Skip to main content
10. Buddy Wynkoop
Sounds like: Pogo dancing with your smartest and weirdest friend.
In 2020, some of us got up to our elbows in sourdough, planted herb gardens, or started knitting in a serious way. Some of us eschewed the above in favor of boxed wine, doomscrolling and Tiger King.
Seth Medeiros, Erik Norseth, Mike Stortz, Ben Fleming and Nate Anderson formed a band.
The five met shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, when Norseth put up an ad on Craigslist looking for other musicians to play with, and had even gotten together to play a bit.
But it was late in 2020, with the pandemic in full swing, that they reached back out to each other and decided to start playing again. They became a pod and started writing songs together.
Now the band is hitting its stride after releasing its debut album, Better Than Botox, in March 2025. Last October, they toured the West Coast and the interior Northwest, including California, Nevada, Idaho and Utah. This year, they played Treefort Music Fest in Boise and are slated to play the Timber! Outdoor Music Festival in Carnation, Wash., and Pickathon in July. But they aren’t planning a full tour, partly due to unpredictable gas prices and because they’re working on their sophomore album, which will be out in 2027.
The band is also putting out a split EP, Crippling Fun, in which they and Nug, another local band, each cover a song by the other. That will be out July 1. Two other songs come out this year, one on a compilation of Portland bands called Volume Bomb, Medeiros says.
“This is kind of a side quest year for us,” he adds.
The band at first aimed to sound like Queens of the Stone Age—that is, art rock or desert rock—but ended up as an “angular, aggressive Devo,” Medeiros, the vocalist and synth player, says.
He describes the band’s first record as “art punk by the book,” but says the second album is going in a darker, more synth-heavy direction, with influences like Prodigy and Nine Inch Nails. Likewise, they’re working on bigger, theatrical stage shows.
“We’re super excited for Pickathon,” Medeiros says. “We’re planning something big stagewise and more theatrical for our set.”
