Photo by Natasha Ostrich, courtesy of idol
UCLA Radio’s Rising Artist Spotlight aims to highlight upcoming artists who have demonstrated unique creativity and talent through their music. Through interviews and features, we delve into their journey, influences, and aspirations, giving listeners a glimpse into the future of music.
BEAUTY SCHOOL DROPOUT (BSD), is a Los Angeles-native five-piece band made up of frontman and vocalist Colie Hutzler, bassist Brent “Beepus” Burdett, guitarist Bardo Novotny and drummer Colton “Seadawg” Flurry, and they have one rule above all. The song is king. With their fresh, irreverent sound, their bratty, pop punk ethos, and songs that spring to life in the listener’s mind. BSD’s live shows are known for their palpable energy and frenetic atmosphere, yet within the band’s latest studio album WHERE DID ALL THE BUTTERFLIES GO?, they are mingling this sound and spirit with an elevated sensibility and sentimentality that does not soften their hard rock edge.We sat down to discuss their creative vision and the ultimate sonic fruition that is WHERE DID ALL THE BUTTERFLIES GO?
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity purposes
Interviewed by Mya Ward
UCLA Radio: How would you describe your sound as a band? How has it evolved over the years? What influences have you pulled from for each phase that you’ve gone through?
Colie Hutzler: I feel like our sound right now is the most raw and electric it’s ever sounded. I think we’ve matured a lot… I think that sonically, this album and this body of work represents the type of band that we want to sound like, which is a lot more organic and holistic and amplified and less digital sounding. And that, to me, is a really exciting thing.
We all have different influences. I know the boys really love the Hot Fuss era from The Killers. We’ve looked to some of our peers like Turnstile, Fontaines D.C., blink-182, of course. I listen to a lot of heavier stuff, but I think in that aspect, I look to that space for world building. A lot of those bands that I reference, like Loathe and Static Dress—it’s not even necessarily that I envision pulling influence from them in the wayof being similar—because I think we’re vastly different… I think more so in terms of just how much unity there is in their aesthetics and their videos and their sounds, and just how it all… represents the next element.
Bardo Novotny: There was a little sprinkle of 2hollis… what’s happening in the underground hip-hop scene. Even with Playboi Carti or even some of the DJs… like Skrillex. The sound design… I think we pull in.
Colton Flurry: Heavy Nirvana, Dave Kroll influence on drums, for sure.
Brent Burdett: The Cure, Depeche Mode was big for me.
Novotny: That’s the fun part! I think we all kind of have our things that we like to bring to the table as you can see. Our “superpowers”, if you will.
UCLA Radio: Let’s just hop right into your upcoming album, WHERE DID ALL THE BUTTERFLIES GO? I’m really excited to talk with you guys about some of the themes and ideas that you’re communicating with the project, not just lyrically, but also sonically. Is there anything that really excites you, that you want to expand on there?
Hutzler: I think, more than anything, just how proud we are of the quality of the music. The bigger message is this story of unrequited love, and finding grounding again and feeling the love for the game that I think maybe we had lost in the past due to too much pressure on ourselves, or exhaustion or feeling a little lost, and so I think in a lot of ways, this album represents finding yourself again. And because of that, I think we have and we’re proud of that, and we want other people to connect in the same way, whether that’s for the exact same reason or whatever they make of it on listening.
UCLA Radio: I want to talk a little bit more about the sonic cohesion of the album because I was really impressed by how cogent it was on a technical level, particularly the transitions from like the electronic synth sound into like this electric instrumentation and traditional, live instruments. I really wanted to ask how you arrived at that synthesis of electronic and traditional instrumentation.
Novotny: A lot of that, I would say, comes down to two things. First is Neil Avron, who is the producer on the whole record. He is a legendary rock producer and producer in general… and he really was the throughline in directing the guitar tones, directing the drum tones, bass tones, vocal tones. All those tones are in one project. Nowadays, there may be—on one album—25 different producers. There may be three different producers on one song.
[WHERE DID ALL THE BUTTERFLIES GO?] was the first time we really wanted a definitive sound… and Neil really helped direct that sound because it was through his lens. In terms of the synthesis and electronic stuff, that’s just choosing the right sounds.We spent a lot of time choosing the perfect sound for things. Three hours just flipping through patches on a synthesizer. And once you find one, rinsing it. We use the microchord synth on the whole album. We use the Juno on the whole album. Using those common throughlines helps create this palette that is what this album feels like, sonically.
UCLA Radio: How a song is generally formed? Is it someone’s singular vision? Is it like a singular process throughout or is it more democratic?
Burdett: I would say we’re fully democratic in every essence of this band, but especially song varying too. Someone can come with a guitar riff or a song idea or a fleshed out demo. Once we all get our fingers in it, it becomes BSD. But I feel like in every single one of our songs, you can hear a little bit of each of us. Also, we’re not precious about who plays guitar bass. [Flurry] did play drums on the whole album, but there are some songs where [Hutzler] played bass and I play guitar, and [Novotny] is playing synths. There’s no pressure. If you got a good idea, you got a good idea.
Hutzler: We’re always in the market of… song is king. I think we’ve gotten to a point in our careers and our marriage as a band where we’re just like, “Whatever is for the greatest good goes.”
UCLA Radio: I understand that you made over 100 songs, initially, for, WHERE DID ALL THE BUTTERFLIES GO? How did you end up narrowing down the tracks that would go on the album?
Novotny: Wrestling match. Thunderdome!
Burdett: A lot of songs just tell you that they’re supposed to be on the album. We all had probably nine songs [where] we all were like, “That goes on the album.” The last few we all had our feelings about but I think the album ended up in the state that it’s in because it was supposed to be those songs.
Novotny: That’s actually where Neil helped a lot, too. Having a third party be able to say, “This is what benefits the project, and this doesn’t.” Sometimes you need to hear that from an outside source.
UCLA Radio: Do you plan on releasing the remaining songs on a future project?
Novotny: A couple of them we’ve talked about. There’s definitely some. They’re not bad songs, they’re amazing songs.
UCLA Radio: I want to go back to the creative process of making the album. I understand that you guys took a year and a half off of the road, off from touring to sit down and write and create this album and I want to ask how that form of stasis really impacted the creative process.
Burdett: I think it really allowed us to put all of our eggs into the writing basket. Whereas, before we’d been writing on tour, finishing songs while on tour. Sometimes that’s in a van in the Middle-of-Nowhere, Germany on a zoom call with someone in the US and we have bad Wi Fi. It’s not always conducive to be the most creative space. So we took a year and a half off to intentionally just create and be together everyday and hang out with our friends and feel inspired by what’s around us. We have a really good community around us, and our friends are all really cool musicians and artists and writers and creatives. Being home allowed us to just dive as deep as we possibly could without being distracted.
UCLA Radio: I wanted to talk about “CITY NEVER SLEEPS”. That’s not the only song that I found had a little bit of hip hop influence. I really liked the 808s that were present throughout the verse and throughout the song, but I wanted to talk a little bit more about experimentation and fusing characteristics of different genres with rock and what was that like during the creative process.
Novotny: I think we just love a lot of different genres, especially hip-hop. The drums and the rhythms of hip-hop are so cool and just like, why not? If it hits and it’s fun and we like listening to it. I think we obviously make music for our fan base, but we’re also making it for us. We want to be fans of it as well. So
UCLA Radio: What are some of your favorite songs off of the album? Which do you think are going to be your favorites to perform live?
Burdett: I think the band’s collective favorite is “MADONNA,” but I’m personally very stoked to play “XXX” live, fast punk song. I get to scream “sex,” over and over and over again, and the crowds get to scream that. There’s a funniness to it too that I really like.
Novotny: I’m stoked for “CITY NEVER SLEEPS”.
Hutzler: I’m also stoked on “CITY NEVER SLEEPS”. And “SEX APPEAL”, that song is just really fun for me to sing. It’s not necessarily the highest energy, but there’s something about it that just really sets well in my voice. And it’s been really nice to be able to have that, because some of our songs are a little bit more aggressive on the vocals.
Flurry: Yeah, “SEX APPEAL” is cool because it gives us an opportunity to connect with each other on stage as well. When we’re just going hard I think we’re just so in it and “SEX APPEAL” is a nice breath of fresh air in the middle of the set to kind of allow us to reconnect as well.
UCLA Radio: On tour, you make time to engage with your fans, whether it’s before shows or in person, on tour, on social media. We’d love to know some of your favorite memories from cultivating this global community.
Novotny: We like hanging out, we’re not precious about hiding away if we’re in Cleveland, we’re gonna go meet up at a coffee shop and tell all of our fans that we’re gonna be there. We’ll just walk around the venue after every show.We want to meet the people that are giving themselves to our project and our music and so why not just go learn their name and their face. We have so many fans that we know well now it’s really cool. It’s all about the community.
Hutzler: Two things we’ve always kind of emphasized [that] we’re always super motivated to leave people with the most memorable experience possible. And I think since the inception of our shows, we’ve always strived to play in spaces that necessarily or aren’t necessarily meant for a rock show, or do things that go a little bit above and beyond. This last time, we were in New York, we just dropped a pin and told everyone to pull up to this park. We brought a fat speaker, didn’t really say much about what we were doing, and everybody came, and we leaked the whole album. And then everybody marched through New York City with us for a mile and a half back to the venue, and they had this speaker bumping. We’re always going to be willing to be generous with our time and just be cool.You know, be human. Obviously, there’s some parasocial dynamics that people lose touch with or don’t realize when they’re crossing boundaries.
UCLA Radio: As a lot of people are discovering your music through this new album and all of your touring, what do you want people to know about BSD? What’s the first thing?
Hutzler: I think that we just love rock n’ roll, and we want to bring people together through music and keep building this movement and this community. And putting on the best show possible, and ideally the best songs possible as well. Always, the song is king, but just creating a space for people to be themselves and to embrace individuality and authenticity.
Burdett: I want everyone on Earth to come to a BSD show at least once in their life.
