Proceeds will benefit the Defending Our Neighbors Fund to provide immigrants with legal aid as ICE crackdowns intensify under the Trump administration
Madi Diaz never planned to release the track-by-track cover of Blink-182‘s seminal record Enema of the State that she recorded while creating her latest album, Fatal Optimist. Coming into the studio each morning and laying down her take on a different song from the project was an exercise in letting “the nostalgia drive my memory for the lyrics and tear through a punky acoustic arrangement,” the musician shared on Instagram. But the more time she spent with the already familiar record, the more its surrounding irony made itself known to her.
“We started thinking about how incredible the name Enema Of The State is for a record,” Diaz said. “How the title is somehow so current and politically culturally socially ironic… How ridiculous it is to cover this record in 2025 when it feels like we need to flush the system and give our whole government a health check / gut check.”
Her version of Enema of the State — playfully dubbed Enema of the (Garden) State, since it was cut in New Jersey — is available for purchase via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the release will benefit the Defending Our Neighbors Fund. The community-driven fund aids in providing immigrants with legal support as ICE crackdowns intensify under the Trump administration. Diaz hopes that the record will help raise awareness and money for those who are “in need of defense and aid in their right to live and work and breathe and be and stay on American soil.”
“There is so much going on at this moment across America and so much pain with ICE raids and false condemnations of hard-working American citizens and undocumented immigrants,” Diaz said. “I may have been born on US soil but my family came from Danish and Peruvian immigrants. So much of The USA is populated by people who came from other places. There is a lot here we have to love and protect and nurture.”
The Defending our Neighbors Fund will provide “immediate grants for trusted organizations to deploy legal advice and bond assistance,” the musician continued. What started as a “fun exercise” Diaz picked up after her obsessive love for Enema of the State returned during her jogs quickly evolved into something much more meaningful.
“For me, it’s about much more than a nostalgia for teenage rebellion against mom and dad,” she said. “Fuck ICE. Enema Of The State Forever.”
