Feeling bleak, yet dance-y this Pride? Consider gloomy june your parade marshals

gloomy june is the kind of local band you want to root for—or gather around a table with, as suggested by the video for single “picking scabs” off their self-titled debut studio album. In the clip, they pack around a nondescript piece of dining room furniture, celebrating birthdays, having a queer family meal, perching atop the Ocean Beach sands and then alongside the Golden Gate Park Dutch windmill.

The song’s melody is as upbeat as emo gets, but the local group’s lyrics present a stark contrast to the sound, telling of fallout from the death of lead singer Alexi Belchere’s older sister from overdose: “Before i knew i was the same age as you/Guess i′m living for both of us now.”

“We write emotional and bittersweet songs that are really fun to dance to; like the idea of a California summer curtained in fog, our songs often subvert the expectation of a fun pop song,” Belchere tells 48hills in an email interview a few days ahead of the group’s album release celebration at the third-ever Queer Emo Night at El Rio on Sat/21 with Arcade 9 and DJ n0be.

“There’s a feeling of freedom you get being your whole queer self while screaming along to Dashboard Confessional,” says Belchere.

And is joyfully thrashing through the pain not the Pride 2025—a gloomy June indeed—vibe? If that notion lands, consider this band your parade marshals.

48HILLS Where are you guys from?

ALEXI BELCHERE We’re a San Francisco band, but we’re originally from all over. I’m from a beach and farming town in SoCal called Oxnard, Jack Sundquist is from Minnesota, and Ash Hyatt is from Boston. Devin Nelson’s the closest, having grown up in Berkeley. Devin and I met in college at SF State, and have been playing with Jack and Ash for years. We started gloomy june in early 2022 after the cocoon pandemic period of 2020. We’d been playing together as another band before and had lost a drummer before Ash, and with Ash joining we were ready for a new identity.

48HILLS Tell me about your eponymous debut full-length. Where’d you record it? In what ways do you think it best represents the sound of gloomy june?

DEVIN NELSON It was recorded in a warehouse in the East Bay with Ivan Garcia, whom we met while running our sound at clubs in the Bay Area music scene. When I was writing these songs, I was consciously trying to go back to my roots and take it in a more punk direction than our previous releases, while still embracing the glossy bittersweetness characteristic of our style. I’ve always found it fun that our band name itself is kind of a guiding vibe aspiration that we are always trying to hone in on.

48HILLS I get that the band’s name is a shoutout to San Francisco “summer,” but given how queer the group is, was Pride month taken into consideration when you decided on a moniker?

ALEXI BELCHERE It was really just about the dual nature of June gloom. We write emotional and bittersweet songs that are really fun to dance to; like the idea of a California summer curtained in fog, our songs often subvert the expectation of a fun pop song.

48HILLS What was your emo awakening like? What were your first favorite bands and what do you think drew you to the genre?

DEVIN NELSON I gotta preface this by being a weird hipster and acknowledging that emo is an extremely convoluted genre descriptor and that many things associated with the term emo are not “true emo” (influenced by the lineage of the DC emotional hardcore scene). On the other hand, if we’re talking emo in the colloquial sense to mean sad songs with punk guitars, then AFI’s “Sing the Sorrow” and Jimmy Eat World’s “Bleed American” were HUGE albums for me in my angsty formative years. The former’s ambiance, incredible poetic vocals, and intricate innovative guitars showed me that punk rock can be so much more. The latter was a staple of deep emotional songwriting with hooks that stay with you for days. These albums hit me hard as a sad youth and I definitely think my songwriting style is a culmination of them. Honorable mention goes to Thursday’s “War All The Time”!

(also if we’re talking “true emo”, Funeral Diner is a legendary Bay Area band that also hit hard for me as a teen.)

ASH HYATT I remember I was in 10th grade, my friend Casey showed me The Used—I was hooked right at “The Taste of Ink.” It just had this raw energy that was different from all the metal I had been exploring. There was just something so pained and exaggerated about that music that felt so cathartic to scream along to.

48HILLS There’s no doubt that emo is undergoing a major revival. Why do you think the sound is hitting so right in 2025?

DEVIN NELSON Folks have always been into emotional guitar music, there was just a weird phase in the 20-teens where they pretended they didn’t because it was cool or novel or something. It seems like the worse the world gets, the more we fall back on it. It feels good to put on a loud song and sing your heart out and folks are just more earnest about that these days.

ALEXI BELCHERE There’s a lot of confusion and anger in the world right now, and like Devin said it feels good to get loud and say what you’re feeling. It’s cathartic to get into a pit and dance and bounce off of people with similar mindsets too. Maybe there’s a connection to cycles of escapism followed by periods of anguish in modern music.

48HILLS Do you often get the chance to play all-queer showcases? Is there a vibe shift from your typical emo night? (It’s not the most heterosexual genre I can think of to begin with.)

ALEXI BELCHERE We often get to play queer lineup shows, but it’s rare that we get to play with queer and emo artists. I’ve been to a few emo nights in the city, and they’re really fun but don’t feel anything like our Queer Emo Night. It might be the emphasis on queerness that sets our show apart; there are queer people at typical emo nights, but there’s a feeling of freedom you get being your whole queer self while screaming along to Dashboard Confessional.

QUEER EMO NIGHT Sat/21. El Rio, SF. More info here.