What a year for the girls; dominating pop charts and fake killing ex-boyfriends. Daisy Grenade successfully accomplished one of the two this year, but the other will come soon enough.
Brooklyn-based and cultivated Daisy Grenade, composed of dark-haired New Yorker Dani Nigro and her bright pink Seattlean co-lead Keaton Whittaker, have spent the last year supporting major tours and opening huge festivals across the U.S. Only two years after their debut EP Sophomore Slump, a female rage classic for the teenage asshole in us all, the fingerprints of emo royalty Pete Wentz and Alex Suarez found across its tracklist helped solidify DG in the eyes of pop punk fanatics.
First meeting at an ill-fated production of American Idiot only weeks before the world shut down, these musical theater grads felt their irreplicable chemistry from day one, and it’s been an upwards journey ever since. Fall Out Boy’s 2ourdust, So What?, Riot and, most recently, When We Were Young Fest are just a few new additions to their CV. Now, Daisy Grenade will hit the road with State Champs to close out an unbelievable 2024.
Before their first stop in Austin next week, I talked to Nigro and Whittaker about what makes these touring shows so special, how their theater meet-cute defines who they are as a band, and how it feels to be a female-fronted group in such a sausage fest of a scene.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Evelyn Martinez: A little icebreaker. Your last show was at When We Were Young Fest (WWWY), a pretty big deal! How was your experience? How’d it compare to other festivals you guys have done this year?
Keaton Whittaker: It was awesome. We had a lovely time. It was run really, really well and smoothly so that made our lives a lot easier. We got to connect with a lot of really cool people and the show was awesome too.
Dani Nigro: There was great communication going on at that festival. We didn’t have any issues playing our shows, and we got to see some bands we love.
EM: This Austin show is kicking off the tour with State Champs, and your first non-festival show after months of playing some stacked lineups. What is that like, going from playing huge festivals like WWWY to more personal venues like Emo’s?
KW: With a tour set, you get a little bit more time to flesh out exactly what the set is and what we like to do. We’re able to see what the crowd is responding to, what they’re not responding to, and being able to adjust and tweak that is really fun. Whereas in a festival setting, it’s like you have one shot and if it doesn’t work, that sucks. Maybe it’s the theater in me. I prefer having time to work it out.
Photo provided by Daisy Grenade
EM: You guys played Antone’s before Moody Center, which is the largest arena in the city. What stood out to you when you played at the smaller Antone’s venue that you’re looking forward to seeing again next week?
DN: That show at Antone’s was great. Every time we play in Austin the crowd is great. I love it. I’m excited, I hope the energy is the same when we’re there.
KW: I really like Austin, so I’m excited to kick off the tour there. It’s such a cool music city. The crowds have always treated us really well.
EM: You guys have released quite a few singles since you were last here, opening for Fall Out Boy. Are there any songs you’re particularly excited to play for the Austin crowd?
DN: I’m stoked for “How To Hide A Body.” We’ve been getting a lot of really great feedback about it online, and people seem really stoked to hear it live. We’ve only done it live twice at WWWY, so we get to do it for the whole tour this time.
KW: Something we also do a lot is tweak how we do things live versus in the recording. Figuring out what it sounds like and how it flows is always really fun, and we’ve already made some changes. I’m excited to see how it goes.
EM: Speaking of “How To Hide A Body,” I love the song and the music video you just released for it. I’d love to hear more about the creative process, since I know you both have theater backgrounds and it’s probably the most theatrical release you guys have so far.
KW: We have an amazing creative team that works on basically everything you see visually from us. Hannah Klein directed it and Jamie Rice was the cinematographer. Before we even finished the song we were already talking about potential video ideas. There’s so much narrative, the visuals are sort of baked into it already.
I think the first idea we had was killing off the band one by one. We were trying to figure out how to make it start off as a revenge fantasy, and then it ended up with the rest of them as accidents. We wanted to have this funny, campy feel, because it could be so dark. Having some levity was really important. Jennifer’s Body was a huge influence for us on that, and other campy horror movies like Heathers and Carrie.
DN: I had a blast doing something with more narrative, and we’ve been getting really great feedback. We’re gonna have to make the DG cinematic universe.
EM: How much of an influence does the theater kid background have on everything that is Daisy Grenade?
DN: It’s a huge part. It’s not something we’re ever trying to hide or avoid using. We’ve been performing since we were kids. Our live show is very important to Daisy Grenade, and the quality of the show is at the heart of what Daisy Grenade is. It’s why we’re so comfortable on stage, and it definitely influences our writing. Sometimes we’re writing these made up stories, drawn from real-life situations but not necessarily reality. I think it helps to put ourselves in a character’s mindset when we’re writing different songs.
For the music videos, we keep getting comments like “they’re actually really good at acting.” That’s the degree, baby! I’m in a lot of debt for you to say that, thank you.
KW: When we’re writing and recording, thinking about how it’s going to translate live is really important to us. We never want to write something that feels like we couldn’t do live. We’re trying to blend that feeling of nicely produced and recorded pop music that also sounds like a live band. We’re still finding that balance, but the live element is the most important thing to us at this point.
EM: I know I’m excited to have a new song for my Halloween playlist.
DN: Almost all of our music can be put on a Halloween playlist!
EM: “How To Hide A Body” is one of several tracks you guys have gotten a chance to release this year. What’s your current backlog looking like? How much of a dent did your 2024 singles make on it?
KW: We have a lot of things on the back burner at the moment. We had a lot of changes internally this year that have pushed things further back that we’re not quite ready to talk about yet. A lot of things will be a first for us, be it an LP or a headliner or whatever, so waiting for the right time is really important to the both of us to make sure we feel ready and right in doing it.
EM: One last big one before we go. You guys have talked previously about the influence emo and pop punk giants like Avril Lavigne and Fall Out Boy have had on you and your music. I would say Daisy Grenade is now becoming a part of the same canon. How does it feel knowing that your music is reaching a whole new generation of emo kids?
DN: That’s really sweet. We’re very grateful to have a platform to show a younger audience that you can be onstage as non-men, and you can be rageful, and you can be angry and loud. There’s space for that, and there’s people who want to see it. Whenever we meet little kids at our shows, and their parents tell us that their kid wants to be on stage and wants to be in a band now after seeing us, being able to be that for anybody feels like such a massive honor and privilege. We’re very aware of it, and would like to continue to be that as we keep releasing things and growing as artists ourselves.
KW: To hear someone say that they feel like we do have a space in the scene is so awesome. it’s hard to know that feeling while you’re in it, we still feel like we’re so new and coming up.
I want to echo all of that, and also bring up a Tweet I saw in response to someone saying there aren't any good women in pop punk: “Pop punk is a whiny boy genre, not a whiny girl genre. If I wanted whiny girl, I’d just read my middle school journals.” This sentiment echoes through the scene a lot, but not a lot of people are bold enough to just say it. We feel it a lot of the time. There are so many amazing women in this scene that are younger and becoming cemented into the canon, so it’s important for us to say that that sentiment is not true, and is not how we or many other people feel about the women in the scene. I know so many female-fronted, non-male groups that are so talented and deserving of so much. I get on a soapbox about this whenever I talk about it, but it is so important to me.
When we were at WWWY, the most emotional I got was being around all the women that were there and all the women who came to watch and just support each other so wholeheartedly. It's really cool to see that, and we want to continue to prove that person and those people wrong. For all the little girls that come and watch us, I want them to know that they can do it, they can be seen in this genre and not feel unsafe or like they don't deserve to be there. That's why we're here. That's my soapbox.
EM: Some bands like to say, we don’t want to get political. But as a woman in this scene, it’s just inherent.
KW: It colors everything that we do. It colors how we walk through every room, every space, every venue that we’re ever in. To not bring that up feels like a missed opportunity. That moment at WWWY was such an amazing moment for a lot of us. We really felt that community with each other, and I look forward to the day when that is just the norm and doesn’t feel like a necessity. We have done a lot of good work. Not just us, but a million other women and non-male people in the scene. I hope that we will continue to be pillars of that.