Beach Bunny Brings Upbeat Catalog to Cleveland Saturday

Lili Trifilio, lead singer of the indie rock trio Beach Bunny, got her start in the Chicago DIY scene.

As a college student, she became enamored with the house shows that her peers were putting on, she said in a recent phone interview. So, she joined in.

Her performances started out fueled by covers, but the inspiration to write was all around. Soon, Trifilio was playing originals.

Trifilio credits the scene she came up in for the conviction with which she writes.

Beach Bunny catalog highlights such as “Good Girls (Don’t Get Used)” and “Blame Game” are equal parts personal experience and social commentary.

Trifilio says that the punk bands all around her inspired her to make bold statements, in these cases about gender politics.

“Blame Game” dissects slut-shaming, sexual assault, and the persistent data and experience-driven fear and discomfort that plagues women. The bits and pieces of weaponized narratives she sprinkles throughout the lyrics culminate as a sarcastic voice-over in the chorus.

“Good Girls (Don’t Get Used)” draws on lived experience to make a larger statement about the cyclical nature of toxic situationships. The song delves into the details, while Trifilio scolds herself with the song’s title – laying it all out there.

The band’s breakthrough smash hit, 2018’s “Prom Queen,” subscribes to the same trope.

While Trifilio unpacks her own insecurities, inherently leading listeners to connect by doing the same, listeners are simultaneously thrust into the lens of the damaging societal standards – coming at us from every angle in the digital age – that got her here.

“Prom Queen,” which enjoyed a stint as one of the most-used sounds on TikTok as the app was rising in popularity, is nearing 900,000 streams on Spotify.

Trifilio expressed appreciation for the band’s continuous, gradual rise and ability to avoid being tied to one moment.

Beach Bunny, which began as a Trifilio-founded solo project and evolved into a band, is still based in Chicago.

Beach Bunny’s latest single, “July,” was released independently, by the AWAL-signed band. It’s a re-recording of the track from 2016’s “Pool Party” EP, featuring refreshed production. Trifilio proudly declares it a ten-year anniversary celebration. While these sorts of moves are increasingly common in our nostalgia-obsessed age, it’s clear that the release is just as precious to Trifilio as it is to her day-one fans.

The other single that Beach Bunny released this year was a remix of “Clueless,” from the band’s 2025 album, Tunnel Vision, with Aly & AJ added as a feature.

Trifilio notes that the original song was inspired by her immediate family; she was expecting Aly & AJ’s added verse to be about the child stars’ sisterhood. Instead, she was blown away by the verse they contributed, which references Aly’s transitional journey into motherhood.

The song is rooted in the passage of time – parallelling now and then – and heavily cloaked in feeling detachment from your age and longing for simplicity or a way to make sense of it all. The loneliness that comes from changes in family and friendship dynamics as one grows up is explored.

The track finds Trifilio taking off the rose-colored glasses time provides and coming to terms with the fact that things were complicated as child too, just in different ways. The simplicity she is longing for she may have never had, after all, but she is still struggling with the discrepancy between how she thought life would be when she grew up and how it is. It reads as a relatable zillenial anthem from the 29-year-old, with the perspective of the millennial musicians she grew up admiring added in.

Trifilio says that Tunnel Vision was written firmly in the present tense. Things of consequence that she was going through, and obsessively thinking about at the time, made their way onto the band’s latest full-length.

“Pixie Cut” was Trifilio’s real-time struggle for control. Accepting lack of control over the increasingly chaotic world while desperately grasping for some semblance of control over her mind.

“Chasm” examines Trifilo’s philosophical musings from a more macro perspective. A clear attempt to quiet the loud thought patterns that come to light in “Pixie Cut.” Though the incessant self-questioning surfaces in this track too, sparring with the past-present-future mantras.

Trifilio emphasized her Saturn return as inspiration for Tunnel Vision.

This record was made while coping with growing pains and fighting for who she is becoming. The confusion that surfaces before any breakthrough can happen is the main character here.

At the end of the day, being willing to bring real struggles to bare as a writer leads to real people that share in those struggles connecting with the music.

Beach Bunny headlined Beachland Ballroom in late 2021, much closer to the band’s viral moment. The Tunnel Vision Tour’s stop at the larger House of Blues Cleveland points to Beach Bunny building a sustainable, growing audience.