What do Useless Kennedys’ Jello Biafra, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and Motley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx have in widespread? All of them dig Frankie and the Witch Fingers, an L.A.-based band whose irresistible garagey-psychedelic rock generally even invokes shades of Oingo Boingo and Devo due to a staccato freneticism and pointed lyrics. The range of FATWF’s peer-fans communicate to the quintet’s wide-ranging enchantment, and the title of their new 11-song album, “Trash Classic,” is a spot-on descriptor of the LP as an entire.
Of their longtime rehearsal-recording room in a legendary Vernon warehouse, the band perch on a sofa a couple of days earlier than leaving for tour. There’s a whiteboard with a set record behind the couch, and so they share some “mood board” phrases written for the creation of “Trash Classic.” On posterboard, the bon mots embrace “Lord Forgive Us For Our Synths,” “Jello -B.Y.O.F. (Bring Your Own Fork) – Ra” and “Weenus.” Laughter ensues on the recollections.
The lineup shaped with Dylan Sizemore (lead vocals, rhythm guitar) and Josh Menashe (lead guitar, backing vocals, synthesizer) greater than a decade in the past, the pair assembly at school in Bloomington, Ind. In several bands, they’d seen one another’s gigs and run into one another at events.
“I was just bored one day, and was like, ‘I wonder if this guy wants to jam.’ I had all these songs,” recollects Sizemore. “I just kind of showed up to his house, and I knew he was really good at guitar and really good at music in general.”
Josh Menashe, from left, Dylan Sizemore, Nicole “Nikki Pickle” Smith, Jon Modaff and Nick Aguilar, of the Los Angeles psych-rock band Frankie and the Witch Fingers get into character of their rehearsal area in Vernon on July 11, 2025.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Instances)
The San Diego-raised Menashe recollects, “I think by the time I met Dylan, I’d already dropped out [of college], though, and there were day jobs — at a screen-printing shop, I worked at a Turkish restaurant; whatever I could do to keep my music addiction going. I never really settled on a major because I just couldn’t think about what I wanted to do. Nothing made as much sense as music.”
Sizemore had been dabbling in music that was “power-pop-y, kind of like Tom Petty worship …”
“… he was in a band called Dead Beach,” Menashe provides, “and I would say it was garage rock, almost like Nirvana meets Tom Petty.”
“And Josh was in a more like surf rock, almost like mathy band. What would you describe [the band] Women as?” Sizemore asks.
“Angular, punky, buncha noise stuff,” affirms Menashe, who additionally performed with acclaimed Bloomington-to-L.A. band Triptides beginning in 2010.
In FATWF (the identify comes from Sizemore’s cat Frankie) the pair’s expertise and influences had been various sufficient to create one thing new that, over seven albums since 2013, has morphed right into a wildly inventive and raucous band with hooks, melodies, smarts, irreverence, loud guitars and splendidly oddball synth and sounds.
A transfer to L.A. in 2014 and eventual adjustments within the rhythm part — Nikki Pickles (Nicole Smith), previously of Demise Valley Women, becoming a member of in 2019; with drummer Nick Aguilar’s 2022 addition solidifying the band additional. Jon Modaff, a multi-instrumentalist from Kentucky who performed drums on tour with FATWF in 2021, joined on synth in 2024, giving the band an excellent broader sonic palette to appreciate their sometimes-oddball audio desires.
There was no grand plan or lyrical theme settled forward of the brand new album’s creation. “We collectively talk about what’s going on in the world when we’re in rehearsal and stuff, and our feelings about it,” says Sizemore. “I think it’s just at a point now where talking about certain things just feels more — what’s the word? — it feels more part of the zeitgeist. Like ‘Economy,’ I wanted to write about being around abject poverty. But it makes more sense now, it fits into the context of where we are. Things that we talk about in here, about what’s going on, maybe weren’t so omnipresent, and now it feels like it is. Like, you can’t escape poverty. You can’t escape what’s happening to people less fortunate than you. It’s everywhere.”
In writing the lyrics, Sizemore considered rising up, “seeing people trade in their food stamps to get alcohol because they’re addicted. Messy stuff like that. But it’s relevant now, it’s not just parts of the world. It’s gonna be everywhere if we don’t do something about it.”
Lyrics, whereas Sizemore-centric, are a collaborative course of. Pickle, nonetheless, who got here to bass in her 20s, says, “I just am happy to be along for the ride, and I’ll contribute where it’s helpful. I like to sit back; I guess I don’t feel qualified as a songwriter.” However, she says, “honestly, I think that that’s a helpful way to be, because if you have too many people with egos on top of each other, like, ‘no, no, no, do it my way.’ I like to listen and then insert where I can. That’s my vibe.”
Differing approaches and backgrounds serve FATWF effectively. Due to their “cohesive diversity and flexibility in the rock realm,” Aguilar observes, “I feel like we could play with almost anybody. At least a rock band, to any extent.”
Whereas they’re principally doing headlining excursions, they’ve shared levels with Low cost Trick and ZZ High. So the place would FATWF overlap with the 2 elder statesmen basic rock lineups on the musical spectrum?
“I mean, we were really into the [13th Floor] Elevators, and…” Sizemore says.
“The Velvet Underground…” provides Pickle.
“…Roky Erickson, all that stuff. I think we tried to, like, gear our set more in that direction, just so we weren’t fully playing freaky, noisy funk stuff,” Sizemore continues. “But there’s an overlap, for sure. If we play in Atlanta or something, we’ll get someone saying, ‘Oh, the first time I saw you guys was with ZZ Top’ and that’s always cool.”
“We collectively talk about what’s going on in the world when we’re in rehearsal and stuff, and our feelings about it,” says Sizemore. “I think it’s just at a point now where talking about certain things just feels more — what’s the word? — it feels more part of the zeitgeist.”
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Instances)
Most of Frankie’s members cite the DIY scenes of their areas as influential: Aguilar is from San Pedro and commenced drumming on the age of 10. He ultimately performed with that neighborhood’s most well-known musician: bassist Mike Watt, and rising up, “discovered I don’t need to go to the Staples Center or Irvine Meadows to see a band. I could just go, like, 10 blocks away from my home on my bike to house shows,” he says, including, “if there wasn’t the music scene in San Pedro, I probably wouldn’t be in this band. I’d probably be playing at the Whisky with some s— metal band that nobody cares about.”
An rising variety of persons are caring about FATWF; Jello Biafra even becoming a member of them on stage. At a gig in Biafra’s hometown of Boulder, Colo., the punk provocateur met the band after their present. The subsequent night time, the singer confirmed up in Fort Collins.
“We have a lot of mutual friends,” explains Aguilar. “I work at Alex’s Bar in Long Beach. So I met him there a long time ago. He said he was gonna come see us at our Halloween show in San Francisco. I was like, ‘How would you feel if we learned some DK songs and you sang with us for Halloween?’”
He answered within the affirmative, so Frankie and the Witch Fingers realized the Useless Kennedys’ “Halloween,” “Police Truck” and “Holiday in Cambodia.” Biafra rehearsed with the band at sound test, and for the vacation present FATWF dressed up as “bloody doctors.” As for Biafra? “He changed his outfit in between every song! He was throwing fake bloody organs at the audience. You could tell half of the audience knew who he was. And half was like, ‘Yo, who the hell is this?’”
“Talking about all this like ancient history makes me feel, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve kind of come a long way,’” Pickles ruminates. Aguilar states his considerably modest hopes for the band: “I think my realistic goal is the headline the Fonda Theater one day.”
But when larger-scale fame and fortune discover Frankie and the Witch Fingers, beware: Menashe claims he’d get a face tattoo if the band sells 1,000,000 information. His promise is captured by the reporter’s recorder, formally “on the record,” the band teases him. However in true FATWF trend, Sizemore pushes it one additional: “You gotta get a teardrop too!”
