Have you ever moshed and square danced during the same set? I hadn't until catching Los Angeles four-piece Fat, Evil Children at the opening date of their week-long run up the East Coast.

In the basement green room of Schubas, a ~150 capacity Chicago bar-venue hybrid, frontman Nic Skrabak and bandmates Truman Sinclair (guitar), Sebastian Peters (bass) and Diego Fernandez (drums) fawn over venue-provided toiletries and debate mac & cheese preferences. The camaraderie between the boys is palpable, but never in a way that felt overly bro-y. They all met as classmates in USC's Music Technology program as pandemic restrictions were starting to lift during their sophomore year, eventually playing hooky together to jam and burn through cases of beer.

"We all ended up going to Joshua Tree where [Sebastian's] parents have a place out in the desert, and we just recorded the first EP. When Truman pulled up, it was just like, oh shit. That was the band," Skrabak explained.

Each of Fat, Evil Children's members are seasoned musicians, but Fernandez and Sinclair have been at it since childhood. "I come from a musical family. My parents are from Guatemala, and my parents met at singing school, actually, like a singing academy of sorts," Fernandez tells me. "My dad was a guitarist in a band in Guatemala and they did some touring. He bossed it up and brought us to the U.S. So I grew up around instruments. Supposedly, the first time I crawled forward, my parents just told me this story, the first time I crawled forward was to, like, towards a piano," he recalls.

You may know Truman Sinclair from his solo music, through which he has a major-label deal at Capitol records, but his heart is just as much in it as the rest of them. For him, Fat, Evil Children filled the hole in his heart that was left empty by the disillusion of Frat Mouse, the moderately successful emo band he started in high school. "I moved to California when I was, like, 14. I was a new kid in high school and I had made no friends, so I just learned to play guitar all day. I figured out Logic and then went from there, started making songs and writing songs," he says.

Sinclair came into that fated Joshua Tree trip as the band's final missing piece. As Skrabak tells it, "[Sinclair] pulled up to the house, it was super late the first night, we were knee-deep into recording 'Weedpuller,' and just first thing rips the harmonica."

"I really missed being in a band," Sinclair added. "So I was really stoked, and honestly honored [to join] because I respected all you guys." Skrabak buts back in, "You literally pulled [the harmonica] out of your pocket, and you just blew into that shit, and it was on the record. The rest was history... it was electric."

Fat, Evil Children's first ever performance together was a cover set at LA's 4100 Bar. They played music that they'd bonded over during that Joshua Tree retreat: mostly The Band and Jack Logan, a prolific, cult-classic folk singer-songwriter from the '90s and early 00's. The latter has become the band's primary touchstone, weaving through the bands identity in more ways than one. Fat, Evil Children's manager Autry Jesperson is the son of Peter Jesperson, the man who whittled Logan's archive of 600+ songs into what would become his 140 minute, 42 track debut record Bulk after being connected through R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck.

The name Fat, Evil Children itself comes from a series of Logan's drawings that were a part of Bulk's album visuals. The drawing of the fat, evil child graced the cover of their debut EP after being granted Logan's permission.

This late July headlining run comes as a warm-up for this September, when they'll be opening for Pixies in the south and southwest US. When asked how that opportunity arose, the boys still seemed shocked their agent was able to swing it. They resort to elaborate fairy tales instead:

"So we were driving through the desert and the sky opened up, and the moon came down, and the earth split, and a bunch of fairy dust came out, and we said, 'what could that be?' And then the Pixies were in there and they said, 'we want you to carry the flame. But first, you have to open for us in Louisville, Kentucky.'" – Truman Sinclair, 2026

He digresses. "We're big fans of the Pixies, obviously. It's like a dream come true. It's strange and awesome. And we don't really know how it happened, but one way or another, they got an email. We don't know how it happened, but we're stoked."

To Skrabak, this tour feels just as important as their eventual run with Pixies. "To us, it feels pretty high stakes, this [tour] right here. I mean, we haven't played like this in a long time. It's the first time that we've been out here and headline shows are a different thing," he explains. "Music is one of those really crazy things where, at least in my experience, which I feel very lucky to have, honestly, it's felt like a million little, tiny, little breaks. I feel like we've had so many moments where I've felt like, wow, this is a fucking big deal. We're taking it one step at a time, honestly. I'm like, this is a big deal, and then that big deal, we'll get to it, I guess."

Their performance matches that attitude and then some. By set's end, Sinclair had broken two guitar strings. Openers Sacred Heart Academy were nice enough to lend their Strat after that second string snapped, but late-arriving attendees would've had no idea anything had gone awry. Throughout their performance, Skrabak was taken aback by the amount of crowd engagement they were receiving this far from home. "You guys know the words?" he half-asks half-exclaims after the chorus of "Fooled."

Their command of the crowd only grew as the set continued, with cuts from their latest EP Can't Stop getting the crowd on their feet the most. As soon as the circle pit that formed during barnburner "The Weight" dispersed, friends and strangers alike do-si-do'd and twirled each other around during an impromptu encore of "What Else Did He Do?," a quick, galloping folk tune about hearing stories from an elder.

Fat, Evil Children's career is growing quicker than they'd ever expected, but their excitement and passion demonstrably outweighs the anxiety that comes with the uncertainty of being a growing artist. The band have released all their music independently thus far, but they tell me they've been in talks with different labels for their next release.

When I ask Skrabak how he keeps his head in check during moments like these, he says it's always the music. "For me, I'm just stoked every time we get on stage. I love to hear the shit rock. It makes me not be nervous anymore. We're just great friends, honestly, so it's easy when you have your people to do it."