share your story as they say: you don’t need a parachute to skydive, you need a parachute to skydive twice. one of the most amazing things about sharing your story is you can help guide other people through their lives. we’re all walking this planet together. please share your story with us. and please be respectful of other rats’ stories.
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
“NO I’M FINE!!” “THIS IS LESS ABOUT THE OUTCOME THAN THE PATH ALONG THE WAY.” Hey Rugrats, Dom here. I’m sure you’ve all probably seen the email Casey sent out with this new song, but if you haven’t, I figured I’d give some of my own perspective on it before passing the torch over to the story-lord. I think in some way, we all battle with internal struggles we never really talk about with others.
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.
Trying to be Radiohead… hey rats, we’re overachievers, so instead of doing one live song this week like we usually do, we tried two. both covers. both by our favorite collective band, radiohead. this cover of “no surprises” fell a little short in our opinion, but it will get better with time. i wanted to share it here in the spirit of growth and because we fucking love you guys and wanted to give
LONESOME & MAD GUITAR TUTORIAL how to play lonesome and mad on guitar but explained by an out-of-breath dummy. hey rats! someone posted a meme in the discord, asking for a tab for “lonesome & mad,” and so we decided to oblige by doing a quick guitar tutorial for you all. brendan and sean are going to follow up with some sauce on the other instruments soon, but I just wanted to take
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
JUST ONE OF THOSE SONGS THAT JUMPED IN MY BONES AND STAYED “IF YOU WON’T WAKE UP, I DON’T WANT TO WAKE UP…” People resonate with songs for all types of reasons. It can be the lyrics, the rhythm, the band’s culture, the singer’s hair, the guitarist’s HUGE muscles . . . sometimes though, a tune can just remind you of a time and a place and a feeling. This is one of those
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
HOW TO WANT TO BE A GOOD HUMAN BUT NOT REALLY DO IT, A SHITTY GUIDE “IT’S HARD TO BE, HARD TO BE A DECENT HUMAN BEING…” Go to the gym—your mental health is important. Feel tired. Drink a small, black coffee. Make an humungous big-farm steroid egg. Wonder if it would really be that hard to buy free-range eggs. Look up free range eggs and learn they come from chickens in quail-sized cages. Give
“LEAVE ME ALONE! WAIT…NO, COME BACK!” I wanted to post something happy and exciting … but that’s just not how today is going. Hey Rats, Sean again. You know these days. The ones that just start out wrong. Where every little thing is a big deal. Where videos of dogs and soldiers being reunited make you weep uncontrollably. Like, what? That’s not what you’re even sad about…you just
STUFFED MONKEY FAREWELL: LIVE IN THE LIVING ROOM WE’VE BEEN SO BUSY, WE HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO JUST SIT DOWN AND PLAY TOGETHER. Hey all, It’s Sean (Shrub, if you’ve figured out my Rat Chat alias 😛). I know you’ve heard a lot of talk about how busy we are building website stuff and launching the album and planning a tour and paying our debt and managing our feelings AND while things are
HARRY WINSLOW???? WE NEVER RELEASED THIS BUT IT’S A GOOD SONG??? WE WE THINK??? Hey all, Casey againnnnn. It’s Sunday. Sean is doing some backend work and listening to Alien Ant Farm (ha!) while I cringe at the storytime from our live stream, talk with Nikki, Laura, and Beth in Rat Chat, and write this. It’s a nice, quiet, grey Texas Sunday morning outside. It rained last week and the grass
I FEEL LIKE I WANT TO GO HOOOOOMEEEEE WE’VE BEEN WANTING TO SHARE THIS SINCE WE FINISHED IT. Hey all, Casey here. So many of you have been in our comments and DMs, asking for this song. It feels TERRIBLE keeping it from everyone, but our press people would kill us if we shared it before launch. In fact, if they knew we were doing THIS they’d probably be pissed. Not to mention that this
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.
The Secret Hideout is a website we designed to give you a place off of social media where you could be more connected to us.
This is our first attempt at something like this, so we ABSOLUTELY will be putting more time and resources into making it easier to use as time goes on.
Here is the most simple breakdown…
Here is a description of each page:
The Feed: This is much like a social media feed, although very duct-tape-and-paperclip. Posts are listed in chronological order, and we add new ones at an arbitrary frequency. Because our social media is SO public-facing these days, we hope to make The Hideout Feed a place where we can be a little bit more homey, less polished, and relaxed. We want to treat these posts like we’re writing to close friends, which, if you’re supporting us this way, you might as well be.
The Hideout: The Hideout is a doodle. An animated doodle that you can click on. It’s meant to be a place where we can hide little things for you to find, because it feels magical and cool to us. We will update it from time to time (don’t worry, we will email you when we make big changes) but we want fans to be able to go there, explore, see a new thing, discover it, and share it with other fans. We think that’s cool and fun and SO different from the way the rest of the internet works.
rat chat: The rat chat is a private discord server we set up so that members of the hideout can chat with other members. you’ll need to set up a discord account and download the app in order to participate. there is a lovely, kind, supportive, funny, and awesome community waiting for you should you decide to join!
Acct Info: The Acct Info page allows you to change or cancel your monthly donation at any time. If you cancel, you will lose access to the secret hideout immediately. It also gives you access to all necessary account info (billing, profile details, etc).
We want people to donate what they think is fair, which keeps this a fun, inspired project for us. If you feel that this site is only worth the minimum $5, great! If you want to donate more, and be a bigger patron of our work, wonderful! There’s no pressure. We just hope you enjoy yourself. Really (:
