If you didn’t know better, you might mistake the band members of Hippo Campus for a group of regular college students. However, while most students are cramming for midterms, this band is opening for Walk The Moon at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado.
The young indie-pop Midwestern group, composed of lead singer and guitarist Jake “Turntan” Luppen, guitarist Nathan “Stitches” Stocker, bassist Zach “Espo” Sutton and drummer Whistler “Beans” Allen, formed while still in high school at the Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists.
Hippo Campus released their first EP “Bashful Creatures” in February 2015, a six-track playlist featuring their top hit “Suicide Saturday.” Since then, the band has toured across the country and in Europe, preparing for their upcoming EP “South” which is set to be released in early October.
“It’s pretty crazy being exposed to the bigger music markets like Chicago, New York and London and other places overseas,” Luppen said. “It’s just different, I guess. Coming from Minneapolis, me and everybody are like out for the best. Everyone wants us to succeed and do well, which is awesome.”
Hippo Campus’ latest release from “South,” “The Halocline,” debuted online in late August. While the word’s actual meaning is a scientific term for the illusion of air experienced by scuba divers in underwater caves, the band uses it as a metaphor for adulthood.
“We were just graduating high school, we were figuring out adulthood and what that meant and what it meant to grow up and go off to college, get a new job, and so on and so forth,” Luppen said. “We kind of discovered it wasn’t that black and white. The Halocline served to us, sort of the illusion of growing up, you just don’t [grow up], you know?”
Luppen said the tracks featured on “South” originate from a collection of eight songs the band wrote before “Bashful Creatures,” when they hoped to put out a full album.
“Some songs are different in the fact that there are some darker themes that play,” Luppen said of the “South” EP. “For sure there are some deeper moments, but I’m really proud of it, I think it’s fantastic, I’m excited to share it with people.”
While Hippo Campus has performed at top music festivals in the country such as South by Southwest and Lollapalooza, Luppen said the band always recognizes its hometown crowd.
“It’s always great to play shows back at home, because everybody’s super jazzed about it,” Luppen said. “Being home, there’s just such a strong support net behind us, it’s good to catch up there every now and again.”
Hippo Campus’ dance-inducing tunes and catchy lyrics attract a relatively young fan base, which Luppen said has both its pros and cons.
“A large majority of our fan base is 18 or younger, or kind of around there, so we have to play more all ages shows,” Luppen said. “Which is totally cool, and there are venues that will do that, but there’s also a lot of venues that won’t do that. It’s just a matter of finding the right places to play, I guess. We’ve been fortunate so far that people have been so gracious with us.”
Hippo Campus will perform a free concert Friday on King Street with New Orleans singer-songwriter Benjamin Booker and the local band The Hussy.
