A Year Update from the Drummer and Keyboarder A Year Update from the Drummer and Keyboarder hi rats! brendan here. it’s been almost exactly one year since we moved to portland. and as we’re settling into our new house, we’re constantly changing the studio around to accommodate what we need from the space. recently, we set up this little keys booth where all the keys we have in the house are accessible at any time.

come pick up a synth with me come pick up a synth with me hey guys! brendan here! as the haze of releasing ilottebiiha is settling and things are going back to “normal,” i wanted to give y’all a glimpse into my day to day. so i made this little video. this all started because i really wanted to ride my scooter (it’s fun) but i also had to pick up synths from the portland

sean’s emo kid blog sean’s emo kid blog hey nerds, it’s sean. i miss you. we leave for l.a. to record more music next week. it’s going to be recorded to tape with our good friend dave. i can’t wait. i’ve been nostalgic lately. here are some poems and their random and arbitrary picture counterparts with rambling captions. they kind of explain what i’ve been up to/thinking about. think of it like a mid-aughts, emo

a little piano cover by brendan a little piano cover by brendan hi there rats! when things get stale for me and i need to shake things up a bit, there are a few things i do to find inspiration. i tend to read a lot—mostly fiction—but lately i’ve been reading a lot of memoirs written by other musicians. i like to get in their heads, see what worked for them, and see how they

the devil smiles guitar pro tab & sheet music the devil smiles guitar pro tab & sheet music Hey, rugrats. Discord Admin Meepus here. I have dreams, you know. When I was just a boy, far before I moved over to Australia, I loved rhythm games. More specifically, those ones with the plastic instruments. There was just something about that experience. Cheering crowds, face-melting guitar solos, explosions of colors, gold stars, triple-digit percentages that told

Rugrat Spotlight: Lumi Rugrat Spotlight: Lumi Hey there, rugrats! Discord Admin Meepus here.​ With the busy-bodied band doing their best to relocate UTR HQ, it’s been understandably quiet lately. Of course, as much as I tell all my friends and family that I’m part of an indie band (I don’t mention that my instrument is community management), we all know that I’m over here in Australia, remaining idle-bodied, free of the stresses of moving. So,

new song – the devil smiles!! NEW SONG – the DEVIL SMILES! Hi Friends. Tomorrow I head out to California to try to get my IDs situated, particularly with regards to my gender marker. The last time I got pulled over for a speeding ticket was quite the spectacle, especially considering the vibe of the gas-station-passersby in the western-facaded small Texas town. I mentioned on our last voice check-in that we would be sharing some

north star tab & sheet music north star tab & sheet music Hello, rugrats! Meepus here. Most of you will know me as the admin of the Discord server, but some of you may not know me at all. This presents me with an opportunity to remind those lone wolves out there to join us in The Rat Chat, where you can pop in to see the Discord-exclusive band livestreams, check out the Rat Chat

packing for tour: a nervous guide packing for tour: a nervous guide hi friends! sean here. our fall tour is a month away and there’s a mountain of things to do. on top of all of our normal responsibilities, we’re adding… – polishing the set,– coordinating our crew and the openers,– finishing the album launch,– preparing merch,– getting our live gear dialed in, …all while trying to maintain our sanity. luckily, we’ve learned a lot

Livestream tonight!!! livestream tonight!!! hiya lovely rats— tonight we’re going live to talk about the new album, mad girl’s, our new merch, and even tease some little clips of new songs and videos. the normies will now be allowed to preorder as well, which is no fun for y’all (since by now you’re probs loaded up), so we’re limiting video participants to our lovely paying patrons (you). if you would like to join us with

HIE PREORDERsNOW OPEN!!!!!!! HIE PREORDERS NOW OPEN!!!!!!! Hi rats. hopefully my explanation wasn’t too somber—it’s just that this album is heavy and meant a lot to me when I wrote it. it’s some kind of art, and it feels a little more somber to talk about than previous records. This go-round of merch is lovely, though, and, I think, very much worth having. As always, thank you for supporting us 🙂 Click Below to preorder

ruidoso pt v ruidoso pt v Lately, so much has changed for me, I am trying to find a new way of being, of navigating my life in a new body with a new style and a new way of signifying to others. Have you ever seen that little saussurian diagram of sign/signified? Hopefully the language nerds will bear with me while I explain something they already know, but the idea is that every word

ruidoso pt iv ruidoso pt iv Tara Fike found us through our video for Maybe Later during a trying time. I won’t go into detail for her own privacy, but she had a major surgery that changed her life, and, during that time, enduring an insurmountable amount of physical pain, took comfort in our music. We met her at our album release for Homesick, to which she drove, alone, during her recovery, from New Mexico.

ruidoso pt VI ruidoso pt VI It’s funny, changing my outsides, it makes me realize how similar we are on the inside. I am the same person I always was, but, as I change, the world changes around me, for me, in a way, to reconcile how I seem. New mental doors are opening as fast as others are closing. One of those new doors is how similar we all are, really. More than ever,

North Star NORTH Star Well, rats, I have to confess: I feel guilty. I feel guilty that you’ve been supporting us through this membership service for a long while without much from us. Believe it or not, we have been trying to find a way to re-do this thing, to reimagine it in way that we can balance, while writing, recording, touring, posting, booking, manufacturing, learning, making, selling, and, when we’re lucky, living. I am

ruidoso pt iii ruidoso pt iii When we finally make it to Ruidoso, Bradshaw and his mom, Terry, welcome us in. She tells me she had a dream of a group of male deer and one female deer standing in a sunbeam on its lonesome. I wonder if she is making this up, it’s so sweet. We give her a plant we bought on the road, a little succulent. She thanks us. When we get

ruidoso Pt II Ruidoso pt ii Sometime before we get to our hotel in Big Spring, TX—which is comically springless and full of people who chew their cheeks between words—we stop at a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican joint. The hostess points at a booth and asks if we mind sitting there, but Brendan, strangely, asks to sit on the opposite side of the room. I think to myself, That’s odd, and insist the booth is fine.

ruidoso pt i ruidoso pt i Today, we packed up Old Trusty, my beater Prius, with an elephant’s worth of music gear and started off towards Ruidoso, NM, where our manager Bradshaw is donating us a cabin to record something new. Last night, we put the finishing touches on a fourth record, “happiness is easy, pt I,” the first half of a 30-song garble of my last few years of trying to figure out what

Welcome to the Secret Hideout! Welcome to the Secret Hideout v3! We hope you enjoy this new version! For those of you just arriving, this is our third redesign and this time I think we’re really onto something. When designing this version, we asked y’all what you enjoyed about the first two versions. We took all of your wonderful suggestions into consideration and we tried to build a website that was for all of you,

PENCILS DOWN, TIME’S UP! The first annual Secret Hideout contest is officially over. rats, the month is ending and that means our Secret Hideout referral contest is officially over! first of all, thank you times a million to all those who participated. every little bit helps keep this damn thing alive and we have all of you to thank for getting us this far. this contest was meant to do a few things: grow our

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!! How to win a free weekend getaway with the band: rug rats, We sent some of this same information in an email to all of the hideout members, but wanted to announce it here as well since you’re all the hardcore folks. earlier this year, we launched the secret hideout version 1, which was a huge success thanks to YOU. now…you might have noticed it’s been a little quiet around here.

WE’RE GOING LIVE, PEOPLE! AND THERE’S LIMITED SPOTS… This is my “you know the drill” face… hey party people!   We’re going live on FRIDAY 11/4 at 8:30 cdt to talk about the new album.    as you know, hideout members have the exclusive privilege of joining the stream to chat with us; HOWEVER, we tend to get a little sidetracked without any ground rules.    so here’s the plan:   we have limited time,

The NEW SHINY THINGS are finally here!!! Hello beautiful human, I hope you’re ready for what I’m about to drop on you…   So, the question of the last 6 months has been: WHEN DOES IT COME OUT?   Honestly, we didn’t really have a concrete answer…until today.    And the answer is NOW!   Well, at least to the few special people in this Hideout. We wanted to make sure our most loyal fans

EVERY AD WE’VE EVER PUT OUT IN ONE SPOT Whether it was on Facebook or Instagram, I’m sure there’s that one special UTR video that first caught your ear, right?    …the one that you sing to in your car or in the shower, much to your neighbors chagrin.    …the one you’ve been combing Spotify and YouTube for.   …the one that is going to be on our next album, but is physically impossible

YOU’RE ALWAYS IMPROVING AT SOMETHING. THINGS TAKE TIME. TRUST YOURSELF. TRUST THE PROCESS. Hey Y’all,   Brendan here. Sorry I haven’t posted yet!    We’ve been super busy filming music videos for the Homesick for Another World launch, they came out pretty great and I can’t wait to share them with you!    but I finally had a moment this weekend to sit down and play some piano after working some long days with the

ALMOST DONE! Wohooo! I can’t believe it. We’re almost done designing this thing. Now we send it off to some people to test it and make sure it isn’t shit! I imagine we’ll have to make some changes to the way things work, but as it stands we’re pretty close.   The more we do this band thing and try to push ourselves to learn new skills, like building a wacky website, animating GIFs, working

A quick welcome from Sean Hey friends! Sean here. I am not a website designer or developer. One time, I sent Casey’s laptop to a “Nigerian Prince” scammer cause I couldn’t suss out a fake Paypal email.   One time, I put one of UTR’s tunes on Spotify without audio.   One time, I somehow put a VERY personal photo of myself on one of the bands streaming platforms when changing the band’s press picture.