In March, Dexter and the Moonrocks released “Freakin’ Out.” By May, the grunge-laced song had cracked the Top 40 of the Billboard 200. In June, the group opened a series of arena dates ahead of Turnpike Troubadours and Muscadine Bloodline. Come September, they announced an album release concert. Within a day, all 13,000 tickets were gone.
“Pretty good for an industry plant,” says drummer Ryan Fox.
Unless the industry in question is peak grunge, Fox is joking. After the pandemic, country music was pulled toward emo and then toward honky-tonk, but the shift with the most buzz right now is the one toward the alt-rock rage of the 1990s. Youthful, energy-filled bands like Cigarettes at Sunset, Fox N’ Vead, and Winyah, with roots across the country, have all seen explosive growth this year, especially with fanbases traditionally associated with country, folk, and Americana. It’s not a totally new trend (see Treaty Oak Revival, Koe Wetzel, Whiskey Myers), but its prevalence looks stronger than ever.
Within such a movement, no band is embracing it with the tenacity — or the audacity — of Dexter and the Moonrocks. They dropped their debut album, Friends That I Don’t Like, on Friday via Severance Records/Big Loud Rock. It was a record they had no plans to make when the year began. “It was tongue-in-cheek, like ‘… unless we have a fuckin’ big song,’” Fox says. In “Freakin’ Out,” they had one.
“We went into this year saying, ‘No album. Singles only,’” Ryan Anderson, lead guitarist, says. “And we immediately had to scrap that the second ‘Freakin’ Out’ started happening.”
The band is fronted by James Tuffs, who also plays guitar. Fox is the drummer and often the face of the Moonrocks on social media. Ryan Anderson and his brother Ty — the bassist — round out the group. They formed in 2021 in Throckmorton, Texas, population 727 and almost that many miles from an urban area. Their influences are a mix of grunge, punk, and Texas country music, and they decided to incorporate them all into one outfit.
There’s no rhyme or reason for the band’s name — there is no Dexter and the closest they come to moon rocks is calling their sound “western space grunge” — but it’s a name that concert promoters and venue owners have moved to the top of their wish lists since midsummer.
A year ago, a big show for the four-piece from West Texas would have meant a crowd of a few hundred. On Friday, when the Moonrocks released their full-length debut, they did so at Cook’s Garage in Lubbock, Texas, in front of those 13,000 fans who snagged tickets, along with a motocross showcase, BMX races, mud pits, and a lot of crowd surfers. Mosh pits are a common sight at Moonrocks shows.
“You have the hardcore scene, with, like Turnstile, and it’s super healthy right now,” Fox says. “But in our scene — making it OK to mosh and crowd surf and dress up like a fuckin’ wizard or a leprechaun, I think in our scene a lot of people don’t have the freedom to do that. With us, we’re gonna accept all of the weirdos, and we’re just gonna be a big group of idiots, and we’re gonna play rock as hard as we can.”
Friends That I Don’t Like features 13 tracks plus an outro titled “Is DeMar DeRozan Dexter?” It has guest appearances by Avery Anna and Treaty Oak Revival. Once they decided to make the record and tabbed Taylor Kimball (Koe Wetzel, Treaty Oak) to produce, the project came together quickly.
“We thought we were going to have the whole month of May off,” Tuffs says. “We were home for three days.”
“Freakin’ Out” is the album’s bellwether. Its angst-laden lyrics like “The panic’s setting in, Let me out/So I can get back in. I’m freakin’ out again” resonated first on social media and then with fans far beyond the band’s base. The song was still climbing the Billboard charts when the band was in the studio with Kimball. The group had viral hits before, like their 2021 breakout, “Couch,” and 2024’s “Sad in Carolina,” but those songs rose and fell quickly. “Freakin’ Out” was different.
“When it hit the Hot 100, that’s when I went, ‘Oh, shit. This song is actually kind of big,’” Tuffs says.
It’s far from the only standout on Friends That I Don’t Like. The collaboration with Anna, “Why Don’t You Say So,” dropped as a single ahead of the record with heavy buzz, raising the possibility of repeating the feat of “Freakin’ Out.” Treaty Oak Revival, who recently admonished their own fans for throwing objects at their concerts, appear on “12 Steps,” a tune written by the Moonrocks plus Treaty Oak frontman Sam Canty.
“We were in the studio, with the producer,” Ryan Anderson says, “and me and James both told him, ‘This song will not happen without Treaty Oak on it.’ And it couldn’t have been easier.”
For all the rock in their sound, Dexter and the Moonrocks still live in Texas, playing shows in the Texas country market, and earning the respect of their peers in that scene along the way. Like Treaty Oak, the band cites William Clark Green as a major influence and speaks of Turnpike like heroes. They tried to adapt to Texas country twang when they formed, but quickly found that people responded better to their natural roots in grunge and rock.
While touring with Turnpike and Muscadine Bloodline this summer, the Moonrocks won over both bands. In 2025, the Moonrocks made a public push for a Cheez-Its sponsorship, declaring it their favorite snack food. The snack company refused and asked the band to stop throwing Cheez-Its from the stage. In August, after the Moonrocks announced their debut on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, Turnpike frontman Evan Felker responded on social media, “CheezIts is rolling over in its grave.”
“I cannot begin to tell you how cool playing with them was,” Fox says. “I sent Evan the album, and he texted back, ‘If you guys had come around at the right time, I’d be playing a Les Paul.’ That’s the greatest songwriter of all-time saying that, and being a huge fan of us. I learned how to two-step to Turnpike. I learned how to slow dance to Turnpike. They are everything about being in Texas. I cried …”
In mid-October, the band will make its first Australian run as part of the annual Strummingbird Festival series. Then on Halloween, the Moonrocks kick off a headlining tour that stretches into February and features stops at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom, Mission Ballroom in Denver, and two nights at Webster Hall in New York.
“The show has always kind of been what it is, and we saw that it worked at the scale that it has,” Ryan Anderson says. “What you hear is what you see on stage. There’s no tracks. We’ve always wanted to keep it as real and as four dudes on stage playing instruments as it can sound.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose upcoming book, Sonoran Sounds, is set for release in March 2027 via Back Lounge Publishing.
