BEN HOPKINS

All shows need more twinks.

It's not about the individual notes. It's about the energy.

For me, choosing to perform in drag, because of all the things I enjoy about it, is a political act.

I'd say, at the end of the day, you know, from a songwriting practice standpoint, you write songs to make yourself feel something true and validating, and cathartic, maybe, and then whoever responds to it is, like, out of your control.

Like my gender, sometimes things don't come out right the first time.

PWR BTTM isn't the only queer rock band. We've been lucky to receive a platform. If you go on Bandcamp and search for 'queer rock,' you can find 150,000 bands that you could love more than PWR BTTM.

Ben Hopkins is a very nervous, neurotic kind of person who is afraid of not being liked by people all the time. But, Monster-Me doesn't know who those people even are.

Drag has always made me feel less scared.

When I started playing music, I was more of a character. Now I'm just me with a cool outfit on. I'm more comfortable being myself.

I know what we're going to do as PWR BTTM. We're going to put a new record out; we're going to go on tour a lot, and we're going to do cool stuff. We're going to try to be kind to our friends and family and loved ones. And we're going to look cute.

I'm in a car so much on tour that I often just ask my friends to DJ and ask them what they like. That's the best way I discover music.

If you listen to PWR BTTM, or to Gloss, If you look at me on stage, it can make you feel less alone. It makes you feel like you're a queer person and you have this singular power, but it's not like we're a brand. We're just real.

When you're a queer person put in the spotlight, you're supposed to have all the answers.

Rather than writing about my experiences with other people, 'Ugly Cherries' is the first song I've ever written about myself. It's a confrontation: an attempt to unpack my own queerness with humor and self care.

The most radical thing about our lives is getting to be in a visibly filled-out queer crowd every night.

PWR BTTM fans dress up better than we do.

I feel like with PWR BTTM, Liv and I tried to create something that was kind and cared about the people who come.

What we do is provide a suggestion. We say, 'We're queer. We're going to do this; we're going to open up the space to queer thought.' People don't have to show up, but they do.

For queer people, the personal is very political, just to talk about it in a public space. It's very political just to come out and take up that space and be like, 'This is my narrative. It's not an outsider narrative, and it's not a fetish narrative; it's just my story, and it's worth being told and listened to.'

A lot of my queer development as a kid came from trawling the Internet.

I'm a freewheeling flower-child falling down the stairs constantly.

I think that when you're queer, you grow up with these kinds of men who might have made you feel small because of who you are. They could be part of your family, or somebody on the street, or a teacher.

It's our responsibility to cater to the needs of people who come and enjoy our work who have the same values we do. We're not trying to change the world. We're just sort of trying to deal with our specific lens of performance.

We're not writing songs to solve a cultural problem. The goal for us is to express what we're going through, and it's great if people find commonality in that.

There is power in organization. There is power in a community. People have always wanted to destroy communities.