Q&A: Saint Luna Pushes Past the Margins of Indie Rock, Evolving Their Sound With “Revolver”
AFTER ALMOST THREE YEARS OF ROCKING HOUSE PARTIES — and selling out some of San Diego’s most popular venues, surfer-punk band Saint Luna is ready to challenge themselves as dedicated musicians and place new meaning upon their music. With the release of their punchy single, “Revolver,” they give a glimpse of the new chapter of sound that is to come.
Leaning more into an experimental and layered soundscape, “Revolver” noticeably stands out from the rest of the band’s discography. The track is a heavy-hitting one, immediately grabbing attention with an edgy guitar lick that leads into a drum-fronted, distorted instrumental. Lyrically, Saint Luna does not hold back — the group is ready to start sharing their opinions on the world in hopes of making a bigger impact with their work. Lines such as “Give me ideas of perfection / Burnt in my LED eyes” call out the toxic conformity of social media.
Made up of lead vocalist Bradyn, guitarists Wick and Charlie, Paarsa on drum, and Tanner on bass, like most bands, Saint Luna began with jam sessions and high-energy backyard shows, but the group quickly found their footing in the San Diego music scene and continue to expand beyond.
Read below as four out of five of the band shares what inspired “Revolver,” behind the scenes of their live performances, and their excitement for what’s to come leading up to the release of their debut album.
LUNA: Congrats on the release of “Revolver.” This is the first single off your upcoming debut album — how are you guys feeling about putting this track out into the world?
WICK: We’re so excited.
PAARSA: Yeah, this is definitely our best song out yet. Everyone that we've shown it to loves it and thinks it's gonna be the one for us. And we think that too. We definitely experimented on this song.
TANNER: I'm stoked for the song to go out, personally. I think that this song is more reminiscent of what we're trying to do as a band. It feels a little bit more authentically us.
BRADYN: I think we're actually trying to say something now with the song. It’s a cool change of pace, as opposed to just feeling it.
LUNA: Can we dive a little bit more into that? What kind of message do you hope gets translated with this track when it comes out?
BRADYN: We're all in our early twenties — we don’t really know what to expect out of the future, especially having lived through COVID and everything. We're kind of just trying to acknowledge that no matter what hand you're dealt in life, there are things you can do to change the direction you're going in. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to work with what you got.
WICK: There’s a cool lyric in there — the first verse — it says, “Show me your idea of perfection, burnt in my LED eyes.” It's kind of like a diss song, commenting on how full of social media the world is today and it's kind of hard to get away from that.
LUNA: When you were creating the track, did you guys imagine an ideal setting for streaming it?
WICK: Not really. We were just having fun.
BRADYN: I just want people to play it loud.
PAARSA: Yeah, it sounds way better loud. It could be in a movie, commercial, or video game.
TANNER: Maybe put it in Fast & Furious, I don’t know (laughs).
BRADYN: Somebody called it the Subway Surfers song, which made me laugh.
LUNA: “Revolver” leans a little bit more into the experimental side, and I know we can expect a bit of a sound shift with the new music coming out later. Can you walk us through what sparked that change?
PAARSA: We got inspo from a song called “Billy Toppy.” I told Wick to write a riff like that and he just came up with the song. When me, Wick, and Tanner jam, we just rip. We don't really play the indie, soft stuff — we like going hard. We wanted to use our talents in this song because our other songs have the classic indie vibe. This is showing our talents — fast, heavy rock, which is definitely who we are as musicians.
WICK: And we’ve been together for a couple years. There’s been a lot of [change] within all of us. We've all gotten really comfortable with each other so now we can kind of just bring ideas to each other. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.
BRADYN: I think the sound is evolving as we get older. We’re kind of leaning away from the indie stuff of 2018 to 2020. We started to kind of think that all of our songs were sounding the same, and we wanted to try to set ourselves apart from other bands making that kind of music.
PAARSA: We had a big break, too, before we wrote “Revolver.” We weren’t really writing or practicing much. We kind of all sat down and talked about where we were going as a band. “Revolver” definitely helped a lot with that.
TANNER: All of us as a collective have a really wide range of musical influences as well as what we’re interested in. So that kind of creates a nice situation where there are a lot of different ideas for what we want to do with songs and the music. We're able to mesh it all together into something that's more authentic than any one thing put together.
LUNA: Who are your current music inspirations?
PAARSA: We’re all pretty different with our taste but we play the same.
BRADYN: What have you guys been listening to recently? I wanna know.
PAARSA: The Beatles. Men I Trust, recently.
WICK: Khruangbin and Iggy Pop.
BRADYN: I’ve been a boygenius fan recently. I’m like the resident indiehead.
TANNER: I grew up listening to a lot of punk. Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Django Reinhardt.
LUNA: Was there a specific moment — either as a band or even as individual musicians — that solidified this path for you? Where did it turn from jam sessions to knowing you could actually do something bigger with the band?
PAARSA: TikTok helped a lot with that. When we first started, we just wanted to play fraternity parties and shows just for fun. We were all in the same fraternity so it was easy to do that. Then we played our first show and people were like, “Woah, you guys actually got something good going.”
Then that Thanksgiving break, Brayden posted a TikTok of our first song and it went viral. People were saying they loved it so we took it seriously. And that's when we found [it], from that TikTok. We just knew we had something going on.
BRADYN: It was cool to see the way the band could impact people. Now when we’re writing music, we hope it moves somebody somewhere, makes an impact on someone’s life.
PAARSA: And it does. A lot of fans have DMed us asking for the chords to “Goldfish,” saying, “I want to play this for a girl.” Things like that drive us to want to do this as a career.
TANNER: I’ve been a part of a couple bands around San Diego but there’s definitely a distinction between Saint Luna and some of the other ones. I joined and it was a more professional and serious thing from my perspective.
PAARSA: When we play live, we just know. Playing live is, like, the best attribute for us. It’s just so fun to practice, too. It makes us want to keep doing it.
BRADYN: At the end of the day, we’re just musicians who like playing music together, and that makes us happy.
LUNA: You guys are performing at GoSurf Fest later this month. How do you prepare for a set like that compared to your own show?
BRADYN: I feel like we treat most shows the same.
PAARSA: We try to come up with a set a few weeks before and just practice it over and over.
WICK: We used to invite people into our little practice studio and try to get rid of the nerves by playing in front of them back in the early days.
LUNA: The album is coming out later this summer, but what else can we expect from Saint Luna this year? Can you hint at something you’re hoping for?
PAARSA: Catch us on tour. We just need this album to be as perfect as it can be and hopefully we can get a tour from that. We’re patient, though. We have a good thing going in San Diego but we just want to get out there now.
BRADYN: Keep an eye out for the “Revolver” music video, too, coming soon.
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