Local pop punk band Capture This is opening for California-based female punk band The Linda Lindas this Wednesday, Sep. 23 at Summit Music Hall alongside VIAL, another female American punk rock band.
While the band was originally established in 2021, the current members have been playing together since 2024, after some of the original members left. Capture This consists of vocalist Leah Drost, Andrew Wilson on guitar, Alexander Balister on drums and Zach Brennan on bass.
Despite being strangers who found one another on Craigslist, the band members have grown close enough to joke around together. They’ve become “best friends,” according to Drost.
“All bands have a good chemistry for the most part that I work with, but they have an exceptional one,” said Flynn Norris, their manager. “They’re a family.”
The band members are thrilled about opening for The Linda Lindas. They’re especially excited to be part of a lineup made up almost entirely of women.
“Normally, it’s just a bunch of dudes, us included, and then Leah,” Brennan said. “So it’s nice to be the minority for once.”
Since the punk and alternative music scene has been historically very male dominated, women are treated more as an afterthought and getting lumped together as “basically Paramore” despite the diversity of sounds.
“Having a lineup of entirely non-male fronted bands on a bill like this is important to us and the scene, as representation really matters, and other women in the crowd can look at the stage and go ‘Oh I could do that too, I belong here,’” the band said.
For Drost, opening for The Lindas Lindas is a full circle moment. Drost saw them open for one of her favorite bands, AJR, an American indie pop band, in July of 2024.
Despite their music not completely matching The Linda Lindas music genre, it’s a great opportunity for The Linda Lindas and Capture This to get some exposure to another fanbase.
“It’s great for [The Linda Lindas’s] fanbase to see a local powerhouse, female-fronted alternative band that’s based in Denver,” Norris said.
Norris, who works for 307 Artist Management and Powerline Management, was initially drawn to the band from an Instagram ad for their song “Halothane Dreams.” He was impressed by Drost’s raw vocal talent, the video production quality and how put together the band seemed. Norris has worked with them since January.
“They’re not only my client,” Norris said. “They’re a band that I share with my friends and peers and that I genuinely listen to.”
The band’s sound draws inspiration from the early-to-mid 2000’s pop punk bands like Paramore, Evanescence and Green Day. Despite still being in the pop punk genre, their music has changed with their new Extended Play that will be released next spring. The new EP leans more into an alternative pop sound.
“To me, it’s this modern twist on the early-to-mid 2000’s pop punk,” Drost said. “There’s still elements that sound like us and have that pop punk sound, but it’s also way more of that alternative pop rock.”
Their new music emphasizes pop-like production and “punchy bass lines” that people can dance to.
All of the band members contribute to the composition process. For their currently released EP, “Tangled,” the band did about 95% of the songwriting while Colton Krohn at Blasting Room Studios recorded and produced it.
For the new EP, Capture This traveled to Nashville and worked with Dan Swank, the producer and touring guitarist for the band All Time Low, and Brook Betts, the guitarist for Mayday Parade who helped co-write some of the tracks.
“It might be the coolest thing I ever do in my lifetime,” Wilson said. “We got to meet a lot of people that, growing up, we looked up to as musicians. So, just being able to be in the same room and writing with them was insane.”
The band worked hard preparing for the recording session. Preparation took them several months and they ended up raising $15,000 through their Kickstarter, overshooting their goal of $12,000.
“It was a big risk but a huge payoff,” Drost said. “I think we underestimated how much our fans and the community actually cares about us and shows up for us.”
The thing that’s kept the band going and has set them apart from other bands is the simple act of having fun.
“Even if nobody’s listening to the music, we’re still having fun,” Brennan said. “We keep doing it because it’s fun, not to have people know who we are and be big cool rock stars.”
After opening for The Linda Lindas, the band is going on tour with punk band Public Figure from Nov. 1 through Nov. 7, going through Madison, Wis.; Minneapolis, Minn.; Kansas City, Kan.; St. Louis, Mo.; Omaha, Neb.; and ending in Denver.
