Trans-Fronted Indie Pop Band Arrlo is Trying to Change Minds with Relatable Tunes

Arrlo is an indie-pop band from Las Vegas, Nevada serving up some truly catchy songs about love and heartbreak. The band’s transgender frontman Sunni Suede (he/him) has a dynamic energy that shines through in his lyrics. Backed by the talents of Alexander Vera (bass, he/him) and Anthony Braun (drums, he/him), Suede’s lyrics aren’t always about being transgender, but he makes sure that he talks about his transness on stage at every concert so audiences know what this band represents. Suede hopes to win over transphobes with relatable songs about broken hearts, which he thinks are pretty universal.

OFM got a chance to sit down with the up-and-coming band to get their perspective on their new singles and what’s next for Arrlo.

OFM: How did this project come about? How did this get started?

Sunni Suede: Me and Alex used to play music together in California before COVID. And then after COVID, after quarantine, we moved out here [to Las Vegas], started playing some shows. We met Anthony. And yeah, we’ve just been trying to branch outside of Vegas ever since.

Where did the name Arrlo come from?

SS: When my grandma was in high school, she had a high school sweetheart and his name was Arrlo. And after they graduated they got married and then–right after they got married, after their honeymoon–he went into the army and was going through boot camp and ended up getting kicked in the head by a drill sergeant. And then I think something was happening with headaches and he went to a doctor and they found out that he had brain cancer. He died shortly thereafter.

So then, years later, she met my grandpa and continued her life [and] was married to him for 20 years. But the way that my grandma talks about Arrlo, he sounded like a great guy. And I wouldn’t be here if that didn’t happen. It’s an unfortunate thing that happened, but I personally want to do something meaningful with the life that I have. It’s a privilege to get older; not everyone does. So it’s in memory of Arrlo and someone that my grandma cared about very much.

That’s a really fascinating story. I wasn’t expecting that. So what are your influences for this project?

SS: Anthony, you’ve got so many,

Anthony Braun: A lot of the same and a lot of different ones, too. I have a lot of influence from the band Journey and Green Day, a lot of early 2000s rock bands.

SS: Third Eye Blind, right?

AB: Yeah. Yeah.

SS: Most of us grew up on some sort of variation of MTV, VH1, BET, and we were really inspired by everything. And when we write music, we’re not saying, Oh, we’re going for this particular genre. We just want to make a good song every time we write a song, and make it commercially catchy and accessible. So we pretty much have a song for everybody, whether you like heavy music, or R&B, or rap and pop. We just tried to spider web and touch all genres.

So you have the new single out called “Cavities.” Can you talk a little bit about what that song is about and how that came about?

SS: So I met somebody that I ended up having very strong feelings for, and that had strong feelings for me as well. I didn’t know it at the time. There was always this unspoken, magnetic energy, but we were both in other relationships and different points in our lives. And in my head, I was like, This makes no sense. And she’s burlesque dancer and she had a big old career and she was her own person. And I’m like, We might feel a certain way, but it doesn’t mean anything is going to happen. So that’s [why] in the song. I say, “Maybe in another lifetime.” Because it was something I felt very strongly for her, but I just didn’t think anything would ever happen.

Then I wrote the song and then presented it to the guys we all jammed it out. And eventually she found out about it and, over time, we ended up together, but it wasn’t an overnight thing. Yeah, it was a star-crossed lovers situation and I was willing to accept that, but everything ended up working out in our favor in the end. But that’s the thing is, for certain things to fall together, certain things have to pull apart. And what I’ve realized about life is that it is just constantly ebbing and flowing. And that song, it’s a wishful thinking sort of song but it ended up in my favor after the song was written. So I don’t know if it’s good luck. Or good luck for me, bad luck for other people, I guess.

You organized your own music festival and food drive called “SunCan.” Can you talk to us a little bit about that and how that came about?

Alexander Vera: We wanted to do something with our scene out here. The Vegas scene musically has been so gracious to us. And we wanted to do something that was going to give back in a way. We got 10 bands and a DJ, but just all bands that we’ve made friends with, and we were happy to have them on. And with the we had the idea of the canned food drive to provide an incentive for a discount. But we didn’t realize how many people would bring cans, and we had like five cars full of cans. So making that donation was wonderful and just being able to give back to Vegas has been cool in just such a short amount of time that we’ve been active out here, it’s been very eye opening and wonderful. So we wanted to do something give back.

Do you face any challenges as a trans-fronted band in the indie rock world?

SS: Surprisingly, we’ve not really had any issues with the bands that we play with. Everyone’s really supportive. And we say it at every show; I have a little two-minute scripted speech that I talk about. People are very receptive to it. People are very willing to learn. We’ve gotten a little bit of hate on Facebook from middle-aged white dudes that are huge Trumpers. It’s always just copy/paste, it’s always the same person. [They’ll say,] Why do you feel the need to say this? Your music’s good and you should just let it stand on its own. But anyone can write a good song. So what makes you stand out?

And we feel like this is a lens that not a lot of people get to hear from. And if I’m not open about it, people don’t know that I’m trans. We had somebody at our show the other day, another trans guy, who pulled me aside after the show and was like, Hey, thank you so much for talking about this, it needs to be talked about. And he’s like, I would have never known you were trans unless you said something. And I told him, I would have not known you are trans so thank you for saying something. But we luckily haven’t had any issues.

Now if there’s people that won’t book us, just based off that fact, we’ll never know because they can just say, Oh, we don’t book your kind of music. But we also feel a need to be undeniably good and catchy. Therefore, when someone says no to us, it’s like, Well, you either don’t book that genre at all, or there might be another reason. But we try not to jump to that conclusion because someone might just not like our music and that’s totally valid and fine. But people can use that excuse to not expose their transphobia. But that’s something we’re fine with because I’m done; I’m not going to hide in the closet anymore.

And how is transness and queerness reflected in your music? Or is it reflected at all?

AV:  We’ve got a new single that we’re that we’re going to be releasing soon. [When we play it] live we’ve now worked it to where, when we do talk about Sunni being transgender, he has a moment where he delivers a speech [about] why we feel the need to express that. There’s not a lot of songs that are written from this perspective, but it’s not super direct to the point where everyone can vibe with it and then they realize, Oh, this is promoting LGBTQ and queer sexuality and embracing it.

SS: Yeah, and I think that’s our only song that is directly pointed at the LGBTQ community. It’s going to release in October. But none of our other songs that we’re playing right now have anything specifically to do with anything about my transness just because I know that if I’m like, Hey, we’re trans-fronted, I know the demographic that’s going to accept us off the bat, which is going to be most of the LGBTQ community or allies of the community. But what we’re also trying to do is humanize it and make the people who are on the edge, [who] don’t understand it, or don’t have the education, we’re trying to reach those people as well. And those are voters. People are voting on these issues and people have opinions on these issues, even if they’re not trans or they don’t have the education. So I want the education to come from somebody who is trans and not just an echo chamber on Facebook.

I sing about heartbreak and losing loved ones and depression and all that stuff because that’s something everybody goes [through], whether you’re trans or you’re cis or whatever. So the main goal is to have some transphobic Trump supporter listening to the radio in Kansas somewhere Oklahoma listening be like, Oh my god, I love this song. Oh, yeah! My heartbreak! That girl broke my heart, too, man. And then they find out Oh, this thing kicks ass, let me check out who they are. Oh, my God, trans-fronted? They’d look like an idiot if they were like, Oh, well, I hate this band now. So it makes people think Oh, we actually have something in common; we had our hearts broken.

I wasn’t going to get too much into your singles that haven’t been released yet since this is probably going to come out before then, but since you brought up the next single that was coming out, I did notice that it has a number of Harry Potter references in it. Was that a complicated thing for you to address?

AV: You were watching an entire Harry Potter marathon and then you were just writing down. You’re like, Oh, I’m inspired! And it just came across as that.

SS: Yeah, this was during quarantine, wasn’t it?

AV: Yeah. Yeah.

SS: I was like, I’m going to watch the Harry Potter marathon for funsies. And then [Alex] wrote the instrumental. And I was like, ah, Slutmagik! Slutmagik is actually a word that came from Ryan Reynolds says in the movie Waiting, where he goes And poof by some form of slut magic you appear. And I always thought that line was funny. And people talk about the LGBTQ community as being sexually immoral. We accept violence and guns and kids getting murdered in schools, but someone expressing their sexuality, we’re trying to make so many laws against even just educating kids on sex ed. We need sex ed for queer kids, too. And sexuality is blown way out of proportion. As long as you’re a consenting adult, I don’t think it really matters what you do, as long as it doesn’t negatively affect someone else.

But yeah, with the Harry Potter thing I was just having fun. And then all that JK Rowling stuff came out and I was like, Oh, this is kind of fun, because the Harry Potter kids are going to love it. But I also have a line in there that says, “Just another tranny K-K-Karen’s want to cancel.” And I say, “But they got a policy, no T in LGB. And we should do nothing about the flaws in our biology.” And what I meant, “No T in LGB” is there is also a lot of transphobia within the LGBT community. I didn’t know that there were gay people that existed that were transphobic, which was weird, because I’m like, We’re in the same community, so how are you against that? But surprisingly, there’s a lot. So I’m calling them out, too. And “We should do nothing about the flaws in our biology.” People will be like, Oh, well, God made you that there’s no flaws. And it’s like, Yeah, well, if you believe in God, there’s no flaws, but for people who don’t believe in God, or maybe believe in something else, yeah, you can. For me, it’s a flaw, and I did something to fix it. We do that with crooked teeth; we do that with hair color; we do that with our noses if we think our nose is too big or not big enough, we fix it with plastic surgery. People are cherry pickers when it comes to body modification.

And that song is a big fuck you to anybody and everybody who is close minded when it comes to trans stuff. And then I thought the Harry Potter references were just a fun thing, because I know that there’s a lot of queer kids that love Harry Potter and Harry Potter, as a story, has helped a lot of queer kids. And I know that [most of] the actors are super supportive of the community as well. It just came together and it’s this queer sexual anthem.

So what’s next for Arlo then?

SS: Anthony, what’s next?

AB: We have a couple of singles coming out before, and then right after, the end of the year. And we’re just planning on playing shows out of town regionally, hitting new markets and making friends along the way, and trying to spread the message.

Is there anything else you want to throw in or plug?

SS: Just if anybody wants to add “Cavities” or “Slutmagik!” when it comes out to their Spotify playlist that would really help us just getting our Spotify numbers up. That’s really what we’re focused on right now. So anybody who can add us to their playlists or share the song, add us on Instagram, just those tiny little things that cost nothing helps out tremendously.

AV: And go through the other stuff we have.

You can keep up with Arrlo on Instagram at @arrlomusic as well as on Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok.