Alyse Vellturo, better known as PRONOUN, has the distinction of being the first artist I went to see live post-lockdown (Earlier that year, prior to the release of her June 2021 EP, OMG I MADE IT, we chatted and she told me she was desperately itching to get out of her apartment and back into the world.) It was July of 2021, and she was supporting Ace Enders at The Foundry, with our local buddies Carly Cosgrove handling opening duties. It was one of many shows that the Brooklyn-based “indie-bedroom-arena-rock” artist has played at The Foundry over the years. However, she’s also played some mega-venues in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection, including a 2018 stop at Union Transfer supporting our phriends Turnover. However, tonight (5/10) she’ll be playing a significantly more intimate space when she’ll be opening for Minneapolis indie poppers Bad Bad Hats at Kung Fu Necktie, which Alyse tells me during a recent phone chat she has played before, quite some years ago.
PRONOUN’s jaunt with Bad Bad Hats kicked off May 5th in Detroit, and on Tuesday she dropped her latest single, “i haven’t felt like me.” The song (and accompanying music video, directed by Jax Anderson) embrace Vellturo’s love of pop-rock of the late-90s and early aughts. “That was the first music that I got into, like BBMak and Ryan Cabrera, before I found emo and pop-punk,” she tells me, before going on to say, “A lot of new music I listen to has things like that, too.” As two people in their mid-late thirties, we joke about the notion of those sounds now being regarded as “retro,” to which she tells me, “It’s totally retro. I mean, The Killers is a dad rock band now [laughs].”
“i haven’t felt like me” is the first single from a forthcoming EP, the follow-up to 2021’s OMG I MADE IT. And Alyse tells me that, in a lot of ways the upcoming EP is something new to her: “It’s basically a crush EP, and I’ve never done that before. I’ve done ‘breakup,’ ‘heartbreak,’ ‘wanting to die,’ [laughs].” She also explains that it represents a new way of approaching her own music (Much of OMG I MADE IT was written prior to the pandemic.): “A lot has changed in the last four years… With the new music I’m making, I think the biggest difference is feeling completely comfortable with letting it be and letting it go and not worrying so much about what people will think about it.” However, she tells me that the actual songwriting process has not changed much: “A lot of this I wrote really quickly… I can’t get myself to just sit down and create stuff, so it tends to come out in spurts, but that’s really true of all of my releases.”
When I talked to Alyse in 2021, she told me how fortunate she felt to have gotten to tour with so many bands that she loves (“Jimmy Eat World, Third Eye Blind, Taking Back Sunday, and Dashboard Confessional are like my favorite bands and I’ve toured with all of them and they all found us organically, which has been really crazy.”) and she tells me the same holds true for Bad Bad Hats: “I really love all of their music and have for a long time… I’ve always lucked out with touring. I was commenting on Bad Bad Hats’ Instagram and that’s how I got this!” She also tells me that all of these acts have proven to be exceptionally cool tourmates: “I’ve lucked out in that area. I’ve not had one bad experience!”
For these dates, PRONOUN will be playing as a three-piece and premiering some new music from the forthcoming EP, Alyse tells me: “We’ll play two unreleased songs. I’m trying to get used to playing these live, which we’ve only done twice.” She also tells me that she’s currently getting final mixes of the songs and that she’s hoping to have it officially drop in August. However, she says that there’s even more new music on the way: “I also want to put out another album… I’ve had like half a record done for like five years now. I was like halfway done and then I caught the feels and I was like, ‘I’ll do this side thing!’”
*Get your tickets here.
