail end of the blog era was GothBoiClique, which spawned out of popular image blogging site Tumblr. The tongue-in-cheek name, coined by Long Beach, California-born Filipino singer and producer Jerick “Jay” Quilisadio aka Cold Hart, ended up sticking. Alongside Wicca Phase Springs Eternal and Horse Head, Cold Hart built the foundation of what would become one of the generation’s most influential musical movements of the 2010s and beyond, changing the definition of punk and emo. The GBC collective’s boisterous lineup of Lil Peep, Døves, Fish Narc, YAWNS, Mackned, Lil Tracy, and JPDreamthug took 2000’s rock into the modern Soundcloud age.