When March comes around, everyone is about ready to book their summer tours, looking at what festivals they can cram into the rest of the year. I’m usually screaming into the void about deadlines in addition to the above, but it all came to a grinding halt in March 2020. I was gonna go to Australia that year and live out my Wake in Fright fantasy until I had to live that same nightmare in my Brooklyn apartment, drinking mezcal like there was an embargo and watching YouTube videos of Rose Tattoo instead. That’s kinda like going to Australia, right?

True Body are a band that would have been on the Breakfast Club soundtrack if instead of them all becoming friends, they burned down the school. It’s sexy; it scares the shit out of me because it makes me feel vulnerable; and it rides the line between curiosity and paranoia—like investigating a funny noise in the basement in the middle of the night. And just like the rest of us, True Body had that rug swept out from under them during COVID. “We released our record the day everything in Richmond, Virginia [where the band originated], shut down,” guitarist Hector Castro told me. “I walked into a bar to get a celebratory drink, and they told me to leave. ‘I didn’t wanna go in there anyway,’ I told them!” He’s laughing, but I can hear the pain and reality of that time.