Beauty School Dropout has been a band for barely half a decade, but they’ve already played the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. When SPIN caught up with the busy Los Angeles quartet of singer Cole “Colie” Hutzler, guitarist Brent “Beepus” Burdett, producer-guitarist Bardo Novotny, and drummer Colton Flurry, they were fresh off a July performance at the Cleveland institution—not for a ceremony, though. “It’s a new series called Rock Hall Rising,” shares Beepus. “They’re putting on new artists, which is super cool.” The video series might not have the pomp surrounding the Hall’s annual induction concerts—the band could bring in around 15 fans as an audience, according to Beepus—but it did feature some local flavor. “They do it actually inside the whole museum,” says Novotny. “So that people who were just there looking at exhibits could just walk by, and we’re just playing.”
It’s a big step up from the band’s first formal gig, in 2021, at a thrift shop. Due to the lingering pandemic, it was “super not OK to throw shows, but we just kind of did it,” Novotny recalls. “Everyone wanted to party… People wanted to be there.” The band originally had a bigger debut date booked: South by Southwest, courtesy of the buzz they’d generated in the fertile L.A. alt scene in 2019, playing raucous free events for friends.
But then COVID-19 happened, and plans changed. “The pandemic kicked our ass,” Novotny says. It also presented an opportunity: “We ended up having a year and a half to write a ton of songs,” Novotny states. “It really taught us who we were.” Typically, Beauty School Dropout rolled with the punches and came out hitting harder. “That’s still one of my favorite shows of all time that we’ve ever played,” Beepus says of the thrift-store concert. “Coming out the gate to that kind of energy … [it] made us.”
The band transferred that boisterous resilience into a handful of EPs, including 2022’s tellingly titled We Made Plans and God Laughed, featuring Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus, who signed the band to his Verswire label, which he co-founded with Sherry Saeedi (Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz is involved as well). The band is understandably thrilled to be working with one of their favorite musicians. “He’s someone we’ve looked up to a ton,” Novotny says of Hoppus, whom the band praises for his unflinching support. “He’s done a great job of pushing us to not settle,” Novotny says. “He’s like our artistic bodyguard.” Beepus adds: “He really does believe that art is king, and we try to take that into everything we do.”
Beauty School Dropout shares a similar commitment. “We write probably upwards of 50 to 100 songs per project that we put out,” Colie says. The band composes collaboratively and decides which songs to focus on as an album develops. While the four members share a strong rapport (“I think we’re all insane,” Beepus asserts), the conflicts that inevitably occur are handled with class and discretion: “Usually if we get in a fight, we have to make two people get naked and battle it out … whoever gets pinned down the longest is usually the loser,” Colie says.
Unexpected reversals, defiant celebrations, crucial support, naked fighting, and hard work—it’s all there on the band’s debut full-length Where Did All the Butterflies Go?, out September 5. Packed to the gills with riffs, hooks, grit, and sass, it fully captures the Beauty School Dropout blend of dirty punk attitude, clean pop dynamics, and surprisingly heavy textures. “Your clothes look better when they’re on the floor!” Colie declares in “Fever,” the deliciously snarling second single, backed by big, anthemic guitars and a juicy chorus. Canny reference points abound—sparkling Killers-esque keyboards on the sultry “Two of Us,” the brooding My Chemical Romance swag of “Sick Puppy,” the slick rhythms of “Sex Appeal,” which has a touch of the 1975’s swanky sheen. But as catchy as Beauty School Dropout can get, there’s always a sharp edge. Beauty School Dropout has plenty of glamour, but it’s decidedly roughed up.
Part of the extra heft comes from producer Neal Avron, who’s worked with Fall Out Boy, New Found Glory and Linkin Park, among many others. “It was really fun for me to work with Neal, because he’s such a legendary producer,” says Novotny, who produced most of the band’s other output. “He is so honed in on quality … Neal was an inspiration.” Avron’s “old-school” methods, as Novotny calls them, was a departure from the band’s usual quick way of working but mixed well with their own dedication to craft. “It was a dance,” he says.
The band is excited to finally begin debuting the new songs live, and has had plenty of chances to do so, with recent stops on the resuscitated Warped Tour and a handful of tour dates with Blink. It’s a long way from the thrift shop, but Beauty School Dropout haven’t lost their early freewheeling spirit. As Novotny puts it: “Even now that we are doing ticketed tours and things, we always like to say we’d rather throw parties on stage than a show.” The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame should probably start preparing now for the next time Beauty School Dropout shows up.
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