Cheap Bouquet is a pop-punk 4-piece from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Though they only have two releases, including a fun Punk Goes Pop-style play on "360" originally by Charli XCX, the band was established in 2024 and has gained traction in the local live scene around the Twin Cities. Their sound is fun, with a nice take on the 2010 pop-punk feel while carrying it into this era of sound for the subgenre at the same time.
On October 23rd, Cheap Bouquet released their debut single, "Anything Other Than That," on DPSs, and it goes to show that the local scene can't keep them to themselves much longer!
One of the hardest cycles to break is the kind where you dearly love someone who keeps playing you, and you keep believing them when they tell you it's over, usually to be proven wrong again. "Anything Other Than That" seems to be a song about just that. With lyrics like "Fool me once, fool me twice / You fool me every time, and every time I come back," it feels like those lines that echo out in an argument with an ex.
"And woah, karma's on the loose and / Gotta tie up the loose ends / Won't let you get away with this again" is such a fun lead-in to the chorus too. This song reminds me of something you would hear State Champs jump in a collab on, one of my personal favorite older pop-punk bands, so you can bet I would petition to see it happen!
I could hear this as a fun collab song as well as a great live-energy song, but let's talk about how fun it would be in a rom-com or coming-of-age movies/shows. I think this would really set the scene for the aftermath of a breakup in a movie where it's a montage of the main character finally getting to go do all the things their ex-partner didn't let them do and enjoying themselves again.
Photo Credit: 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐨𝐬
Cheap Bouquet is one of the bands keeping an old sound style alive and refreshing it in a way that pulls more of the younger generations into a sound that used to be such a formative experience for a lot of us, while also having a focus on some of the topics we, as a society, still keep to ourselves and handle on our own. I will always appreciate a good band and song that reminds us that we aren't on our own in these things.
I am so excited to see this band grow and release more music over time! I know their sound can pull people in and make them fall in love, not only with pop punk music and Cheap Bouquet themselves, but also with the ability to talk about their lived experiences with one another.
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