Ben Hopkins

I think the earnestness of what we're saying and what other bands like us are totally saying - or other queer bands - is 'We exist.'

Rather than writing about my experiences with other people, 'Ugly Cherries' is the first song I've ever written about myself. It's a confrontation: an attempt to unpack my own queerness with humor and self care.

PWR BTTM isn't the only queer rock band. We've been lucky to receive a platform. If you go on Bandcamp and search for 'queer rock,' you can find 150,000 bands that you could love more than PWR BTTM.

I'm a freewheeling flower-child falling down the stairs constantly.

The most radical thing about our lives is getting to be in a visibly filled-out queer crowd every night.

I think that our work and our music stands on its own without this knowledge about our identity around it. But I also think that we very consciously decided not to hold back that part of ourselves, but to be very vocal about who we are, kind of what experiences we've had in life, and how we identify.

You can't deny who you are, so you might as well be yourself in the most authentic way.

Is punk dressing up in leather jackets? No. It's having a counter-cultural perspective.

I'd say, at the end of the day, you know, from a songwriting practice standpoint, you write songs to make yourself feel something true and validating, and cathartic, maybe, and then whoever responds to it is, like, out of your control.

There is power in organization. There is power in a community. People have always wanted to destroy communities.

I know what we're going to do as PWR BTTM. We're going to put a new record out; we're going to go on tour a lot, and we're going to do cool stuff. We're going to try to be kind to our friends and family and loved ones. And we're going to look cute.

I think that when you're queer, you grow up with these kinds of men who might have made you feel small because of who you are. They could be part of your family, or somebody on the street, or a teacher.