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Why this DC punk band describes its music as ‘mascara mosh pit’

DC punk band Ekko Astral revels in honesty and critical acclaim

While relatively new, local band Ekko Astral is swiftly claiming their title as heavyweights in the D.C. punk scene. The band’s intense, debut album, “pink balloons,” has been caught in a whirlwind of critical acclaim since it was released in April of 2024.

The album is chaotic, head-spinning, harsh and anxiety-inducing. The 11 songs on “pink balloons” can waver between emotional or contemplative to defiant or hopeful. Every so often, the band also references local sights and sounds — sometimes more literally and obviously with song titles like “somewhere at the bottom of the river between L’Enfant and Eastern Market.”

In “head empty blues,” lead singer Jael Holzman belts out, “Is it Bon Eye-ver or Bon Iver? / I don’t care / I’ve got stalkers outside / not going out tonight / gonna sit and take pics / in my underwear.”

In their band profile, Paste Magazine described this track as a “blistering male gaze parody.” 

NPR named “pink balloons” as one of the “Best Albums of 2024,” celebrating its “highly chaotic energy,” and also listing “head empty blues” as one of the “Best Songs of 2024.” 

Pitchfork ranked “pink balloons” the No. 1 best rock album of 2024, describing it as “textured, audacious, and fully realized.”

Stereogum also included the band in their list of the “Best New Artists of 2024,” while Consequence called the debut album a “killer record,” listing their follow-up song, “pomegranate tree,” as one of the best songs of 2024. 


Holzman, along with lead guitarist Liam Hughes and producer Jeremy Snyder, spoke to WTOP about how they got started, how they approach their music in a way that’s unique to others (and why it’s working so well) and, finally, what’s next.

Find the edited and condensed Q&A below:

WTOP’s Michelle Goldchain: How did Ekko Astral initially form? How did you all meet?

Jael Holzman: Liam and I, we went to college together at the University of Vermont. I’m from the Beltway area — Rockville, Maryland, born and raised. And we started playing music together. Flash forward, a number of years later …

Liam Hughes: When the pandemic hit, I was a music teacher and decided that I wanted to go back to school for audio engineering, and I ended up down in D.C. at American University for recording technology. And then when Jael caught wind that I was coming back to D.C., she immediately hit me up like, ‘We’ve got to make music together.’ I didn’t move down until 2021, and then that’s when we got linked up. And, yeah, the rest is history.

Holzman: And we made our first EP at American University. We joined forces with our now-drummer Miri Tyler early on in the period where we were forming the band in the end of 2020, through the spring of 2021.

And then we put out our EP (“QUARTZ“), started playing shows to small rooms in the D.C. area. After that, we linked up with Topshelf Records and worked on a record with our dear friend Jeremy Snyder, our producer, and we put that album out in April of 2024.

The reception has been a whirlwind of, honestly, so much excitement that it’s taken us a lot by surprise. But it’s really been cool to get to stand for the blissful and joyous music scene that exists here in the District. 

Goldchain: With this whirlwind, what are your thoughts on where you are now and where you want to be?

Holzman: A lot of people get into art for the wrong reasons. People make music to fill in a TikTok trend or play in the same style of music as other people. That has never been why we do this, and this industry is really hard. It’s a challenge to even make your own music these days with a budget enough to not sound like trash. Candidly, it’s really, really hard.

We’re privileged and fortunate enough that people have really locked onto our sound and into the message and mission of what we do, trying to make music that is speaking truth to power and unifying people with a positive vision of the future. We don’t get enough of that these days. 

Goldchain: You are the pioneers of “mascara mosh pit music.” For people who are totally unfamiliar, how would you describe this type of music?

Holzman: The thing about “mascara mosh pit,” as my dad likes to say, is if you want people to recognize that what you’re doing is unique and special, what you got to do is — it’s a silly trick — make up a name for it. And there’s some beauty in that.

But when we started playing our shows in the scene, it became apparent that our crowds were quite diverse. They were safe spaces for people of any background. There were a lot of women and queer people in the audience, which doesn’t always exist in mosh pits, especially in genres of music that have not historically been welcoming to people who are constantly under the male gaze and the violence of misogyny. In speaking to that, when we wanted to describe our music, it was pretty quick and easy. There’s a lot of mascara in that mosh pit.

If by some design, we happened to pick a label that describes the literal reality of our crowds and our sound, it’s a happy accident.

Goldchain: Was there a specific goal that came to mind when putting together your debut full-length album, “pink balloons?”

Snyder: When we had actually met up, we had ended up speaking about music for probably about the first 10 minutes and then several hours of our political ideologies, and our ideas for a better future and our critiques of why that is unlikely. I think that sort of camaraderie over our political ideologies went into more so than I would say music tastes went into what we were going to do.

The way that I produce music in general is that I want it to be reactive to the sensation of what’s happening. It was a very kind of natural sort of exploration together. So there was that unifying viewpoint that was a part of it. But there weren’t really rules set other than basically being as honest as possible and not having any sort of exterior influence besides our own self interest.

Holzman: When we set out to make this record, it was not to make a rock record, but to make something that was simply, honestly and earnestly speaking to how it feels to live today, to look forward into the future and wonder what reality might come next. Imagine if artists actually sat down and did that before they made art. Imagine if the intention was there before you even stepped into the booth.

And then it was just an accurate and literal recording of what we performed. A lot of the performances on “pink balloons,” that’s not really edited. If we mess up, like we’re in the studio now working on another record, and that’s the song now.

Snyder: I think that what is actually getting through is this honesty that Jael was just referring to, and I think that should be true for any artist. That honesty is actually what resonates. That’s the thing that people’s sixth sense is grasping onto, is that they can tell you mean it. They can tell they’re not being conned. 

Goldchain: On your latest album, is there one song you can talk about where you felt it took the most time to find that honesty?

Holzman: There’s a track at the end of “pink balloons,” called “i90,” that is a very honest depiction of the experience as a queer American traveling through different states in the U.S. with varying degrees of civil rights protections. The record itself was crafted in part by my own lived experience as a journalist struggling to tell stories about that subject matter even. I felt compelled because the media itself would not, it seemed at the time, have the willingness to tell those stories. I felt compelled to tell my own story and the stories of others through this very long and emotional — I would go so far as to call it slow core, but it’s more just a ballad — like a power ballad about the struggles of being yourself today in America.

That one for sure took the longest to even process emotionally. It also took the longest to write on the record. Most of “pink balloons” was written in two weeks. That was the only one that really took maybe as long as six months to write.

Hughes: Yeah, it’s the oldest one on the record. 

Goldchain: There are quite a few references to D.C., itself. What would you say are some of the most and the least obvious references to D.C. on your album?

Holzman: The most obvious references to D.C. are the literal descriptions of it. There’s an interlude, called “burning alive on k st.”

The least obvious D.C. reference on the record is there’s a line on the song, “on brand.” It’s actually the beginning of the song, and it’s like, “She’s got a pair of cheetah print pink pumps made by federal prisoners.” No one has realized yet that that line is about Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, famously the Hill’s best dresser.

Goldchain: If there’s one thing a listener can learn from your latest album, what would you want that to be?

Holzman: It’s impossible to describe how people have responded to this record in this current moment. People even recently have been just glomming onto it en masse. And the sense I get is that the subject matters, themes — everything that we’re trying to do — we’re one of the few bands out there that’s actually trying to give you something that you want. A lot of people are making art that’s completely self-centered and interested in themselves.

If you want to listen to a record that actually speaks intentionally in trying to give you something that’s going to make you feel better no matter who you are, no matter what you do, no matter what your background is — we are trying to be the thing that you need. We are trying to give you that soul nourishment in a way that too many people are not doing, and hopefully that changes sometime soon.

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Michelle Goldchain

Michelle Goldchain’s reporting has focused primarily on the D.C. area, previously working as Editor of Curbed DC for Vox Media and Audience Growth & Engagement Editor for Washington City Paper. She is the author of “D.C. by Metro: A History & Guide.” She also reports for 'Artsplained' on YouTube.

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