Honey Revenge on 'Loving and Losing,' Growth, and Staying True to Themselves

I feel like we were trying to keep this essence of fun rock music that has heavy emotional content, but you can still dance to it. We wanted to do that in a more mature way than we did the first time around.

For me, I wanted there to be a really clear message. I think that was present on Retrovision, but when you're a brand-new band, it's very easy to just try and get your music out there. That was so important in that era because we made that record without really expecting much. We didn't know it was going to take us as many places or into as many people's homes as it did with those songs.

With this record, I think it was really important to show that we've grown a lot and that there is an overarching message throughout the record. Even if some of the songs feel like they don't connect to some people, I could tell you exactly which songs connect to loving and which songs connect to losing.

There is this overall theme of loss and love throughout the album. If you keep that in mind, it becomes clear. That's why I'm glad the record has been announced, because I think it wasn't as obvious to some people without the name.

A little bit of both, I'd say.

We've talked about having features before, and then they just haven't worked out for one reason or another. We're also people who feel like the song needs to need the feature, or else what's the point? We don't want to get a feature just to say, "Oh, we got this person on a song."

This isn't a knock to anyone who does features, but I do feel like they've become a little less cool, if that makes sense. A lot of the time, I notice that these features aren't necessarily people writing for their part, they're just being asked to sing.

For me, if I'm going to have someone on a Honey Revenge song, I have to like you so much because it's such a personal thing. Eventually that might evolve. Maybe once we have more music, I'll be more open to involving people outside of our project, but right now it has to feel intentional.

It has started to feel a little oversaturated. Sometimes it feels like a press move every time I see a feature. For us, I would want to write a song with the feature in mind, whereas with this record we were more focused on regaining our confidence in writing. A feature would have been an afterthought, and I wanted everything about this album to be very well thought out.

I also think I've done a lot of features very early in the band, and I love all those songs. I love the Telltale song, I love the Magnolia Park song, I love the Broadside song. But because I've had those experiences, I think I'm a little more apprehensive about jumping into a Honey Revenge song with somebody else.

Exactly. There are obviously people we have in mind, but it's definitely something we get asked a lot. I actually like the question of asking why we don't have features rather than who we would collaborate with.

I think that's a way cooler question.

Well, I really appreciate you saying that.

It kind of just happened naturally. The way we write as a band has changed and evolved so much since we started. When the band first formed, it was basically me and Donny sending voice memos back and forth. I don't play any instruments, so it was a lot of me tapping my hand as a fake metronome, sending it to Donny, him recording something, sending it back, and repeating that process.

In the beginning, a lot of the time it was Donny sending me an instrumental, and I would go live. Part of it was to build a following because, especially on TikTok back then, going live gained you way more engagement than it does now because it wasn't as oversaturated.

But what it did for me personally was really open me up to writing with other people.

At that point, I had never done real serious writing sessions where you have people outside of your band involved. It gave me the confidence to take other people's opinions into consideration and not have such a tight grip on being the primary vocalist and primary lyric writer.

Because of that, I think we've had so many great songs come out of it. Over time, we've done more sessions and collaborated with way more people, like Brian Logan Dales, Kanner, Danen Reed, and other amazing writers.

I'm really thankful that our fans kind of let me test it out on them.

I also love when the songs come out and people say, "Oh, I was in the live when you started writing this." That stuff is really special to me because it makes them feel more involved in the process, which is something I would have loved as a fan growing up.

I had to learn to be nice.

I don't mean that in a bad way, but I can be really concise and blunt. I don't intend to come across that way, but I had to realize, "Oh, these are your fans. These aren't people in a professional writing room."

Even with Donny, he knows when I'm just zooming in. I can come across way colder than I intend to.

I think it's the ADHD of it all. Sometimes you're just trying to get to the point and you accidentally barrel through.

But because I'm trying to be patient with my fans and be a teacher in that moment, it immediately transfers into actual writing sessions. I'm able to be more patient with other writers and explain why I like or don't like certain ideas.

It's all this cycle that feeds into itself. Everything comes back around and helps the other thing.

Not really. I'll hear an idea in my head, and I'll sit there for an hour or an hour and a half trying to figure out how to make it happen.

If we're in the studio, I'll ask the producer for help and get their opinion, but when we're just writing ideas and demos, it's usually me trying to find the sound that's in my head.

Some things I plan really far in advance.

My hair, for example, I've had the hair I have now saved in my phone since 2021 when the band launched. That's because my hair is an expensive thing to change, so that kind of planning has to be intentional.

The outfits and styling are a little different. I don't necessarily think of myself as a fashionable person. I have to really put the time and effort in to figure out what I want us to look like.

I also don't play an instrument, so the way I experience music is very visual. I listen to songs and immediately picture what they look like.

With Retrovision, I think I let the fans have a little more control over the visual side of things. They would comment on what they liked and what they didn't like, and it's very easy as a young band to take that feedback and let it become too much of a deciding factor.

By the end of that era, I was looking at myself and thinking, "I feel like I'm dressing way younger than I actually feel."

The clothes were cute, but I felt like I was dressing like a little kid or a preschool teacher, like a Nickelodeon character, even.

You can still wear those clothes in real life.

Yeah, just not on stage and not for promo photos.

For this era, I wanted things to feel different. Some of these songs are very synth-heavy, and we weren't wearing things with a lot of movement. There wasn't a lot of flow.

I wanted the clothes to move more on stage, especially with fans blowing and everything happening during a performance.

I also think I started embracing my femininity a lot more. I started wearing dresses and skirts and letting myself be a little girlier.

Growing up in the scene, there was definitely this pressure to be "one of the guys." There weren't as many bands with non-men in them, and I think that's been an amazing shift over the last five years in the alternative world.

Now, I feel like people are more comfortable embracing who they are.

For the outfits, I have to mood board a lot. I have to ask, "What do I want these songs to feel like on stage?" That plays a huge role.

I think that's definitely been a big part of this era.

For a long time, especially in alternative spaces, there was this idea that certain aesthetics belonged to certain people. I think it's really cool that people are breaking away from that now.

I don't want the way I dress to feel like a costume. I want it to feel like an extension of the music.

Honestly, I just want to wear something that's comfortable, looks cool, and gives me a lot of options to play with.

That was actually really scary for me to do at first, but now it feels very natural.

Donny and I both had heavier music as our first love. Before I was into pop punk or anything on the alternative rock side, I was a post-hardcore kid. I loved that 2000s metalcore sound.

I was listening to things like Chelsea Grin and Born of Osiris.

Exactly. Donny likes even heavier music than I do.

So this was our first step into seeing how people would respond to that side of us.

We were lucky enough to be put on the Spiritbox tour at the end of last year, and they really gave us an opportunity to test whether heavy music fans would connect with what we do.

And honestly, they did.

That wasn't necessarily something I expected, but I think our influences have always been there. They were just blended into our pop sound.

We grew up in the Warped scene, and that festival was all about bringing genres together. That's really what we try to do with our music: combine the pop songs we love with the heavier genres that first made us fall in love with music.

"Poison Apple Baby" was kind of the culmination of those things.

We also have another song we're playing on this tour that has this funky pop feel but also a dance breakdown. It's really cool watching fans hear something brand new and seeing their reactions in real time.

It was good, man. I still have to look at the guitar for that one because it's kind of hard, but it felt good.

I think there's always a lot of pressure when you're excited about a song or when a new song is coming out. You get to see everyone's immediate reaction, whether they're moving their heads, whether they're into it, whether it connects.

But everyone there is there because they want to see you and enjoy the moment, so it's really cool.

Thank you. I really appreciate that.

Our friend Alex Windsor, she used to play guitar for us and has been around since the very beginning of the band, described this album as the evolution of Honey Revenge.

I think that's the perfect way to describe it. It's different, but it's still the same band. It feels like the natural progression of where we were always going.

I'm glad it's coming across that way to people outside of just the people who have been around us since the beginning.

I want to find out who makes the videos for BLACKPINK and go wherever they are. I want them.

Yeah, it's a little limited.

I really wanted "Butterfly" to get a video, and we just didn't have enough time between singles to make it happen.

That song is really special to me because it fits the themes of Loving and Losing so well. Lyrically, it's probably the most connected to the thesis of the record since "Risk" came out.

Obviously, I'm going to pay more attention to the lyrics than anyone else, but I think that song captures what we were trying to accomplish. It's very ethereal and emotional.

I had this whole Pinterest board with ideas. There was this beautiful greenhouse with purple flowers everywhere, and I don't even know where it is, but I would love to film there.

I also wanted to do shots where I'm actually flying, like being rigged up and having wings and creating this feeling of being suspended in the air.

For the visualizer, we made ourselves animated characters, and I really wanted to combine those ideas and have us animated in the outfits we're actually wearing.

I even had a whole skirt made for a video for that song that never ended up happening.

There are still things I hope we can do later in the album cycle when we have more time.

Do you mean on our end or the fans' end?

I feel like we honestly haven't had many horror stories with people who come to our shows.

Everyone has been really respectful.

I think we've also been lucky to be in an age where boundaries are talked about more and people are more receptive to those boundaries.

Even something small, like people asking, "Can we hug you?" during a meet-and-greet, it goes a long way.

It goes a long way.

Exactly.

And I think people are always nervous for me because I'm a really little girl and I go into the crowd every night to sing a song. But nobody has ever tried to make it weird. Nobody has ever grabbed me. Everyone has been respectful.

We're very fortunate that Honey Revenge fans are just decent human beings right now, and I hope that continues.

I think people really respect personal space.

That's exactly the thing.

I've made the band feel very accessible because I interact with everyone, and Donny does too. We want that connection.

But there still have to be lines drawn. You're a fan, and I'm an artist.

The biggest thing I would say is: please don't sit outside our vehicle.

That's the only thing that's happened where I'm like, "Hey, please don't do that."

Both, actually. In different cities.

And it's tough because sometimes it's raining, and sometimes the venues are set up where we're parked directly in front of the door.

We understand that people are excited. Everyone who's done it has been sweet and respectful, but that's still our home while we're touring.

If someone was outside my front door, I'd probably feel a little uncomfortable.

And sometimes I might be having a bad day and not want to interact. I don't want to have to fake it, because I don't want to be disingenuous with someone either.

It's rare, though. We try to create opportunities where people can interact with us, whether that's VIP, meet-and-greets, or going to the merch table after our set.

I want people to know it's not me trying to be a rock star and blow someone off. Sometimes I'm just not ready.

Also, I'm sensitive about bad pictures of myself.

I don't want a picture of me with no makeup, my hair not done, and then it's online forever.

Exactly. I always try to say, "I will be at merch later. I would love to take a picture with you then."

It's just about being mindful.

Oh, that's such a funny story.

We went to this really beautiful scenic location to take pictures for the album, and as soon as we took the camera out of the bag, this park ranger pulled up and was really rude to us.

Basically, he was like, "You need a permit. There's nothing you can do to shoot here today. Respectfully, either put your stuff away or leave."

So we were like, "Okay, cool," and we left.

We didn't actually say that to him.

No, but we were definitely frustrated.

We didn't know where else to go. We had flown our photographer to California specifically for this photo shoot, and the sun was already going down, so we had very limited time.

I was like, "Guys, you might hate me for this, but I have a really good smoke spot down the street."

And it worked out.

We ended up on the side of the road, but there was still a beautiful cliff and the sunset was gorgeous. That's what we needed because we wanted the sky to have that purple color.

People say weed is bad, but it came in handy that time.

That's why it's legal.

Exactly. Donny being a stoner saved the day on the Loving and Losing album artwork, and you can quote me on that.

That's the only time she'll ever say it.

Exactly. Never again.

I think so.

When we started the band, we wanted people to feel like they could actually be part of this. I know what it feels like to be a fan and feel disconnected from the artists you love.

Growing up, any opportunity to understand how a band worked, how a song was written, or what went into creating something was exciting to me.

So if we can give people even a little bit of that experience, that's really meaningful.

At the same time, I think we've learned that being accessible doesn't mean there aren't boundaries.

There's a difference between inviting people into the process and feeling like you can access every part of someone's life.

Absolutely.

I think the biggest thing I've learned is that you never stop learning.

When we started this band, I thought I had to have all the answers. I thought I had to know exactly what I wanted and protect every idea.

But the more I've worked with people, the more I've realized collaboration doesn't take away from your vision. It can actually make it stronger.

Whether that's working with other writers, listening to fans, or getting feedback from Donny, everything teaches you something.

I hope people see that this is still Honey Revenge.

I think that's the biggest thing.

It's different, but it's still us. It's still the same emotions, the same energy, and the same reason we started making music.

We want people to have fun. We want people to feel something. We want them to be able to dance to it and also find something meaningful in it.

That's always been the goal.

Yeah. We don't want to make the same thing over and over again.

Exactly. Growing is part of being a band.

Just that we're really grateful.

The fact that people have stuck with us through every version of this band means everything. We've changed a lot, but the people who have been here from the beginning have grown with us.

We're excited for people to hear the whole record and experience the story of Loving and Losing the way we intended it.

Thank you. We appreciate you.

Yeah, thank you.

And thank you for sticking with us since the beginning. Existing on the internet is hard, so it means a lot when people are paying attention.