Most new artists would be overwhelmed opening their first realtour for three of the Aughts’ biggest hard-rock bands. Kami Kehoe didn’t just open — she jumped onstage with all three, hammering Seether’s “Fake It” and P.O.D.’s “Youth of the Nation” from behind the kit, and belting Lzzy Hale’s parts during Daughtry’s take on Journey’s “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart).”
“I grew up listening to all those guys, so making sure I didn’t fuck it up was definitely nerve-wracking,” she says during an off-day near the end of the six-week run. But Kehoe nailed it every time.
The multi-instrumentalist impressed during her own 25-minute set, too — bouncing between the mic and the drums to deliver a blend of rock, R&B and pop that feels like a sharper, modern evolution of the genre-bending sound that defined early 2000s nu-metal. After each gig, her merch table was mobbed by dads who lived through that era and their daughters discovering heavy music for the first time. “They all seem to want to be drummers,” she says of the latter with a grin. It’s easy to see why.
Kehoe is best known for absolutely destroying her drum kit in powerhouse live clips that have blown up across TikTok (10 million likes and counting), but it’s her lyrics that are keeping people invested long after they’ve stopped scrolling. “DOPAMINE” is about the numbness that follows a brutal breakup, while the rest of her new KANDY EP digs into the fallout of a toxic relationship.
“Every song is like therapy for me,” she says. Releasing them, she hopes, offers the same catharsis to the listener. “I hate that people are relating to these sad, vulnerable songs,” she admits. “But I love that I can make them feel less alone in what they’re going through.” It’s that raw emotional honesty — paired with a heavy, shape-shifting sound — that’s propelling her far beyond viral fame.
Despite that momentum, building an online following means Kehoe still feels she has something to prove. “I don’t love hearing there’s a stigma about getting popular off social media, especially because I’ve been doing music long before TikTok even existed,” the 22-year-old explains. “I want to show people I’m a true artist.”
She got her first toy drum kit when she was three, a ploy from her parents to keep their wild-child toddler entertained. By six, she’d formed a band with her older sisters, Kierstin and Keyla, and for the next decade they wrote uplifting guitar anthems as Pink Furs and hustled to get their music heard however they could.
Kehoe still remembers standing outside Los Angeles’ Whisky a Go Go, flogging tickets to their next gig when she was just 10. After they struggled to get industry traction, her sisters suggested moving away from their seemingly unfashionable rock & roll sound toward something easier to market. Two more years of hard work followed before her sisters called it quits. Kehoe, though, wasn’t done.
At first, she pivoted to making music videos for SoundCloud rappers while teaching herself to produce and play keys. “I just wanted to be around music,” she says of her decision to go it alone. Kehoe dabbled in DIY R&B, hip-hop, folk and country as she searched for her voice as a solo artist. “When you’re in a band, you must rely on other people, which is fine,” she continues, “but I did that growing up, and I never want to carry the weight of others when I’m already having to push through to make myself known.”
Once Kehoe started performing live, she realized how much she missed the grit of an ace rock song. “It felt really boring,” she recalls. “I want to sweat onstage and I needed to feel something real.” Her 2023 single “SLEEP WHEN IM DEAD” marked that rollicking return — and since then, the angsty guitar anthems have come thick and fast.
She still pulls inspiration from everywhere — Miley Cyrus, Arctic Monkeys, Mac Miller, Omar Apollo — but the artists that shaped her most are Joan Jett and Green Day. Jett, she says, “made me feel like I can dominate any space while still being true to myself,” while Green Day “stuck up for the weirdos and outcasts.”
That outsider energy has long fueled Kehoe. She’s always been a highly emotional musician, but some of her previous collaborators made her feel strange for wanting to sing about darker, sadder subjects. “It was just what I was going through,” she says with a shrug. Now, she wants to inspire people to be whoever they want to be — a mission that underpins her personal mantra “Kure the World.”
“I know it’s such a huge statement,” she says, but she’s seen how real it can be. When Kehoe was six, she wrote a song to comfort her parents after one of her older sisters ran away from home. “It made them cry, which made me realize how powerful music can be.” Since then, she’s wanted to use her voice to help others in whatever way she can. Her recent single “FADE OUT,” which confronts the pain of seeing someone who no longer belongs in her world, was the first time she’d cried while writing a song — a reminder, she says, that things do get better.
“Even if just one person ends up understanding themselves a little better, or feels strong enough to leave a toxic relationship after listening to my music, that’s all that matters,” she says. “[Then] I’ve made the world a better place.”