Caroline Rose
After a yearlong drought, genre-bending pop purveyor Caroline Rose has reemerged with a renewed sense of purpose — and a healthy disdain for the current live-music industry. Fresh off the release of the long-awaited piece of “beloved trash” that is “Yip Yip Yow,” a song that spent more than a decade as a live-only fan favorite, Rose is kicking off a new era with a string of pop-up shows at secret locations starting in July. The under-the-radar gigs also serve as Rose’s personal fight against ballooning ticket prices and service fees, offering fans a chance to experience the funky dance-pop psychobilly beast’s return without all the industry bullshit.
Though most streaming services display Rose’s last full-length project as 2023’s The Art of Forgetting, they threw a semi-secret album into the mix back in 2025. The iPhone-recorded lo-fi project Year of the Slug was quietly released exclusively via Bandcamp, signifying one of the singer-songwriter’s major steps in the direction of independent artistry.
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Rose’s independent streak continues with the announcement of their upcoming pop-up shows across the U.S. Before they embark on a fall tour in support of Modest Mouse, the multi-instrumentalist now based in Austin, Texas, is prioritizing independent venues and booking shows with zero ticketing fees for fans. The location of each concert will be announced only to ticketholders during the week of the gig. (The Nashville show is set for Tuesday, July 14. See carolinerosemusic.com/tour for ticket info.)
Rose hopes the classified shows put fans first, and they’re sidestepping traditional concert promotion by announcing the tour via their mailing list and one single social media post. But Rose also hopes the message behind the shows helps tackle a bigger issue plaguing the music industry right now.
“I feel like we just have watched the service fees go up and up and up, and none of that money has gone to the bands or even the venue staff,” Rose says. “I think everybody is just sort of scratching their heads as to where that cost goes. … My bullshit meter has been in the red for so long. It’s all pretty much broken at this point.”
Rose has dug into what they describe as a “DIY trench” as of late. They’re doubling down on artistic independence while also trying to enact the change they want to see across the industry.
“Without some symbiosis in the ecosystem of the music industry, it’s a monopoly, it’s a monoculture,” they say. “It’s like a Goliath that you cannot fight. So I don’t know, I’ve just been on my soapbox screaming into the wind.”
As a new era emerges for Rose, one thing is guaranteed: “Yip Yip Yow” will be along for the ride.
After sitting on the shelf for years, the mutated Americana anthem was given new life by Rose and producer John Congleton. The single is what happens when a group of teenagers who are “equally obsessed with The Gun Club and Britney Spears” form a garage band, as Rose puts it. It’s simplistic yet stacked, featuring punchy, twang-forward guitar and razor-sharp vocals that make it painfully obvious why the pointed tune became a concert staple.
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It wasn’t easy to reach the final version of “Yip Yip Yow,” though. The song resurfaced while Rose sifted through ideas for their next project, and it took recording at least four times before it came out just right.
“I was like, ‘Can we do it again, but dipshit style?’” says Rose, explaining the way they described their vision for the song in the studio. “‘Like, imagine you’re a 16-year-old in a garage and you don’t know how to play your instrument. That’s what I want the song to sound like.’”
From there, the recording blossomed, Rose says.
“They didn’t play worse, but they played with abandon,” Rose says of their band. “And that’s what it needed.”
The single is the inaugural release from Rose’s recently launched independent label, SUCK Records. Though the song is finally getting its well-deserved spot in the limelight, Rose says fans might catch it on an undisclosed upcoming “collection of songs.” Though they aren’t revealing much just yet, they describe the project as “hyper Americana” with “dive bar energy.” They also explain that the upcoming pop-up shows may give fans a chance to get very familiar with the aforementioned new material.
“There may or may not be a new record. And, with this said, there may or may not be a bootleg at this pop-up — that may or may not be the record.”
