The New Kids on the Pop-Punk Block: Ringpop!
Photo courtesy of Asher Thomas // @asher_thomas_
This interview has been edited for clarity & conciseness.
Ringpop! is an emo/pop-punk band dedicated to creating a refreshed take on classic pop-punk while staying true to their careless, yet captivating sound. Both Berklee College of Music students, lead vocalist Jake Michne and guitarist and producer Charlie Burket continue to pave their way on the path to greatness, paying respects to the genres they grew up listening to. The duo is happy to call Boston their home as it allowed them to be a part of such a lively music scene. This is something the bandmates didn’t get the privilege of having in the cities they’re from, as Michne is from Clifton Park, NY and Burket is from Rochester, MN. I recently had the chance to speak to them about their backgrounds, discography, and how it’s okay to have fun while being sad.
Charlize Tungol: I know you both have either made music individually or in other groups, but how did you find each other?
Charlie Burket: We started online because of COVID, and there was this Instagram page… I remember I saw Jake’s [page] and he was playing this midwest emo tapping sh*t that he came up with and [on Jake’s page he] was like “I want to start a band!” That semester is when we wrote the EP Nobody Cares. We probably wrote 15-20 songs and decided on our favorite five. It was cool, but we didn’t actually meet each other until a few months after the band started because of the whole online semester thing.
CT: How did that communication process work between you two since you weren’t physically together?
Jake Michne: We made a Google Drive folder, and would just make demos [in our basements] and just be like, “Yo! Check out this crazy demo.” We’d upload it to the drive and be like: “That’s sick,” and when we got there in person, we got to actually play them.
Burket: We wrote some stuff as a band.
Michne: Right, and we tried to figure out which [songs] were playable live because obviously some of the old demos, looking back, were ridiculous. So now that we’re actually in person, we can properly turn it into what our band would play.
Burket: I remember that our single “My Best Friend Is Pikachu” [was kind of like a game] we came up with where we picked a tempo, a key, a capo, a tuning, and all that sh*t, and we each wrote 10ish little nuggets of a song. Just 20-second riffs and sections, and uploaded it to the same folder. I remember that’s how Pikachu was made, I wrote the verse – that was one of my little nuggets, and I think [Jake] came up with the intro and the tapping bridge thing. So it’s definitely weird starting online, but being in person now is huge.
CT: Did you also come up with the band name in that same semester? Song titles?
Michne: We were on FaceTime…and we were trying to come up with a band name. We had a list and a lot of them were really dumb, but Ringpop… we came up with it because we were just going through the list and I had a candy Ring Pop in my room and I was just like, “Oh! What if we name the band Ringpop and put an exclamation point after it.”
Burket: The song titles are truly just the names of the demos. A lot of bands do that, where they just call the demos super stupid stuff. We kind of liked the vibe of just keeping it silly, and I think that all of them…we wrote them instrumentally, and Jake would topline the vocals for them and would make the demo name work. Like, “Ocean Ears” is obviously a Billie Eilish spin-off. I was like, “There’s no way we’re keeping that,” but we did.
CT: You’ve been surrounded by larger indie rock atmospheres, especially in the cities you grew up in, so how do you feel about introducing the sound of modern pop-punk to indie rock-dominated cities like Boston?
Burket: Our whole premise as a band is a genre blend, like we call ourselves a pop-punk/emo band. My main thing in high school, growing up and stuff, was midwest emo, and [Jake] was super into pop punk. It’s definitely always kind of a conversation of how we’re blending that within each song and what elements are coming from the midwest emo world, and which elements are coming from the pop-punk world. I guess all of it kind of falls into that indie rock category.
CT: There are conversations about how pop punk has fallen out lately, but now it’s making a resurgence with bands like Paramore making music. What are your thoughts on that?
Michne: I feel like the sound of pop punk with heavy guitars and loud drums is coming back and becoming more of a normal thing to hear, especially with Blink-182 being back. I just feel like the whole genre is coming back into the mainstream, which is really cool.
Burket: I hadn’t really thought about it like that. I do think a lot of [the resurgence] can be attributed to Paramore and Blink-182 and [their own resurgence]. I think it started happening before that with the smaller bands. Now that Blink-182 and Paramore are back doing sh*t, it’s very exciting. It feels like a good time to be a pop-punk artist.
CT: With these bigger bands and their large influences on many other bands, how do you strive toward originality with your music?
Burket: [...] I think that something a lot of bands aren’t doing these days is nodding to old-school, true pop punk, so [we] definitely have some nods to that with D-beats and octave guitars and stuff – stuff that people a lot of these days are stepping away from. Maybe one of the things that we’re doing that other bands aren’t doing is a pop punk [style] with true midwest emo riffs, and midwest elements with pop-y vocals.
CT: Since it’s been nearly a year since Nobody Cares came out, I wanted to ask, what were your biggest successes and challenges that came while making the EP?
Burket: Personally, I’d say one of the best decisions we’ve made was [when] we had this guy named Brett Romnes do the mix. We met him at a show we played with [Park National] and hit him up after the show to mix the EP – kind of just on a whim, and he was down for it. This was definitely a huge stepping stone for us as a band because whenever we got those mixes back… we were kind of like, “Woah, we didn’t know we could sound this good.”
CT: I also wanted to ask about “My Best Friend Is Pikachu.” The song gained a lot of popularity, especially over social media. How do you feel about that single getting noticed?
Michne: That was the first song we ever released. I think that era and that song has been – I don’t want to call it our opus, but when you listen to that song, that’s what we sound like in that era, and it has all the elements of our sound. Every other song that’s part of the EP is like [a different vibe.]
Burket: I love that song. I think it was the first song we ever wrote. With other bands I’ve been in too, there’s always something so special about that first song you write. You have that feeling of the excitement of the blank slate, and just doing whatever the f*ck you want. Everything after that – it’s hard because you have something to compare your new writing to. Doing whatever you want – I truly think that’s how the best music is made. People just listen to a bunch of music all day, then go to your room and you write what you’re hearing. You don’t want to overthink it, and that’s why that song is so special to us.
CT: I’ve also watched your music videos. Do you think they help to visualize the easy-going, carefree vibe you’re going for and the image you’re looking to create for yourselves?
Michne: Those videos; we made [them] with no budget, just with the intent of having fun. Like, let’s just go outside and do some crazy sh*t! That’s the vibe that we want to have with our music. The songs have serious themes in them, but it’s more lighthearted and [we’re] trying not to overly romanticize being sad, because everyone feels sad, but everyone can be happy too. That’s what our vibe is about.
Photo courtesy of Asher Thomas // @asher_thomas_
CT: I also wanted to bring up your next show at Monkey Palace. You’ve performed there before—last year I believe—what significance does this show carry for you?
Burket: I think [the Monkey Palace show is] insanely special to us. It’s definitely one of our favorite basement spots in Boston; it’s amazing. Ben, the person who really does a lot of the work there, takes it so seriously. Monkey Palace has smoke machines, lasers, and they even record the shows. It’s a seriously legit operation for a basement spot. It’s also our first show back for a while. We took a lot of time off to write for the album. After the EP and after a few shows, we got really inspired and heard where we wanted the band to go, and we wanted to really capitalize on that. It’s our first show in a year, but we’re super excited and it’s the perfect place to play. We have a couple new songs we’re going to play – some of our favorite old ones, so it’ll be great.
CT: I’ve noticed that you have a whole lineup of live shows following the one at MP. How do live shows shape your motives as a band?
Michne: Just being an emo/pop punk band, playing live is such a big thing. All of the bands we grew up listening to – I always watched videos of Warped Tour and there was moshing and crowd surfing the whole time. That insane, fun, energetic, live energy has always been something I’ve wanted to do. Especially since bands like this make a career out of touring – obviously they sell music or whatever, but touring is such a good way to build a fanbase. We love playing shows. It’s so fun to have people who know the lyrics already. The last time we played, there were people who knew the songs even though they’ve only been out for a few months. It’s such a cool feeling to know that people are physically affected by it, moving and moshing.
Burket: That’s truly the end goal. If I could choose one thing to happen for our band, it would be selling out, like, House of Blues. It’s always kind of about the live show and the next tour, and the next band we want to play with. That’s what it’s all about for us.
CT: Do you have any songs you’re most excited to play or debut?
Michne: We have a song that’s called “Be Honest, Do I Look Like Andrew Garfield” coming out on the album, and there’s another one that’s unnamed for now, but it’s going to be out too. I’m just excited to play sh*t live, like this newer era. Also, the older songs from the EP are redone to match this new era, so it’s like the same song[s] but more energetic and more pristine.
Burket: There’s a chance you might hear one of the EP songs reworked on the album.
CT: You’ve hinted at your next album, can you tell me more about it?
Burket: There aren't really many secrets. We’ve announced that it’s coming, and it’s been a long writing and production process. We probably reworked these songs three or four times – made multiple demos of them. We started with a lot of songs. We probably made like twenty-five or thirty songs – a few of them we kind of said, “Obviously we’re not doing these,” but we made it down to fifteen or sixteen, and whittled that down to nine and [now] we’re reworking all of those. Last semester—there’s this guy named Dave Marvuglio, in a band called Lesser Glow now—we did this directed study with [Marvuglio] and went through all of the songs again, worked on the arrangements and made sure that everything was feeling really, really good. Having his input on that was just super helpful. I do some studio work for Brett Romnes, the guy who mixed our EP, so he’s going to be listening to some of the demos and helping us out with the drum recording. So yeah, we’re recording over spring break and I’m really glad that we can kind of have ten days to really live with the project. We probably won’t finish it, and will probably do vocals and stuff after.
Michne: We haven’t really announced when it’ll be out, but probably later this year – October, November, December, like around that time in the fall/early winter. It’ll probably be between ten to eleven tracks, maybe? I think we’re just really proud of the EP, but as a band, we’ve grown so much in the last year that these songs are going to be the true representation of what we want to do as a band. [We’re excited to finally be able to show people.]
Burket: It’s really good that we did the EP as a little “test,” just to start figuring out what we sound like. With this album, we’ve been really careful with every song, every section, just to make sure we say everything that we want to say as a group – and we don’t say the things we don’t want to say. It’s been feeling really good.
It was my absolute pleasure to facilitate this conversation that introduces Ringpop! and their upbringing in the music world – their debut EP was only a little taste of what greatness is to come from this duo. From basement shows to making epic demos on FaceTime, Ringpop! has done everything they need to do to earn the status of being your new favorite band. Look out for their new album on the way, but in the meantime, stream Nobody Cares!