On first listen, it’s easy to view Chicago power-pop trio Beach Bunny and New Zealand alt-indie quartet The Beths as two sides of the same coin. Aside from literally touring together, both tend to lean heavily on their charismatic female vocalists, introspective lyrics and earworm hooks. Complementary as they are, though, there’s more under the surface.  

Beginning as frontwoman Lili Trifilio’s 2015 solo bedroom project, Beach Bunny’s largely self-trained roster was all working mundane day jobs at fast casual restaurants when they came together spontaneously through a Battle of the Bands competition. By contrast, The Beths’ founding lineup consists of formally trained jazz musicians who later rebelled against those roots in favor of harmony-driven melodies.  

In practice, Beach Bunny is the punchy, energetic younger half of this union, while The Beths present as the technically polished, sardonic older sibling. On August 2 at the House of Blues, Indianapolis’ shoegazing quintet Wishy served as the opener before The Beths rotated into the middle slot ahead of Beach Bunny after closing it out in Tucson the night prior.  

The first note I took on The Beths—namesake of vocalist Elizabeth Stokes—was that they sound nearly identical to their studio recordings. While I’d seen them once before at an outdoor festival, this trait is even more apparent in a smaller, indoor venue like House of Blues. Still, they manage to marry that impressive sound quality with a stage presence that more closely resembles that of a garage band. 

Half of their 12-song setlist came from their fourth studio album, 2025’s Straight Line Was a Lie. This included a new-wave adjacent highlight in “No Joy,” the dreamy, pulsing antidepressant anthem, “Take,” and the cerebral ballad, “Til My Heart Stops.” They added another two songs each from 2022’s Expert in a Dying Field, 2020’s Jump Rope Gazers and their 2018 debut, Future Me Hates Me.  

One clear standout was the jazz-nerd showcase, “Little Death,” where frenzied drumming accentuates a hook that sounds a bit like an anime credit sequence before the full-band showcases their technical prowess in a triumphant, harmonic breakdown.   

Stokes also had plenty of help from her bandmates in between songs. At one point, drummer Tristan Deck noted that he was on a “performance food” sugar high, thanks to the custard sundae he grabbed after riding the Big Apple Coaster at New York-New York. Elsewhere, bassist Benjamin Sinclair quipped about playing on a stage where he could constantly see video of himself performing and expressed his desire to try the venue’s heavily advertised “boozy milkshakes.”  

The Auckland-bred Kiwis closed it out on “Expert in a Dying Field”—a track more listeners seem to relate to over time as AI methodically headhunts most of our careers. Here, ethereal lighting and keen vocal harmonies thrive alongside Stokes’ potent soprano on their signature jam.   

Beach Bunny took to the stage with a larger touring roster of five—including Trifilio and two additional guitarists, plus a bassist and drummer who kept watch from a pair of raised platforms. This squad proceeded to dish out a dense 20-song set, starting with the pairing of “Mr. Predictable” and “Ms. California.”  

The band truly arrived with “Vertigo,” from its third studio album, 2025’s Tunnel Vision, which came after Trifilio half-jokingly asked the crowd to “open up the pit.” One of the hardest-hitting entries of the evening, it featured a bombastic mini-guitar solo woven between the elite sad-girl hook of “I’m protecting myself from emotional healing.”   

Throughout, Trifilio punctuates each tempo-shift with a peppy kick or a twirl of her silver and pink glitter-covered Fender Stratocaster. Playfully nudging at the pit for the next few songs, she knowingly added, “I’m catching a vibe that some of us might’ve never been in a mosh pit before.” She then offered a group of timid younger fans some help by requesting a temporary female-only mosh. 

Released in 2018 as the band’s debut single, “Sports” is a lot like what “You Belong With Me” would have sounded like if Taylor Swift had been far deeper into the bleachers, near the emo and theater kids. They play it with intentionally punkier energy live—deviating slightly from the original arrangement to add flair to a familiar favorite.  

That kicked off a strong middle leg that included the confessionally-minded “Cuffing Season,” in which Trifilio admits her own familiar existential inconsistencies in the hook: “Sometimes I like being on my own. I’m afraid of winding up alone.” Next came the scrambled, peppery riffs of “Tunnel Vision,” plus an early-2000s pop-punk informed pushback on unrealistic positivity in their July single, “Year of the Optimist.”  

Later, it played one of two songs that have by all accounts gone viral organically in “Cloud 9.” I don’t have a TikTok, but this one apparently blew up there in 2021—prompting Beach Bunny to release a second version with Tegan and Sara shortly thereafter. It’s easy to see why, as it’s a perfect live play bolstered by an upbeat, catchy chorus and an instrumental break that’s slathered in recurring surf-rock seasoning. 

The three-song encore started with “April,” where Trifilio again draws from surfier twang and fluttery drum licks to deliver one of her best vocal performances of the night. Next was the band’s original viral hit and 2018 single, “Prom Queen,” where it mixed in some heavier strumming and a distorted solo as its leader raged against toxic cultural norms. 

“I’m no quick-curl Barbie. I was never cut out for Prom Queen,” Trifilio sang as fans of every age and gender leapt around in the closest thing we saw to a real pit all night. 

“Painkiller,” also from the band’s 2018 Prom Queen EP, was a deserving closer. Fueled by sleek rainbow lighting, this one summed up Beach Bunny perfectly—from its bedroom-pop meets surf-rock undertones, to heavier-than-expected instrumental segments and Trifilio’s own biting and vulnerable lyricism. 

As a man in his early 30s who primarily listens to a wide range of underground hip-hop and alternative indie acts, I have no shame admitting that this show provided a much-needed palate cleanser. In the end, you can’t ask for much more than the brand of good, old-fashioned fun that The Beths and Beach Bunny absolutely delivered on.