What’s it like when a song you wrote more than half a decade ago goes viral on TikTok? Well, that’s exactly what happened to Massachusetts indie band Vundabar with their 2015 track “Alien Blues”—to the tune of 83,000 TikTok videos and 600 million Spotify streams. This week, frontman Brandon Hagen joins us to talk about the experience of navigating a sudden, overwhelming deluge of attention (and major label interest) and the brutal economics of an algorithmically driven industry that always demands more from artists while giving them less. We get into how the financial traumas of the 2008 recession and the pandemic shaped a generation of independent artists; navigating social media when you hate social media; and how Vundabar’s years in the Boston DIY scene equipped them to venture into the post-viral unknown. Plus a sneak peak at Vundabar’s upcoming sixth record.
You can catch Vundabar on tour right now in North America. Don’t miss it.
