Since their inception in early 2020, Sunrose have shared a deep fascination with the concept of self-immolation: the act of setting oneself on fire, often as a form of sacrifice or protest. In all of the music they create—and in their wildly frenetic live show—the four-piece band fully channels fire’s unpredictable power, delivering a potent breed of alt-rock that’s equal parts exhilarating and dangerous and undeniably hypnotic. Rooted in the explosive musicianship of vocalist/guitarist Jaxon Rose, multi-instrumentalist Stephen Swanson, bassist Tripp Bowers, and drummer Jax Kemp, Sunrose endlessly merge the reckless passion of rock-and-roll, crushing intensity of classic metal, and sonic expansiveness of psych-rock into a one-of-a-kind sound that’s immediately essential. With its members based in Texas and Los Angeles, Sunrose emerged from a series of strangely charmed coincidences. A near-lifelong musician who spent his childhood in both the Caribbean and New York, Swanson first met Rose while the two were living in the same apartment building in downtown L.A. “I heard Jaxon playing guitar through my window, then went and found him and asked if he wanted to jam,” recalls Swanson, who plays guitar, piano, saxophone, and harmonica. Born in New Zealand but mostly raised in Houston, Rose had moved to L.A. as a teenager and worked a number of odd jobs (including a brief stint playing Spider-Man on Hollywood Boulevard) before deciding to pursue his passion for music. Not long after crossing paths with Kemp at a party, the two began meeting up weekly to jam and instantly discovered a powerful chemistry that grew even stronger once Swanson joined the fold. “Before I met Jaxon I’d go to this rehearsal studio near my place and rent out a room by the hour, just to play drums like I did when I was younger,” says Kemp, a small-town Kentucky native who took up drumming in sixth grade. “The first time Jaxon and Stephen and I all got together, we played for about four hours straight. I remember walking out thinking, ‘That’s the best I’ve ever played music in my life.’” When it came time to find a bass player, the band reached out to Bowers, a longtime friend of Rose’s who’d grown up on a ranch in Texas, moved to California at age 13 when his father entered a seminary, and later began modeling for leading fashion houses like Yves Saint Laurent in Europe and New York. “Before the band, I’d never played music at all,” says Bowers. “But once I heard what they were doing, I knew I had to get involved—it had so much heart and soul, I got the next flight home from New York and bought a bass as fast as I could. I’d never felt so compelled to be a part of something in my life.” With the lineup solidified in the early days of lockdown, Sunrose next moved into a 400-square-foot apartment together and threw themselves into writing their first batch of songs. “I remember thinking, ‘The whole world might be burning, but this is going really well,’” says Swanson. Late that summer, Sunrose played their first show at a dive bar in East Los Angeles, laying down a blistering performance whose raw ferocity was magnified by a 4.6 earthquake mid-set. Quickly making their name as an incendiary live act, they soon began playing shows all over L.A.—including a now-legendary sold-out headlining gig at the iconic Whisky a Go Go in which a blackout hit the Sunset Strip several songs into their set. “We continued the show acoustically at the drop of the hat, and kept that energy going even without any power,” Rose points out. After turning heads at another crowd-thrilling show, at the famed Stubb’s Austin in early 2023, Sunrose landed their deal with Crush Music just in time for the completion of their forthcoming debut album. Building on the unbound vitality of their 2021 self-titled debut project, Sunrose’s first full-length marks a major leap forward for the band, unfolding in bigger hooks and grittier riffs and more commanding rhythms. In bringing the self-produced album to life, the band worked at Austin Music Group (Swanson’s Austin-based studio) and deliberately took their time to sculpt the most dynamic sonic atmosphere for their songs—ultimately arriving at a glorious onslaught of cathartic meditations on the state of the world and the search for transcendence. “When this collective of people first came together, not only did our ideas about music mesh—our ideas about the world completely meshed as well,” says Rose. “A lot of bands right now hold themselves back from saying what they want to say, but very early on we all decided, ‘If no one else is willing to bang down the doors and take any kind of risk with their music, we’ll do it.’ We just want to create something that helps people to feel more awake and alive, and we bring that energy into every single thing we do.” Presented by Soda Bar. This is a 21+ event