From summer camp to the recording studio: sit-down with all female band “Kick Rocks”

New Jersey female pop-punk duo Kick Rocks is making waves in the South Jersey music scene. The band consists of two students, Mika Green and Skye Jorn. Green says the band came about really suddenly. 

“It was just like a thing that came out because we were this band was never supposed to be serious, we started as a joke. Skye didn’t play drums until we started the band,” said Green. 

Green also said the name Kick Rocks came just as unexpectedly. 

“We used to work together at a summer camp, and legitimately, she just kicked a rock, and said, ‘Kick rocks.’ We were like, ‘Oh, that would be a cool band name.’ We shelved it for a little bit, and then we decided to start the band,” said Green. 

Being a small female band in a predominantly male music scene presents challenges, but Green has experienced a welcoming environment and points out that the situation could be more difficult.

“It hasn’t affected us nearly as much as it could have,” said Green. “But I don’t know—I feel like people have really accepted us with open arms. We’re getting booked, and there are a lot of men who have supported us. Plus, all the other women we’ve played with have been very clear: ‘If anyone gives you any trouble, don’t take it.’ So, in that sense, I feel like we’ve been extremely lucky.”

Green and Jorn have encountered misogynistic comments, but they choose to focus on the positive rather than dwell on the negatives.

“We get a lot of ‘people only want to listen to your music because you’re pretty’ like, ‘people actually don’t like your music,’ so we’ve just kind of ignored it because we’re just having fun,” said Green. “We love playing music. We love playing music together, so we like to focus a lot more on the positives.”

Green describes their sound as ‘pop punk,’ with influences of other pop music.

“Like pop-punk, electric rock kind of thing, because we get a lot of influence from pop punk music, but we want to bring that, I don’t want to say EDM, because we don’t make EDM music, but we both listen to a lot of EDM. We both listen to a lot of K-pop, hyper pop, so we try to bring that kind of influence into pop punk,” said Green. 

Green hopes to lean more into the rock style in the future. 

“We definitely want to get heavier right now. It’s a skill issue, because, as you know, Skye’s new to drums, I’m new to lead guitar, and a lot of sides of production as a whole. So we want to get a little closer toward metal-core,” said Green.

Green says the band takes inspiration from smaller indie pop and K-pop bands for influences. 

“The home team is a big one because they do a lot of what I was talking about like they bring that, like, synth, electronic, poppy kind of music into, I don’t think I can call them pop punk,” said Green. “Dreamcatcher is a big one. They’re a K-pop group. They’re really unique and different in K-pop, because they have a horror concept which is so different from what you think of girl groups in K-pop they’re cute.”

Currently, the duo has two songs released, “I’m So Down!” and “Love Sucks! (But You’re Alright).” The group hopes to release an EP soon. 

“We want to get out the EP,” said Green. “We have our single out from it, and then we have four other songs on that EP. We have a second EP in the works that’ll hopefully be a little later, probably in August or something. We didn’t really talk about a timeline, but we always try to be one release ahead of schedule, so once one thing’s ready, we start working on the next.”

 In the long term, the band hopes to tour and start working more collaboratively.

“I feel like we work separately a lot, and I think integrating would be very fun,” said Green. “Obviously, a tour would be really fun, but that feels like a long-term goal. I want to play somewhere that’s not the tri-state area. We’ve played New York, we’ve played New Jersey. We’ve had offers in Philly, but it just didn’t line up. I think just playing some random state would be so cool.”

Overall Kick Rocks is making a name for themselves in the South Jersey music scene with their blend of pop-punk and electronic influences. Green and Jorn are determined to leave their mark on the indie music world.

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