On Saturday, Sept. 19, Bermuda Search Party performed their last show as a Boston-based group before their big move to Los Angeles at the end of the month. Formed as students at the Berklee College of Music, the band has performed across greater Boston, including at Wellesley College’s fall festival concert, and across the country. The Swellesley Report got the opportunity to interview the band about their roots and next steps in their music career. 

The members of Bermuda Search Party include Hoyt Parquet (trombone, percussion, vocals), Claire Davis (bass, vocals, songwriting), Leo Son (guitar, vocals, songwriting), and Maclin Tucker (trumpet, keys, percussion). 

Their music is inspired by rock, pop, funk, and dance music. They’re drawn to upbeat sounding music, and describe their songs as a bit introspective but “you can get down to” them. Sonically positive and lyrically reflective is the balance they try to find.

Davis shared “When the band first started out we joked that we make happy music for sad people and our music has gotten a bit happier since we first started. But there’s still some truth to that.”

They acknowledge that life has hardship, but believe that when they are together in the music they can get through hard things and there’s a lot in life to be grateful for. 

“I listen to sad music that’s heavier than what we make, but when I sit down to write it’s just upbeat and poppy and sunshine and I just can’t avoid it. I try to write sad things and it still sounds kind of happy,” Son shared.

He’s resigned to the fact that “that’s what’s inside me.” Lyrically, the music is for “people who want to get better,” he says.

The band has been talking about moving to LA for a few years, believing they would know when the right time was. But Son believes that big decisions with a big level of risk will never have a time when it feels right, and that right time is when they decide to make it happen. 

“We had a really long winter,” he joked when talking about the move to LA.

Son shared that risk is the thing the band needs to do and get comfortable with, to recommit to the risk to make art their living, and redoubling their commitment to create for life. 

“We love Boston; it’s truly where the band was raised. We’re not leaving because we don’t like it. Boston will always have a place in our heart,” Davis chuckled. 

Davis is excited for the “new and unknown adventure calling to us on the west coast.” 

She’s excited to be in a city driven by creatives, music, and the entertainment industry.

Bermuda Search Party was known as the Q-Tip Bandits for the first five years of the band, but once they had a label and a legal team, they were advised to change their name to avoid legal issues with using “Q-Tip.” The band saw it as an opportunity to rebrand and choose a name that reflected their music. 

Their music has always been very energetic and lively so they wanted something that felt like a party but conveyed the element of heaviness and mystery found in their lyrics. Bermuda Search Party felt fitting in that way.

“We were figuring out what kind of search party we wanted to be. Where better to go looking for people in the place where people are getting lost?”

Their final show as a Boston-based band, at the Paradise Rock Club, began with their first five songs that Son describes as an “anchor for the band to get in the zone every night.” This featured a new unreleased song about Spider-Man. In the middle of their set, they played one of their newer songs, one of Tucker’s favorite parts. They called on a real fan named Jason to come on stage to play the tambourine with the band. For the grand finale, they ended the show with a brass battle between Parquet and Tucker. Even after their epic energetic encore, their last performance in Boston as a local band isn’t the end, but the start of something new.

More music:

• Solya, a 20-year-old throwback singer/songwriter, ready to sparkle at Crystal Ballroom
• Australian band Rum Jungle rumbling into Cambridge at Sinclair

If you’re interested in having us interview an artist or cover a concert or festival, let us know:  theswellesleyreport@gmail.com

While the lyrics on Solya’s new “Queen of Texas” album are downright violent at times, her throwback vocal delivery set against an analog soundscape results in an overall dreamy and catchy collection. Expect the 20-year-old from west Texas to stay true to that sound when she performs live amidst the chandeliers at the Crystal Ballroom at Somerville Theatre on Sept. 2 as part of a 25-city North American tour that starts this week and has already chalked up sellouts at the first three venues.

I spoke with Solya via a video call following the U.K. portion of her tour and ahead of her trip to the east coast. She’s only played in the Boston area once before, as an opener at the Middle East in Cambridge about two years ago, though I suspect she’d be welcomed with open arms if she could score a gig someday at Wellesley College, which in recent years has hosted Muna and Chuwi for its spring concerts.

Love and danger, youth and mortality, and being seen vs. being alone are all recurring themes in Solya’s music. “Silver Swan,” off the new album, “is what my soul sounds like,” the singer has said.

Solya’s music is inspired by the types of artists her parents have enjoyed, from Patsy Cline to David Bowie. Bu its slight spookiness also reminds some of Julee Cruise, known for the theme music from “Twin Peaks,” the 1990s surrealist soap opera from David Lynch that I happen to be bingeing after never having watched it. Solya’s music has served as the perfect complement to that cult classic.

Asked if she finds inspiration for her music in any modern artists, Solya says not really. But she enjoys electronic music and rap for her own listening pleasure.

Solya made clear during our talk that those attending her show in Somerville should expect to hear the “Queen of Texas” come to life, performed similarly to what you hear on the album, with the same band she recorded it with on analog equipment in Texas (Danny Reisch produced the album and plays drums, Jason Chronis plays bass and lead guitar). Solya wrote the songs in just months and the album was recorded over 10 days.

Don’t expect Solya in concert to stretch out the sub-4-minute songs she’s released to date. Though the artist told me she is working on some longer songs as she becomes more confident in her song writing.

What will sound different live are her earliest songs, recorded at home in a decidedly modern bedroom pop approach (think Clairo or Conan Gray) that’s not at all old school in style. Those older numbers, like “Heaven” and “Roadkill, get reimagined with the full band treatment on the road.

Solya took an interest in music at an early age—learning piano and then guitar and synthesizers— though it was mastering music recording, editing, and mixing technology Pro Tools that allowed her to share her music with the masses. Her scientist dad, seeing Solya’s passion for music, learned Pro Tools and taught it to her.

Being a digital native, Solya succeeded in attracting an audience not just with her voice and songs, but with her social media skills—Instagram is where she first went viral after just posting every day.

“The virality was just me posting online, it just kind of happened, that was just organic…” she said. “There’s really no secret formula.”

Solya self-released her first EP in 2024, then was discovered by independent label Version III, which she worked with to release “Queen of Texas.

Solya Ava Lowe, who graduated a year early from high school and performs under her first name, recently wrapped up a UK tour that she acknowledges was both a blur and a lot of fun, between hanging with her bandmates and crew to chatting with fans and taking pictures with them at post-show meet-and-greets.

When I asked if I’d be the oldest person at her Somerville show if I attend (we started Swellesley four months before she was born…), Solya didn’t flinch before confirming that would probably be the case. Many of her fans are in the 12-20 age range, she said.

Though she has attracted a young crowd, they’ve embraced Solya’s modern take on an old-school sound. Solya has experimented with digital versions of her songs, but has always returned to the analog sound, which she assures the average person can recognize.

“It’s like the 70’s music. It’s so much warmer and richer sounding,” she says. “A lot of things these days are done just digitally, like through MIDI, and it just sounds so thin and sharp. It doesn’t have that same real feeling to it… MIDI’s not right. It’s not right. No.”

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If you’re interested in having us interview an artist or cover a concert or festival, let us know: theswellesleyreport@gmail.com