Interview: Daisy Grenade is Full of Femme Rage

Amid its tour with State Champs, pop-punk duo Daisy Grenade spoke with Afterglow about performing live, partnering with mutual aid funds, and finding inspiration in horror movie tropes.

Written by Julianna Riccioli

Photo courtesy of Jamie Rice

Brooklyn Duo Daisy Grenade has taken the pop-punk world by storm. With a background in musical theater — often weaving elements of horror aesthetics and dark humor into their music and visuals — the New York-hailing group cemented its place as the ultimate “power punk bubble grunge” band. Currently touring with 2010s legends State Champs, Daisy Grenade took a moment to sit down with Afterglow about opening with pop-punk icons, donating to mutual aid funds, and “Jennifer’s Body.”

Afterglow: I was at the Austin show, and it was fantastic! To kick things off, what were you looking forward to during your opening night here in Austin, especially after being on a festival kick for so many months?

Dani: I was looking forward to being back inside. I know that’s so simple, but I really love playing inside of a venue. After playing outside for so long, it was really cool to be in the enclosed space with everybody and really feel everybody’s energy in the crowd and onstage. [It] felt a little more contained, which was fun for me.

Keaton: On a tour like this, you have so much time to work out your set… [You can figure out] what’s hitting and what’s resonating with people and what’s not. [At] a festival, you get one shot. If something doesn’t work in the set, you don’t know how that crowd’s going to react. [On tour], you get a little bit more time to work things out, which I really like. I think that’s the theater in me! Okay, sorry, I still have to credit the theater.

Since Austin was the first show of the tour, it was your first time performing with State Champs. Y’all performed “Around the World and Back” with them, which was the first time they’d performed it since 2017. What was it like to perform with them and merge the old and new generations of pop punk together? 

Dani: It felt really special that they asked us to do it. We’re super honored. We learned it quickly. It was really cool to just be up there and see how engaged their crowd was, and how excited they all were; the whole crowd was singing it.

Keaton: It’s been really fun to get to do it. Sometimes we have to leave [the venue] a little early and we can’t do it, but whenever we get the chance to, it’s been really great. And seeing how engaged their fans are during it is really amazing.

You guys have been super involved in supporting local organizations and mutual aids while on tour. I’d love to hear more about how you decide which organization you’re going to be supporting each night.

Dani: For the first few nights, we’ve been asking on Instagram if [our followers] had any local mutual aid that they were interested in us using our voice for; then otherwise, we’re just like Google, Google, Google.

Keaton: Yeah, looking up on Instagram… [we try] to keep things pretty state specific, or city specific. Sometimes, you can get some of the people from the organizations out to the show, [such as] the people out in Austin being actually from Local Queer ATX, which was really sick. A big thing that Dani and I care about within this project is building communities. So, keeping the communities that we go into in mind… looking for what certain communities need. In Texas and the South, we focus on queer and trans rights as well as reproductive rights, which felt important. Moving up into the West Coast, we were doing a little bit more mutual aid community bridge stuff in Seattle and Portland, because that seems to be more of the focus [there]. [We’re] trying to keep everything really specific to where we’re at and seeing what those people actually need and what they’re looking for. It’s been really cool to do that; we’ve raised quite a bit of money… It feels like actually giving back and doing something.

At the concert, you prefaced “How to Hide a Body” with a message about being frustrated about what’s going on in the world right now. I’d love to hear more about the inspiration for the song and how your musical theater background influenced the themes of the music video.

Keaton: We both love horror movies, so that was a huge influence in the visuals of “How to Hide a Body.” “Jennifer’s Body” was a huge influence for that, and any chance Dani and I can take to act through a music video, we’re going to take because we really enjoy doing it. It’s really important to give people a space to be full of rage. A lot of our stuff is very rageful. It’s really important for the two of us to connect our femininity and our girlishness into this sort of feminine rage, this powerful place. I think it feels really good for everybody to scream along.

Dani: Our lyrics and our songs tend to lean toward darker [places] and more morbid [themes], and this one probably was the most literal as far as actual murder, which is fun. It’s just funny to hear the crowd screaming all the lyrics. Every time we start the song, we’re like, ‘This is a song about murder!’ And everyone is like, ‘Yeah!’ I’m like okay, we’re all connecting here.

I love that you brought up that the music video was inspired by “Jennifer’s Body,” because when I was watching the music video, it reminded me a lot of the film “Bodies, Bodies, Bodies.” I definitely see that horror movie influence. I would love to hear if any of your other tracks or performances are influenced by other media y’all love. 

Dani: All of the Cult Classic EP was loosely based on horror movie tropes. Each song became a loose representation of a different horror movie trope. You can hear it for each of the songs, [and] you can find where it is lyrically — again, it’s loose, but that was the intention as we were writing the songs. I think it came through in the art as well, and a couple of the visuals we had go with it. When I’m writing, I get a lot of inspiration outside of music from the books I’m reading for lyric inspiration. I read a lot of horror books.

Keaton: Yeah, it’s funny. Cult Classic was not originally called Cult Classic. It was originally going to be called Are You Scared of Me Yet? [but] we liked the idea of it being called Cult Classic in reference to B movies. [However], “Are You Scared of Me Yet?” felt like a nice wrap up for [the EP]. So, it felt like a title track to us. It just kind of felt like “Cult Classic” was actually the title track… and that was just the overarching theme of what that EP was. As far as inspiration goes, I listen to so many different genres, and I honestly get a lot of inspiration from what things look like visually, like from fashion, or just how I feel like a song will look and play live. Thinking about what that looks like and how to correlate what it sounds like electronically with what it looks like visually.

I think that’s super interesting. I love y’alls trademark of being a “power punk bubble grunge band that serves a bitter punch with a lip-glossed kiss on the side.” I just think it’s so crunchy, so visual. I was wondering if there’s anything on the horizon we can look forward to? 

Keaton: We’ve got some stuff up our sleeve that we can’t tell you about yet — I know, I’m sorry, the worst thing to say, but it’s true. We’ve got some stuff lined up in 2025 that we’re very excited to announce.

Dani: We do have one more thing before the end of the year. I don’t know when we’re announcing that, but it’s coming up, so we’re probably announcing it soon. There’s one more thing for 2024 and many irons in the fire for 2025, none of which we can speak on.

Awesome! It was a super great show, and I really enjoyed it. I’m looking forward to seeing y’all make your way to Austin again! To wrap things up, is there anything else you’d like fans to know or anything you’d like to shout out?

Keaton: Please keep donating to those mutual aid funds! It’s been really cool to see the turnout we’ve seen for them, and we want to just keep being able to [give] back. We’ve gotten some change donations [if you have anything to give], and those honestly do add up. It’s been great, but let’s keep the ball moving.

You can follow Daisy Grenade on Instagram and TikTok and stream its music on Spotify and Apple Music.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.