Hi everyone!
Karalyn here. I’ve never written a letter to our readers like this before! I thought now would be a perfect time to write the first one. It’s For The Punks’ two year anniversary. Quite unbelievable, honestly. When I started this online publication and resource back in August and September of 2019, I never thought we would have grown this much in two years! With over 1,000 followers on Instagram and hundreds more on our Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook, I’m thankful for all of you.
We currently have a team of almost 30 people. Everyone is amazing at what they do, seriously. Whether that is photography, writing, graphic design, or interviewing, I am proud to have a team of such amazing individuals (that are almost all non-men). Not only have I brought team members and friends that live around me in Pennsylvania and Upstate New York, I’ve brought on team members from various cities both in and out of the United States (Los Angeles, Austin, NYC, Spain, Philadelphia, and more). We’ve had a handful of team members leave this year as well. To those team members, if you are reading this, know that I am proud of you! We all are.
Of course as young individuals in the music industry, life can get busy. The past week has been one of the busiest weeks of my life, it feels. I’ve said “I’m behind on work” too many times in the past seven days. If I owe you a message or email, don’t worry. It’s coming.
Our team is almost full of full time college students (myself included), or recent graduates looking for more experience and connections in the music industry. Please don’t be afraid to take a look at our team page to see if you can hire or connect with them in some sort of way!
Along with that, I’m happy to look back and see that we have worked with artists and groups as large and as amazing as Hockey Dad, Marina City, Leanna Firestone, and Games We Play along with up-and-coming artists like Pinkshift, In The Mourning, Nightlife, Again In May, Negative/Positive, and so many more.
One of my favorite projects that we launched this year was our ‘For The Punks Biweekly’ playlist on Spotify. I love that we can feature 30 different artists every two weeks. Even though we have (kind of) forgotten about a few other projects and series like ‘Band Of The Month’ and ‘Punk Of The Week’, we’ve grown in a variety of ways.
As I’m typing this, we are sitting on so many more amazing Instagram Takeovers, interviews, reviews, photo galleries, and more. I hope you are just as excited as I am.
To kind of end the letter, I would love to share some recent releases we are loving. Shout outs to Turnstile, Kim Petras, Scene Queen, Phineas, Grayscale, The Summer Set, and James Barrett. Especially The Summer Set (can’t believe they are back)! What other new releases should we check out? The comments are open for you to make suggestions.
Please stay safe and healthy! Don’t be afraid to reach out to us if you have music or art to pitch! We really want to work with more non-musicians this upcoming year.
I invite you to listen to our Two Year Anniversary playlist on Spotify. It’ll get announced officially tomorrow but if you’re reading this now, you know of it a day early!
I hope for another wonderful year.
Love,
Karalyn Hope
