Guerilla Toss

Guerilla Toss met in 2012, crawling out of the skronky psychedelic punk fairytale that was their Boston DIY scene. Now based in New York, the currently touring and always recording art rock band have fully crystalized their brilliantly unhinged music. Along the way, they’ve played alongside Built to Spill and Parquet Courts, Os Mutantes and Mdou Moctar. And they’ve toured all around the world, hitting every festival from Pitchfork in London and Berlin, to Treefort, to the Primavera Weekender to Pickathon.

In 2022, the band’s colorful dance punk took the form of Famously Alive, their Sub Pop debut. The record is the latest iteration of a carefully honed vision, an exploration of what it means to be alive (famously), to survive, to find strength in that survival, to be happy. The record was a revelation. A lazy river ride done while wielding a jackhammer. Electroclash by way of fucked up no wave. ESG by way of PiL by way of Brian Eno by way of Sonic Youth. Not long after, the band went on tour with Pavement, playing some of the biggest venues of their career. Now the long running band is back on tour, this time supporting Primus and Coheed & Cambria. They’ll be going from California to Chicago, playing songs that span the whole of their catalog, playing even bigger venues, reaching soon to be converted freaks around the country.

Here is what it is like to see Guerilla Toss live: explosive, breathtaking. Kassie Carlson crowd surfs and moshes. She is a force to be reckoned with. High energy and raw, but also thoroughly composed. Guerilla Toss songs are all about hooks and grooves — they make music that basically requires you to dance. The band knows exactly what they are doing. If you’re supposed to dance, they’re dancing too. Jumping around and playing music that is totally caustic, ferociously creative, even a little bit feral. They mess with time signatures, making disorienting moves via all avenues at all times. “Guerilla Toss has a unique danceability to this day,” says Jake Saunders, a long time fan of the band, citing Peter Negroponte’s wizardry on the drums and Kassie’s ability to command a room in a way that almost feels like you’re possessed, bewitched, fearing for your life but also thrilled to be living it. And of course there is Arian Shafiee on guitars — a student of absurdly good and righteous hooks. Communing with this band is a kind of experience that is like: I can feel all the blood in my body. I want someone to cheerfully break a plate over my head. Jan Fontana of Godcaster puts it best. Guerilla Toss is “Explosive, Energetic, and Joyful.”