On any given night, Pinkshift vocalist Ashrita Kumar pinballs across the stage — arms flailing, knees buckling, screams hitting like warning sirens. That chaos has always been part of the Maryland trio’s DNA — but now it sounds different. With their sophomore album, Earthkeeper, Pinkshift’s once-buoyant pop punk has transformed into something heavier: a metal-and-hardcore wrecking ball. The shift isn’t cosmetic. It’s a creative recalibration, their sound finally catching up to the fury and urgency of Kumar’s words.
Formed in 2018, Pinkshift — Kumar, guitarist Paul Vallejo and drummer Myron Houngbedji — broke out two years later with the viral kiss-off “i’m gonna tell my therapist on you.” They soon signed to Hopeless Records, where they dropped their debut record, 2022’s Love Me Forever. It was a rapid ascent that found Pinkshift riding the wave of the ongoing pop-punk revival and hitting the road with Mannequin Pussy, L.S. Dunes, Thursday, the Gaslight Anthem, PUP and more.
But in the turbulent post-pandemic world, something shifted. Pinkshift began drifting away from pop punk’s upbeat bounce and digging into gnarlier, more aggressive sounds that better confronted what Kumar and Co. saw as society’s slow death-march toward a late-capitalist implosion.
Their influences got toothier too, reflecting the serrated edges of contemporaries like Loathe and Knocked Loose. That evolution reaches its peak on Earthkeeper, a 12-song tempest where rage and renewal collide. But the band aren’t just amplifying their anger here — they’re also reaching inward.
“I wanted to be very intentional about the emotional catharsis that comes with screaming,” Kumar says of the album, which explores themes of community, resilience and our connection to both the physical and spiritual worlds. That tension between despair and care comes crashing into the nu-gazey “Don’t Fight,” which moves between Vallejo’s melodic clean vocals and Kumar’s shouts of “I won’t forgive and I won’t forget/Don’t be afraid is all I have left.”
Pinkshift are tackling some big topics throughout Earthkeeper, which makes sense given where they came from. The band’s roots can be traced back to an actual institution of big ideas: Johns Hopkins University. It was on the Baltimore campus where a chance encounter between Kumar and Vallejo changed the course of both of their lives.
The pair met through a student group for shared interests — in their case, playing cover songs. But they quickly discovered a creative chemistry potent enough to write originals. Kumar and Vallejo dove in and began demoing tracks in Logic. They soon began looking for a drummer, but the search stalled — until one day they overheard My Chemical Romance’s “Helena” spilling from a nearby rehearsal space.
“We were in the practice space next door, and then Paul’s like, ‘Everybody stop. We have to go to the practice room next door, because someone’s playing My Chem [on drums]” recalls Kumar.
The percussionist behind the door, practicing “Helena” on his kit, was Houngbedji. They struck up a conversation and immediately clicked. When Kumar and Vallejo later played him the demo they’d been working on — for what would become their single “Mars” — his excitement was palpable. It was exactly the spark they’d been looking for, and they invited him to join the band.
With Houngbedji locked in and only a handful of practices behind them, they didn’t wait to get everything perfect. In true punk fashion, they dove straight into booking shows around Baltimore — sometimes to an audience of one. “I am not exaggerating,” Kumar recalls with a laugh.
In March 2020, just as they were finding their footing and gearing up for their first multi-city tour, COVID-19 swept the globe — and live music ground to a halt.
“Everybody in New York is getting deathly ill. This is strange. We’ve gotta cancel our tour,” Kumar reflects. “And then everything got canceled. We were going to graduate and probably get jobs and forget this band ever existed. And then that got canceled. There were no jobs anymore. The job market got canceled. Then there was really nothing else to do besides music.”
In a morbid, roundabout way, the shutdown gave them the chance to focus all their energy on Pinkshift. Writing together became a refuge during that turbulent time. “The only thing I had to live for was our bi-weekly practice,” says Kumar. “I think this band — for all of us, through the pandemic — was our lifeline.”
After releasing their debut Saccharine EP, Pinkshift faced another crossroads. The band was offered an opening slot on Mannequin Pussy’s 2021 tour just as Houngbedji was accepted into medical school. He tried to defer. “Give me at least one year,” he recalls. When his request was denied, the choice became clear: fully commit to Pinkshift and hit the road.
As Love Me Forever arrived to acclaim, Pinkshift’s calendar filled-up fast. In the post-COVID touring boom, they were suddenly on the road with everyone from supergroup L.S. Dunes to Thursday. But that momentum came with an unexpected cost.
“The beginning of 2024 was pretty rough,” Kumar says. “We were like, Oh shit, we haven’t seen [our families] in a couple of years. Catching up with home life and existing as an adult at home, it’s weird. Do I have friends at home where I live? I don’t know.”
To break that cycle, Pinkshift booked a cabin on West Virginia’s Shenandoah Mountain, hauled their gear inside, and jammed until new music manifested. The band reconnected with each other — and with the joy of making music again. “I think we’ve all learned to accentuate each of our individual forms of expression,” says Vallejo. “We’ve had our own musical journeys individually, and so when we come together, it meshes in a very fun and collaborative way. It’s successful. This is our best album.”
The core thesis of Earthkeeper builds on the reconnection Pinkshift found in that mountain cabin and extends it outward — to the bonds that hold people together, and to the relationship we all share with the planet itself.
“I wanted to emphasize this idea that we are all interconnected,” Kumar says. “We can change the way that capitalism eats us alive. We have that power. Where do we derive this power from? We derive this power from each other, but also with our relationship to the Earth. Our relationship to nature is the most creative force that we can bear witness to. Nature is always changing, adapting and creating these pockets of oasis for living beings to flourish together. The record explores this idea of who the Earthkeeper is.”
But alongside that beauty is pain and longing. The bonds that resist oppression can be powerful, but they don’t erase the exhaustion of simply existing in a cruel world. “I want to feel whole again. I want to feel good again,” adds Kumar. “I’m so tired of being beaten down. I’m tired of people dying, and not knowing where they’re going, and feeling like they’re gone forever.”
That duality of anger and grace runs through Earthkeeper, from its roaring opener “Love It Here” (“Fuck your guns and fuck your violence/While we all bleed and you stay silent,” Kumar snarls), to “Freefall,” whose melodic inflections would make My Chemical Romance proud. Earthkeeper is a razor-sharp examination of society and the self.
When the album closes on “Something More,” it feels like Pinkshift arrive at an optimistic conclusion. In the spirit of their personal philosophy, Kumar leaves the listener with a closing declaration: “Wake up and shake it off/It’s not a dream anymore/You manifested a life/You wanted more so you made it something more.”
It’s a final reminder that Pinkshift’s transformation isn’t just sonic — it’s a rallying cry for survival, for community and for turning rage into lasting change. And they’re only getting started.