If you spend enough time in Austin’s music scene, you eventually meet a band that feels like a long-running inside joke with amps. New Strangers – the post-punk trio of singer-guitarist Kyle Carpenter, drummer Nick Stout, and bassist Benton Kaufman – very much boast that brand of magic. They’ve been playing together for so long that calling them “bandmates” doesn’t seem to cover it.
When I meet the musicians in their practice room, it feels like stepping into a clubhouse. Stout and Carpenter have been making noise together for 15 years, and Kaufman’s been in the mix for a decade. “I was kind of their fanboy and finally got asked to play something,” Kaufman admits. “I started playing music with them so young – at that time I wasn’t really much of a musician, so I feel like they’ve kind of shaped me.”
The years of playing together show in their live performance. Onstage at Hotel Vegas last month, New Strangers drew the outdoor crowd in from their smoke breaks with a coiled-tight rhythm section and cutting guitar riffs. For how fast and complex the songs are, the artists hardly looked to each other for guidance – they seemed telepathic.
Their setlist is packed with frenetic anthems, but the bandmates say their sound has mellowed out over the years. Getting older and getting sober shifted the way Carpenter writes. “We’re not as angry,” he says. “I want to sing more than scream at this point.”
Not that they’ve lost their chaos entirely. The band took us down memory lane and recounted some live show horror stories, including their first “real” show, which was a house party at their own home where they got way too drunk right before having to rip through their fastest songs. “We’re drunk and we have to play really fast?” Stout laughs.
If their past is endearing, their future is ambitious: New Strangers plans to record their next album themselves – on tape – in that same practice room, next year. “I want to roll with that: friends getting together where we play and just recording,” Carpenter says. “That’s how all of our favorite bands did it.”
This month’s People To Wave To docu-concert captures all of it: the history, the jokes, the growth, and the live electricity. Filmed at Hotel Vegas on Nov. 5, 2025, with additional camera work by Kailey McComas, the performance presents New Strangers exactly as they are: seasoned but not jaded, mellowed but still punchy, a tight-knit trio finding maturity without losing the spark that made them pick up instruments in the first place.
Austin has watched these guys grow up. Now you can jump on the bandwagon.
The Austin Chronicle Presents: People To Wave To is a docu-concert series produced by Kyra Bruce. Find more on YouTube.
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