Photos by Amy Mudagucci

dadlore — a band that celebrates the present to be thankful for it in the future.

In the fading glow of college-town house shows and living room rehearsals dimly lit by fluorescent string lights, one of San Diego’s most unique up and coming acts has found its footing on cracked pavement and late-night conversations. Born not out of ambition, but out of a need to feel, speak, and scream something true, the band formed between bedrooms, stitched together by friendship and the unrelenting ache of coming-of-age. 

A project which came to fruition in late 2023, dadlore initially began as a series of jam sessions between SDSU students Steve Metcalf and close friend/ Former Blank Space frontman Ryder Schwartz. Led by the songwriting duo, whose lyrics read like diary entries scribbled on the back of a show flyer, dadlore moves between moods with a kind of fragile confidence; one moment drenched in sheer fuzz and fury, the next unraveling in soft, echoing self-reflection.

I got the opportunity to sit down with the band prior to their final show at SDSU, and in sitting down with dadlore, I wasn’t greeted by a band performing for a spotlight — I met three close friends trying to make sense of the noise, both literal and emotional. And somewhere between the laughter, the metaphors, and the cigarette break tangents, I began to see what made their music feel so deeply human. Here is that conversation. 

A Conversation with Steve, Walker, and Ryder of Dadlore

KSDT: How are you and who are you? Tell us about yourselves. 

Steve: Thank you so much for the kind introduction. We are very tired after setting up this entire show, but we’re really excited because it’s been such a long time coming, especially with our EP and it being our last show at SDSU, since at least I’m graduating, and we’re really looking forward to branching out of the college scene. But yeah, we’re Dadlore and I’m Steve. This is Walkie.

Walker: I’m Walker. I’m the drummer of dadlore. Steve, what do you do in dadlore?

Steve: I’m the singer and I’m the rhythm guitarist, and I principally write the songs for the band, or the skeletons of them at least. I was telling Walker the other night. I was like “Walkie, I thought of this metaphor! The rhythm guitar of a band is the skeleton, the bass is the heart, the lead guitar is the–” wait what did I say? The lead guitar was?

Walker: I have no idea

Steve: The drums are like the muscles. 

Walker: The drums were like the heartbeat. 

Steve: The drums are the heart. The bass is—

Walker: Wait, this metaphor is awesome

Steve: The bass is the quads. The lyrics are the face. You know what , whatever, forget it 

Walker: It was cool. It was cool, and we’re dadlore

KSDT: Before we get into the more music-related questions, I have something more important to ask: what is your guys’ dream blunt rotation?

Steve: I gotta say, Jesus first of all.

Walker: That’s the definition of Holy Smokes. 

Steve: I’d say Jesus, Messi, LeBron. I’m trying to think of artists. Well, Jesus is kind of like an artist. He’s an inspiration. Probably my great-grandpa, who I never got to meet, my dad. Oh, Graham Hancock. he’s the old civilization guy who made that theory about the civilization that got wiped out in the flood. He’s a huge stoner himself. He’s done DMT a ton of times. Basically, it would be super interesting, and Jesus would be like, “Yo this guy’s fucking sick”. And then Messi would be like “I’m Kinda Messi”

KSDT: Moving on, how would you describe dadlore to someone who’s never heard of y’all before? 

Steve: Alternative Emo Grungegaze with indie vocals.

KSDT: So one of the first things I’m drawn to is your guys’ name. Online, the term “dad lore” is often used to refer to all the crazy shit our dads did or got up to before we were born. What drew you guys to the name when you first started out? And were there any other names that you were initially drawn to?

Steve: This is all me. I had this solo project called Steve’s, and that was super fucking cringey. And then I started writing better music, and I got better at guitar, and my music taste changed, so I started writing heavier, more interesting alternative stuff. And I decided, you know, with this new music that I’m writing, I think it’s time for me to craft a new image, but I didn’t want it to just be about me, because I honestly feel like it’s easier for people to support a band as opposed to a single artist. You got to be really fucking good as a single artist. I just don’t think of myself as being that good. I rely so much on my bandmates as well. They just make the music 100 times better than I could have ever even dreamed of it being.

I knew that I wanted to start a band, and I knew that if I was rebranding, the name had to hit, so it was months of me trying to come up with the right name. It seemed like everything that I saw — could that be It? Is that the new band name? So I started this huge, long list of band names. One day, I’m scrolling on Instagram reels, as you do, and I come across this video of this kid knocking on somebody’s door. They opened the door, and because he was a black kid, some racist white guy shot him twice for knocking on the door. He ended up surviving, thank God, and I went to the comments, and the first one was something along the lines of “This guy’s dad lore will be crazy.” And immediately I was like, “Bro, that’s it.” I knew right there. The first thing you have to do when you think of a cool band name is go on Spotify and see if it’s already being used. Aside from that, my dad is one of my biggest inspirations. He has awesome dad lore so it’s sort of an homage to him as well for always being like a rock for me and really encouraging me to follow my dreams.

I remember when I played “You Should Call your Mom,” the closer from the EP, for my family at this little get together that we had, I looked up at my dad and he was crying, and it made me really choked me up, I’m kind of choking up just talking about it right now, because my his mom died about a year or two ago, and it was really hard on him. And once I had finished playing it he pulled me aside and he said, “I really think your music has legs. Keep doing it.” It was honestly just that little bit of encouragement from my dad that sort of helped me keep going. 

KSDT: For this next question, I wanted to flash back a few years. August 31, 2023 at the Warehouse OC (a local venue instrumental to the OC DIY Scene), alongside fellow San Diego locals Blank Space, dadlore played their very first show. Tell us more about the origins of the band and anything specific that you guys can recall about that first show.

Steve: So that was our good friend Grace Tom’s birthday show and that was probably less than a month into existing as a band. Ryder *dadlore’s lead guitarist* and I had been jamming all summer, and I had already asked Walker if he wanted to join our new band. That’s one of the main reasons I asked him to live with us *most of the band, aside from their bassist, share a house near the SDSU campus where they live and write together*. In my head, I was just thinking, “We need Walkie in the band, he can’t be a drummer for anyone else, and he needs to be my roommate. We need to be best friends,” and that’s exactly what’s happened.

Walker: More on that show, Grace Tom, our good friend who’s a very talented photographer and videographer, invited us there for her birthday bash. She gathered all of her friends who were creatives and had just a huge concoction of creative, artistic people in the SoCal area. It was a warehouse, and they filled it with her artwork and photographs that she and her friends took, and I believe that was the only show we played with Blank Space.

Steve: Super privileged to have done that. I mean, Blank Space is arguably the whole reason dadlore exists, because of Ryder and how inspiring he was to me. We instantly clicked and became best friends when we met during our freshman year at SDSU. That was right when blank space was getting started, so I was along for that whole journey. I got to see the ins and outs of the DIY scene, how to start a band, and how to make it successful. Blank Space is obviously a very special case. They’re one in a million, basically, I sort of feel like we’re their spin-off, which is totally fine. It’s different, but they’re a huge inspiration. And, yeah, that first show was rough, man

Walker: Oh, we sucked!

Steve: It was awful. I mean, at least compared to now. It was a great first show, though. I mean, you just got to get the reps in when you’re first starting out. Especially for me, because performing was very new at that point, I had only performed maybe four or five times. Walkie was a little bit, well, much more seasoned than me in terms of performing. It probably wasn’t until about 10 shows down the line where I actually started to feel comfortable and a little more confident. But nonetheless, it was a great experience. 

KSDT: Looking back on what must now feel like so long ago, with all the experience you’ve gained and having grown so much as musicians, what advice would you give to yourself at that point?

Steve: I would say keep writing, keep playing guitar, keep learning new stuff. Don’t stress if it’s not coming to you. Firstly, I think of myself as a songwriter. I don’t really think of myself as a guitarist or a musician, because I’m not that good at playing guitar, and I don’t know anything about music theory, but I am a decent songwriter, and I feel like that’s what has allowed dadlore to experience a modicum of success. I like to think that I have good taste and I know that my band has good taste. So I think trust your bandmates and be okay with being rejected.

Walker: At that point, I was just trying to play in as many bands as I could and just get as much experience as I could. I really wanted to just be a recording artist and start releasing music, and dadlore was the way for that to happen. I think just in the last year and a half, I’ve gotten so much better at drums. I was alright. I wasn’t too good at that point. Maybe I’d tell myself, “Hey, you’re probably gonna get better. You’re not gonna suck for this long. Just keep ripping, and eventually you’ll be pretty okay.” And we’ve definitely also gotten better as writers.

Steve: Totally, our new songs in terms of complexity, they’re just brilliant.

KSDT: Yeah, honestly, I’ve been listening to “everlast” quite a bit since it dropped.

Walker: That song is such a bitch to play dude, that song is so brutal but the writing on that song is actually unreal. That was our first weird song. I’ve seen people try to count it next to us, like at the listening party I was seeing people try to count it. That song switches between nine, eight to six, eight to four, four. It’s so bizarre. I don’t know how we did that with all our limited knowledge of theory.

KSDT: On the topic of writing could you guys give us some insight into your creative process? What does bringing a song from start to finish look like for dadlore?

Steve: So it varies. There’s been some songs like “lil homie” and “everlast” where Ryder writes the rhythm, or he writes the lead, and then I fill in whatever’s left and then we sort of write the lyrics together. For “lil homie” we wrote the lyrics together and played it together. For “everlast,” he had this guitar part, and he was like, “Dude, we need to use this for a dadlore song,” and I found some lyrics for it, and eventually I did that song. So those two are examples of where Ryder takes more of an initiative of doing the first part, and we work around it.

Once me and Ryder typically have our strong parts together, then we bring it to the band at our next practice, and we sort of figure it out and see how it sounds, and then structure it from there, play it through. “Okay, do we like that? Well, maybe let’s change this. Maybe let’s try that.” But for the majority of our songs, it goes like, “I’ll write something on rhythm,  I’ll take it to Ryder, if he likes it, then he’ll write the lead.” Once we have the lead and the rhythm and the lyrics, then we take it to the band. I mean, I don’t want to oversimplify your and David’s (dadlore’s bassist) role, Walker, but I feel like it’s easier for you guys to write parts to a song that we already have a rhythm and a lead and lyrics to.

KSDT: Which song in the process of writing it, would you say was the most fulfilling or enjoyable, something that really gave you that sense of satisfaction?

Walker: Well, “lil homie” was funny, not because it gave us a sense of satisfaction but basically Steven and Ryder wrote that song at like 1 AM or 2 AM one night, they wrote the main melodic line, filled it all in with lyrics about me, and they were just laughing their asses off. They come into my room while I’m sleeping, and they turn on the light, and they start singing the song to me and wake me up with the song. 

Steve: Personally, for me, I had the most fun arranging “you should call your mom,” because that was a really meaningful song at the time that I was writing it, and when we brought it to the full band, and things started getting pieced together, it just felt really special. And I know that it’s a really hard song to play live, but I knew that if we recorded it, it would sound so good. Walker actually didn’t want to record it initially.

Walker:  We were arguing between “walls” and that song because we wanted to set a five-song minimum. And then I, I fought so hard for “walls” but Steve fought super hard for “call your mom,” and we ended up just doing both of them

KSDT: So seeing us tonight marks your final show here at SDSU, which, over the course of the past few years, has served as a home of sorts for you guys. How are you all feeling? Nervous? Sad? Excited for this next chapter in the band’s story?

Steve: Yes, it is the end of an era, but it is the beginning of a new one. It is the beginning of an unknown, which is exciting but scary. You know, I feel like it’s sort of similar to the jump from high school to college or the way that jumping from college to real life is scary but exciting. I am excited to get out of the college scene, because it’s kind of suffocating. Everyone is playing the same shows, the same bills, the same houses, and it’s just oversaturated at this point. It’s pretty repetitive, and I don’t want to speak for you guys, but I can say that I think we we did as well as we could with, with the circumstances that we had, and I think after Blank Space, we’re probably the biggest state band, or at least we have the most we had the most momentum/traction, at least in terms of fans.

Statistically, from house shows and stuff like that, we weren’t selling 300 tickets, like Blank Space would, but we got more people than the average band, and it was all ticketed. So, just statistically, we were a successful state band. Not that I think about everything in terms of metrics, but I am very proud of what we’ve done and what we’ve created, much of it trailblazer by Frontseat (a San Diego Media agency started by members of the band) and by Blank Space, and then we sort of just got to follow in the footsteps.

KSDT: That’s actually a perfect segue into my next question, you guys frequently work alongside local organizations like Frontseat Media and SDS Records, Could you tell us a bit more about those relationships and what it’s been like fostering a community here in San Diego, where, in comparison to, cities like LA, OC, or even SLO the scene isn’t necessarily as prevalent. 

Ryder: I think Frontseat is pretty interesting because I mean we are Frontseat, we started the agency freshman year as an opportunity for Blank Space to play more shows, because there just weren’t a lot going on at the time. And so it was originally just a name to throw shows under, so it wasn’t just like, “Oh Blank Space is throwing a show,” and then it eventually transformed into a much bigger scale project.  It’s a full-blown production agency now, which is really cool. It’s definitely been the rock under everything, helping us push through. Being able to be a part of that and start that company, as well as play the bands that are featured by it is really special.

In relation to other scenes, I don’t know if it’s comparable just because we are fighting for a totally different demographic. I think me and Steve specifically have a really big appreciation for the OC scene and hardcore zones, and Frontseat started off as primarily proper indie stuff. I think where dadlore sits in that is kind of interesting, because we blend that harder scene that we have stretched into, into Frontseat, and now Frontseat has become just a melting pot for all the new sounds in the area, because for the longest time it was just indie music. 

Steve: I think we’re a great blend between indie and, I mean, not even hardcore, because we’re not hardcore, but indie and… I don’t know, it’s hard, it’s to put a label on, right? 

Ryder: I don’t know, there’s so many fucking labels you can put on it at the end of the day. It’s just not necessarily something you would expect at a SDSU show. 

Steve: More on Frontseat, SDS, and organizations like that, I think there’s one up in more of the LA Orange County area, Coded, and even Magnol Collective at UCSD. They’re all organizations that are ultimately dedicated to the same thing, which is giving kids like us the ability to, one, showcase our talents and our passions, and two, to create memorable live experiences.

I wasn’t even particularly fond of live music for a very long time, I went to Outside Lands once when I was 16, for one day. It was amazing. I went to a Khalid concert at Oracle Arena, and that was about the extent of my exposure to a live music scene. And when I came here and I finally got the chance to go to a couple of house shows, I just thought  “Wow, this is, like, the coolest thing ever. It’s just a bunch of kids in a backyard listening to a sick band. Like, how do I do that? How do I become a part of that?” 

Ryder: I think that’s interesting, because it’s the same for me, and I think most people in our scene, it’s just kind of something that we all stumbled into. We didn’t come to SDSU with the mindset that, “Oh, we’re going to do this.”

Steve: Now it feels like people go to SDSU because they want to be in the music scene. SDSU has such a vibrant music scene, I think, in part because of organizations like Frontseat and SDS that are putting on high-quality, high-production, fun, safe, house shows. I can’t tell you a show where anything bad really has happened, other than maybe getting a little too drunk, and they’re early, and they don’t attract anything or anyone scary. 

KSDT: No, I feel that completely, the scene in LA/OC, for example, is alive, well, and full of great music, but if you find yourself at the wrong show, it can get a little nerve-wracking.

Ryder: It’s heavy man, it’s heavy. I mean, it’s also just a whole different world. Being in a college area, it’s pretty safe, and  you’re pretty certain that everyone who’s going is either in college,  friends with someone in college, or in the area we’re in. 

Steve: Don’t get me started on some of those OC shows.

Ryder: Yeah like when we went to Chain Reaction. I mean we always joke, because we’re not hard at all that whenever we’re going to a Boycomma (show or just going to play up there in general, it’s always like, man, we’re gonna stick out like a sore thumb. We feel so indie and lame in that scene. It’s kind of fun though. We get to try and channel our inner Boycomma or whatever. It’s just a different world.

KSDT: Do you guys have a favorite memory of playing here? Any shows in particular that stand out to you guys? This is like a great memory of your time here.

Steve: I think that one of my best memories was our end-of-the-year show that we played last year, which was with Veto and Misfire. That was the first show where I really felt like everyone, or most of the people there, were there to see us. And I mean, now going back to metrics, statistically, we had 100 presale tickets. 80 of them were for dadlore.

Ryder: But I think it’s less about us selling tickets and being happy with that, and more finally being able to see that it got through to people. I feel like dadlore’s music is risky in a lot of ways. That show was the first time that we felt like our music had space there. Same with Veto and same with Misfire, because all three of us have a different sound that isn’t indie. Not everybody can enjoy our music, which is fine. It’s supposed to be like that. And that show, I think, was a milestone of, one, we’re getting better and two, that people understand it.

Steve: It was really comforting to see that people could resonate with it, especially at a show like that, which is by no means an indie rock bill. Really thinking about it, we only really played at State four times this whole year. Every single show there was at least like 200 people there, which isn’t like an incredibly insane achievement. But when you think about how these aren’t just, “Oh, free show, come listen to my band,” Ii’s not even a $5 show. People are coming and spending $10 to come and see us. It’s just special for me to think that, you know, our hard work that I don’t even really think of as hard work is paying off in the way it is.

KSDT: Before we move onto the EP I want to ask, how has coming up within the San Diego scene influenced dadlore as a band, and are there any favorite local acts you guys are currently excited about or which have made an impact on you guys sonically?

Steve: I mean, Ryder probably doesn’t want to hear this, but the biggest inspiration for dadlore is undoubtedly Blank Space. Not even in terms of sound, but just the rapid growth that Blank Space experienced, kind of proved that it was possible in our scene because we had never seen any bands get that far

Ryder: And I think it’s a special case for you, Steve, because you were part of Blank Space, you know, not being in the band, but still part of it. It definitely inspired you to get out into that world.

Steve: At least for me, because I wasn’t even really listening to the music that I currently listen to two years ago. I feel like we’re inspired by each other at the end of the day. I mean, just look at all the music I listen to now, it’s all the music that you listen to.

KSDT: Moving on to your newest release, Nothing Ever Lasts, which dropped just a few days ago under San Diego label, SDS records. With six tracks coming in at just over 25 minutes, the project encompasses everything from surf, indie, and garage rock to shoegaze, Emo and alternative. Tell me about the inspirations for the project and what, if anything,g ultimately sparked its creation.

Ryder: In my head, the straight, simple answer is just Steve’s first year experimenting as a songwriter, and us learning how to work with what he gives us. I feel like through the last year and a half in which all these songs were written, each one just got a little bit better in a different way, and it was really an experimental time for us. I mean, we’ll continue to experiment, obviously, but I think this EP is special in the way that every song was a completely different process, and we’re just trying to figure out where we want to go with our sound and how we want to create music.

Steve: I would agree. I mean, like the first song for example, “my landlord andy scammed me,” which used to just be called Intro because it goes into “walls,” which is in the same key. That whole song came when we were practicing, and we were trying to figure out how we should start our next show. Like “Oh, let’s make a cool intro and it can go into ‘walls.'” I did, like, the stupidest little chord progression, and then everyone else wrote their own little parts.

Ryder: Yeah. I think it’s special, because we didn’t have a plan, most bands that have been around for a while, go into an EP, an album, a two-piece single, any project with like intention. And we didn’t have any. We were just like “Let’s write one. If we like it, great, if not, whatever, throw it aside.” And so when it came down to choosing the songs, it was just kind of figuring out what our best ones are.

Steve: And each song on the EP is so unique, you listen to the first one, you’re like, “Okay, that was interesting. Wow.” And then the second one’s completely different, and then the next one’s completely different, and then the next one’s completely different. They don’t really make sense together. I mean, to me, they make total sense, because it’s all that we’ve been playing for the last year. But they’re all pretty different songs. I think it just all ties back into the experimental phase of my first go at serious songwriting. Just that mindset of “Well, you’re gonna find something that works and you’re gonna fucking do it.”

KSDT: Take me through each track on the EP and tell me a little bit about them

“my landlord andy scammed me”

Ryder: Okay, our landlord Andy, actually scammed us. It’s a real story. Well, it doesn’t matter. The point is, we hate our landlord.

Steve: It does matter, we’re in an ongoing legal battle with our fucking landlord, and that’s it, period. 

“walls” 

Ryder:  “walls” is the oldest song on the EP, honestly, one of the oldest songs in the dadlore quiver. It’s super old, and we’re so sick of it, but it’s a classic. It is the song that bridges the indie stuff that we started off with the heavier stuff that we got to in the end, I think “walls” is our perfect example of alternative rock.

“the rats ate my couch”

Steve: Rats actually ate our couch. So this is tied to “my landlord andy scammed me” because the rats ate my couch. The rats also ate my washing machine and dishwasher and refrigerator, which caused thousands of dollars of water bill usage.

Ryder: But the reason it’s called this is not because the song is about that, but it’s an angry song, and we feel a lot of anger towards our whole housing situation with the rats. The song is actually about something completely different. But we didn’t want to name it after what it was really about. It’s actually our first song that we decided to name something funny, and now we’re never gonna have a serious song title again

“everlast”

Steve: It’s the title track of the EP technically.

Ryder: I think “everlast” was one of the breakthrough songs that we were extremely happy with, and was a big step in the direction we wanted to go. And we were just so amped to record that one. “everlast” was one of the first songs that we finished, where we just felt that it was really special. 

Steve: Yeah, I will say that it felt almost impossible to try to write lyrics to a song that’s in 9/8 because naturally you want to write lyrics to a song that’s in 4/4. And it makes sense, but I can’t even explain it. The beat was falling on the wrong spot. I would try to sing to it, and I just couldn’t, so you’ll notice, at least in the second verse, “you are always on my— brain.” The end of the line is the beginning of the next line. I had to play the audio recording in my ear, and then sing some shit out loud. It was just really hard to get down. It’s cake now, but that was, like Ryder said, a breakthrough song for us, where we were like, “Wow. Like, this is cool. This is new. This is different.” You would never go to a college house show and hear this song .

“lil homie”

Steve: “lil homie” is one of my favorites. It’s called “lil homie” after our drummer, Walker, who we nicknamed Lil Homie because he’s two years younger than us, but he’s taller than all of us, so it’s sort of like this, “Oh, like you’re little, but you’re big, so we’re gonna call you Lil Homie.” The song initially was inspired by me and Ryder, we were high as fuck one night, just up super late and start playing some stuff on the guitar. It’s one of my favorite songs to play live, because I love doing the back and forth with Ryder, because I feel like Juice Wrld and Lil Yachty on that one track. It’s just like it’s a cool feeling to be singing with your best friend. It was a meme. The simple answer is, it’s a meme. 

“you should call your mom”

Steve: The best song on the EP, the most emotional one. It’s the song that in the past two days has gotten the best reception. The most amount of people have come up to me and been like, “Dude, ‘you should call your mom.’ That’s my favorite.”

It made me feel some type of way, which is interesting, because we almost didn’t record it, which I was never gonna allow that to happen. I knew when we finally got it worked out last year that if we recorded this song, it would be amazing. I’m super proud of the vocal melody and the lyrics that I wrote. It came to me at a great time, a very emotional time. There’s a bar about Ryder in it, which is the only reason he likes the song, because I would help him with some of his video shoots. Shout out @ryder.schwartz on Instagram if you ever need any videos.

KSDT: Throughout the EP, sonically, you guys explore a really, diverse variety of textures and tones. Could you guys walk us through each of your rigs, tell us about any pedals or pieces of gear in general that you love or would consider essential to your sound?

Ryder: This will be easy, because Steve’s pedal board is just like the smaller version of mine. Well, we didn’t even use my pedal board on the actual record, the sounds that we got recording actually were just a better version of the sounds that we can get live, just because we can’t afford the nice shit. The first one that comes to mind is Way Huge Swollen Pickle. It’s this green fuzz, and it is just the only fuzz that we like. There’s this one reverb pedal called the Walrus Audio Slo, and it honestly just totally made the more gazey sounds that we wanted so we use that a lot. 

Steve: I know that there was an EHX small clone chorus pedal on my guitar, at least. Experimenting with chorus stuff was really fun, and then there were three amps that were mic’d up during the recording process

Ryder: In all honesty though,h the recording process for getting our tones was so much different than what we do live, just because in the studio we had access to a wider variety of high-quality gear. Our recording engineer, mixer, producer, could probably talk about it all day, how he got the tone because he loves that shit. But I think this year, specifically, or at least in the time leading up to the EP, I stepped away as a lead singer in another band and started focusing on lead guitar. It really helped give me time to craft what we want it to sound like. So, I mean, my board is huge, and I don’t use all the pedals, but it was a lot of experimenting with different things. 

I think the biggest inspiration for our tone came from the music we listen to. Our harder stuff, you know, more chord-based, fuzzier stuff comes from, like Title Fight and these bigger bands, and then how we decide to use the reverby stuff comes from even indier bands. We find a lot of inspiration from like Pine Grove and even Americana. On the shoegaze side, Wednesday was a big inspiration for how I wanted to sound. These kind of long shoegaze trails with some delay and reverbs on top. 

I think the inspiration for our tone and how we found it was a mix between us experimenting and us trying to emulate the bands that we like. The first time we heard “Je Ne Sais Quois” by Boycomma, that tone where it’s like an overdrive crunch, but not fuzz, and it’s like right in the middle, we were just like “Yeah, lets do that”.

KSDT: So moving on to our final question. Now that SDSU is out of the picture, could you tell us a little bit more about what’s next for dadlore?

Ryder: I personally think our next goals are much more focused around perfecting our sound and recording, because we are a little bit in the dark about where our geographical location will be. We’re definitely gonna be in San Diego at least for another year. In terms of playing shows, and what our trajectory is, because it’s been so straightforward being at SDSU, we don’t really know yet. We’re gonna have to figure it out as we go, but in the meantime, we have the music to work on. 

Steve: I think it’s more important that we focus on recording high quality songs. The better our songs are, the more opportunities that will lie in store for us rather than going to search for things. That being said, we do get emails. We get hit up about a lot of different stuff. We do have our fingers in a couple of different honey pots. Can’t really announce anything yet, but do have some cool stuff on the horizon in terms of live shows. And yeah, I think with this EP being out, it’ll only add to the demand of people actually wanting to come out and see us. We’ve proven to be able to pack a 500-capacity venue, at least in San Diego, so we’ll branch out somehow. I guess we don’t really know what that looks like yet.

---

dadlore is not a band chasing polish. They are raw edges, inside jokes, unresolved feelings, and whispered lyrics that hit just a little too close to home. What they offer, perhaps unknowingly, is a soundscape for growing pains, stitched with fuzz and feedback and the kind of honesty that can’t be faked. In a scene often saturated with aesthetic over substance, dadlore leans in the opposite direction.

In the days since our conversation, I’ve continued returning to their songs; not for clarity, but for company. Their music doesn’t promise answers, instead, it offers recognition: of loss, of youth, of memory, of transition. Their departure from SDSU isn’t just the end of an era for the band — it’s the end of a world they helped build, and the beginning of something uncharted.

And though Nothing Ever Lasts, there’s something lasting in the way this band exists, imperfectly, passionately, together. Dadlore is the kind of project that reminds you why local music matters. Why stories shouted into a mic at a house show can feel more permanent than any studio gloss. And if their recent release is any indication, what comes next won’t just resonate, it’ll echo.

---

Bands to Check Out If You Like Dadlore: 

Veto – Introspective Post-Emo straight out of SoCal

Love Letter – Gut-wrenching alternative rock/hardcore from LA

Misfire –  Hypnotic Julie-esque Nu-gaze from San Diego

---

More from Dadlore:
Instagram | TikTok | LinkTree