We’ve been dropping the ball on Beach Bunny, haven’t we? Lili Trifilio’s Chicago band started out as a one-woman bedroom-pop project, and it still has the plainspoken intimacy of that kind of thing. But Beach Bunny is now a big deal. Beach Bunny’s self-released Bandcamp jam “Prom Queen” blew up on TikTok in 2019, and they have since become my 11-year-old daughter’s favorite band. That means kids everywhere are jamming out to fuzzy ’90s-style power-pop. I love that! Time to put some respect on Beach Bunny’s name.

Beach Bunny’s whole rise fits with recent quasi-indie gen-Z success stories like Clairo and beabadoobee, which is interesting. But Beach Bunny are really worth your attention because they’re good. They make hooky, driving indie-pop bangers that radiate serious Letters To Cleo vibes, and when they played on Jimmy Kimmel Live, they sent in video from the Empty Bottle, the great Chicago venue. They’re worth rooting for.

Tomorrow, Beach Bunny will follow up their 2020 debut album Honeymoon with a new EP called Blame Game. On Kimmel, they gamely bashed their way through the single “Good Girls (Don’t Get Used).” It’s pretty obvious that they haven’t gotten in too many live-show reps, and an empty club lit up for a TV-show taping isn’t necessarily a place where a baby band can really put on an electric live show anyway, but it’s still cool to see this band thriving. Watch the performance below.

The Blame Game EP is out 1/15 on Mom + Pop.