- Welcome to Music Matters.

I am your host app, Apolonia Davalos.

We build community through music as we meet the artists of Innoskate.

Innoskate Sioux Falls was a free festival with skateboarding, invention, creativity, and fun.

(happy, upbeat music) - Meet Me @ the Altar is a trio of women empowering pop punk into a new era.

Téa, Ada and Edith produce head banging anthems of positivity with the launch of their new EP Model Citizen.

Brighter days are before us and we all feel a thing.

Now or never, Music Matters present Meet me @ the Altar!

(pop-punk music) - [Téa] We're super, super stoked to be playing Innoskate, because we love skateboarding culture and it's everything that it represents too.

And it's so awesome that the Olympics finally added Skateboarding.

That is amazing.

- It took too long.

- It took, yeah, what, why?

(pop-punk music) ♪ Not sure if the medicine, can fix what's broken in me ♪ - [Téa] Model Citizen is all about becoming an adult and growing up and kind of figuring out your place in the world and who you want to be.

And everyone has these kind of, this idea, of what a model citizen is, what the perfect person is, the ideal standards, and it's not always the best to try to live up to that, because oftentimes it's impossible.

So yeah, it's just about, you know, figuring out who you are, and navigating those, those standards.

- [Edith] I feel like it's very important to make hopeful and positive music, especially in the rock scene, because you know, we grew up loving pop punk, but all the pop punk songs were so negative all the time.

People are like whining about-- - Self loathing... - Yeah!

Yeah, like, it was always a very negative undertone within the lyrics, and we were like, we love Pop Punk but we don't really love that so much all the time.

Everyone loves a sad song once in a while, you know?

But all the time I think it's like a little bit too much.

So we were like, let's just make pop punk music but have really positive lyrics and that's what we decide to do.

(pop-punk music) - [Edith] The most influential song on our EP, Model Citizen, is probably Brighter Days Are Before Us.

It's everything you need when you're feeling down, is in that song.

It's about, you know, we all have bad days, bad times, bad months, bad years, but at the end of the day we know that it'll get better and we're hoping it'll get better and people are there for you that will help you make it better in your life.

So yeah, that's one of my favorites.

- And because we put out this EP, kind of in the middle of the pandemic, there was just a lot of negativity in the world and we wanted to put something positive out there to get people distracted from all the, you know, the, the bad that's out there.

People really needed a hug.

- [Edith] Yeah, seriously.

- [Ada] Yeah, big old hug.

- [Téa] Yeah.

(pop-punk music) - [Edith] Where I see us in ten years, if we're not as big as Green Day in ten years, we're not doing something right.

- [Téa] We don't even have our first album out yet!

Like what?

That is crazy.

- What I, what I would tell a young person trying to pursue music as a career, is that there's literally no rules.

And I know this sounds stupid, but life is literally a game and you can play it however you want and there's a way to like, break through what society has told you what you can do, but it's totally blocking them out, 'cause a lot of people have really low expectations for what they can do in their life.

And that's really not... as long as you have the outlook in your brain that you can go way beyond that, you'll go way beyond that.

- And if you have the passion for music or literally anything, it could be anything, don't let anyone tell you that that passion isn't worth you know, chasing your dreams for, because who knows, you could end up playing Innoskate in a couple years.

You never know.

(laughs) - That's true.

Literally don't ever give up.

Like if you tell yourself, I'm going to be the best whatever in the world, you literally will be.

Like, what?

At that point, what's stopping you?

You just have to do it, at that point, honestly.

- We went from like, playing to maybe ten kids a night, in 2017 to like, last month playing to 11,000 people with Green Day, so.

- [Ada] You just gotta do it.

(pop-punk music) - Thank you.

- Thank you so much, Ada, Edith, and Téa for joining us today.

You ladies are so fierce.

- Thank you.

- Thank you!

- Give them a follow on their social media, learn more about them, visit their website, meetmeatthealter.com We'd like to thank our sponsor, the Mortimer & Mimi Levitt Foundation.

I am your host app, Apolonia Davalos, and I love you.

(happy, upbeat music) - [All Together] We love the Levitt!