Vundabar

Two neighbours from Scituate

Vundabar began with two boys who lived near each other in Scituate, a small town on the South Shore of Massachusetts. Brandon Hagen and Drew McDonald became friends in their early teens and bonded over the Boston music scene rather than anything happening at home. At fifteen they sneaked into an underground warehouse show in Allston, the student district on the western edge of the city, and within a year they had a band. Before Vundabar there was a short-lived group called No Nada, running from roughly 2009 to 2012, and it was out of that project that the trio proper emerged in Boston in 2012.

Hagen sings and plays guitar, McDonald plays drums and, increasingly, synthesizers. Zack Abramo has been the bassist for most of the band's life, joining in 2012, stepping away in 2016 while Grayson Kirtland covered the role, and returning in 2018. That line-up has held ever since. Hagen has described Scituate as a place with a glossed-over appearance of a happy little town that hides darker things people prefer not to discuss, and McDonald has said the band has always used humour as a way of confronting real things. Both ideas run through everything they have recorded.

The early releases came out on Gawk Records, a cassette label the band founded themselves. The debut album, Antics, appeared in 2013 while the members were barely out of school, and it set the template of jittery, surf-inflected guitar rock with a taste for abrupt changes of mood.

Gawk and the strange afterlife of 'Alien Blues'

The second album, Gawk, arrived in 2015 and is the record the band is now touring behind a decade later. It contained 'Alien Blues', a track that did modest business on release and then, in 2021, went viral on TikTok, where it soundtracked an enormous number of short videos and became the band's signature song almost overnight. The odd thing about that second life is that Vundabar had by then made two more albums and were about to release a third, so the audience arriving through their phones found a band that had already moved on.

That gap between the song people know and the band that exists now is the tension the 2026 anniversary tour is built to resolve. Gawk is being played in full, and the setlists show the trio treating it as the spine of the evening rather than a nostalgia exercise, folding the newest material around it.

Growing up in public: Smell Smoke to Devil for the Fire

Smell Smoke, released on 23 February 2018, was the record where the humour started to carry heavier freight. Hagen had spent the preceding years balancing a relentless touring schedule with caring for a close family member in serious physical and mental decline. He has spoken about that person having grown up broke and unstable, building a life out of work and success, and being levelled by age and illness. Hagen also said that everything came to a peak where he felt he had to change himself drastically or bad things would happen. The album's brightness sits on top of that.

Either Light followed in 2020 and was the first time the band worked with an outside producer, Patrick Hyland, known for his work with Mitski. Devil for the Fire came in 2022, by which point the group had signed to Loma Vista Recordings, the label that remains home today. Across these three records the guitar-riff-and-falsetto formula of the early years loosened, McDonald's synthesizers moved forward in the mix, and the songs got shorter, stranger and more rhythmic.

Surgery and Pleasure

The sixth album, Surgery and Pleasure, was released on 7 March 2025. It had been trailed by 'I Got Cracked' and 'Life Is a Movie' in 2024, and reviewers immediately noted a change of emphasis: rhythmic hooks rather than novelty riffs, and a willingness to let dance and electronic textures into a sound that had been defined by guitars. New Noise Magazine's Toni Elton, writing on release day, praised guitar riffs that strike through in sharp, angular fashion and bass lines that add a comforting wash of colour, and called the album one of the most interesting personalities the band had delivered yet, with 'Feels Like Forever', 'I Need You' and the stripped-back closer 'Why Is It So Hard to Say Goodbye' singled out. Elton read the record as being about resilience, mended relationships and how music sustains connection between people.

Joe Vickrey at tmrw magazine was blunter, calling it one hell of a beastly album that would end up on the year's best-of lists, and observing that it is impressive to hear a band evolve while still sounding like themselves. He picked out 'Beta Fish', which has since become the album's most streamed track, along with 'Let Me Bleed', 'Hurricane' and 'Stallion Running'.

The album has kept growing since. 'Spades' arrived as a single in 2025, 'Big Bad Bubble Boy' followed on 14 August 2025, and 'Death Punch' on 22 January 2026. All of that was gathered into Surgery and Pleasure (Deluxe), released on 6 March 2026, a year almost to the day after the original.

The anniversary year

The Gawk 10 Year Anniversary Tour was announced for the spring and summer of 2026 across the United States and Europe. The North American leg ran through May and June, taking in Chicago, Denver, Toronto, Philadelphia and a Brooklyn date at Warsaw on 19 June, with Slow Fiction, GOON and Yot Club sharing support duties on different stretches. A warm-up appearance in Lowell, Massachusetts on 2 May showed the risks of a lean three-piece: a string broke on Hagen's guitar after 'Spades', he ran backstage to fix it, and three songs including 'Alien Blues' were cut before the set closed on 'I Need You'.

The European leg is what matters now. Twelve shows across six countries begin at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds on 13 September 2026, then Thekla in Bristol on 15 September, Village Underground in London on 16 September and CHALK in Brighton on 17 September. From there the run moves to Le Trabendo in Paris on 19 September, Le Botanique in Brussels on 20 September, Tolhuistuin in Amsterdam on 22 September, Club Volta in Cologne on 23 September, Bahnhof Pauli in Hamburg on 24 September, Ampere at Muffatwerk in Munich on 26 September, Klub Hybrydy in Warsaw on 29 September and FRANNZ Club in Berlin on 30 September. Yot Club is listed as support on the London date and at least one other.

What the show is like

The Philadelphia show at Union Transfer on 14 June 2026 is the clearest snapshot of the current set. The main body ran to twelve songs, opening with 'Ash in the Sun' and 'Chop' from Surgery and Pleasure before the Gawk material took over: 'Darla', 'Bust', 'Worn / Wander', 'Cotton Kid', 'Oulala' and 'Smile Boyo' among them, with 'Spades' dropped into the middle. A four-song encore of 'Stallion Running', 'Desert Diddy', 'Alien Blues' and 'I Need You' closed it, sixteen songs in all, with ten from Gawk, five from Surgery and Pleasure and 'Smile Boyo' representing Smell Smoke. Slow Fiction opened.

The band has built its reputation on years of near-constant touring, and fan write-ups collected alongside the current dates repeatedly mention the energy on stage. As a three-piece with no touring hired hands, there is nowhere to hide, which is why a broken string in Lowell cost three songs rather than a minute. The European rooms are all club-sized, from the Brudenell's back room to Village Underground's old warehouse, and the set is now a settled shape: the newest songs first, Gawk in the middle, and 'Alien Blues' held back for the encore.