“The attic’s never finished,” Nick Mateyunas says. “You can see exposed wood, and there’s stuff in it that you can’t get rid of, but it still holds value. It sticks around, and you don’t even know why. That’s what we are.”
Mateyunas is speaking of “attic rock,” the label that Arcy Drive chose for its sound that blends angsty emo with classic garage rock. Mateyunas is the front man and songwriter for the four-piece from Long Island. In a little more than half a decade, the group has risen from a hobby among friends to a name-drop in discussions about the next big thing in rock.
“I feel like there’s a nostalgic element to the sound,” Mateyunas continues. “They can see that we’re starting from nothing. We’re growing. We’ve never been musicians before. We’re all learning together.”
Arcy Drive is Mateyunas, drummer Brooke Tuozzo, guitarist Austin Jones, and bassist Patrick Helrigel. The four met in school in Northport, a village on Long Island’s North Shore, an hour east of New York City. Growing up, most of the band was more into sports than music, but shortly before the pandemic, they decided to get together and play some covers.
At the time, only Tuozzo had a musical background. She had played drums in elementary school, but it was enough of a headstart that the first year of Arcy Drive was spent with the other members largely playing catchup. There was one constant, however: Mateyunas had grown up a fan of Neil Young and Nirvana, and he was driven to be a songwriter.
“The first day we were all together, we really just wanted to play at our local dive bar,” Tuozzo says. “Covers and all that. Then, like a week later, Nick came over and showed me an original song, and I was like, ‘This is what we should be doing.’”
The group is social media savvy, and in 2021 and 2022, that was a veritable cheat code for musicians. A few original songs — especially “Roll My Stone” and the bluesy “Superbloomer” — went viral, but it was the band turning a decommissioned school bus into a tour bus over a series of videos that endeared them to the online crowd.
The band caught enough attention to land festival slots at Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo in 2023, and their song “Louie” helped to showcase Arcy Drive’s potential as bona fide superstars. The track plays out over unconventional percussion and guitars that call back to 1990s post-grunge, with Mateyunas as the centerpiece. There’s just enough inflection in his raspy vocals to draw a Bob Dylan comparison, yet it’s a sound that’s fresh and unique to Arcy Drive.
It’s also a song that Mateyunas wrote for a family member. Lyrics such as “Amaretto and Irish cream. Cheers to you, and a cheers to me,” were intended as a snapshot of his grandfather. “Louie” caught on quickly, and the crowd response to the tune at the 2026 Bonnaroo became one of the festival’s defining moments.
“I actually called my grandpa yesterday,” Mateyunas says. “He calls everybody ‘Louie,’ because he forgets everybody’s name. I was like, ‘Our song’s doing really well! Everyone seems to really like it!’ and he goes, ‘Yeah, Louie!’ It’s just funny to see this song about my grandpa be the one everyone likes. It’s hilarious, and he loves it.”
“Louie” became the signature song on 2025’s The Pit, their debut on Atlantic Records and an album that allowed Arcy Drive to tour on new music for the first time. “It amplified our live shows. They went from rowdy to real rowdy,” Jones recalls of The Pit’s release. Suddenly, fans knew the words to a dozen of the band’s songs and “Roll My Stone” no longer needed to anchor each set. But perhaps the most important contribution of The Pit to Arcy Drive was that it took the pressure off the band to win over each fan in concert. When they’re onstage now, they just go with the flow.
Arcy Drive. Photo: Tate Stussy*
“Something has to go slightly wrong, or slightly off, that comes across as human,” Mateyunas says. “When you’re playing a set and something happens — even if it’s just like, a string breaks — and it throws off your equilibrium, that’s when the good stuff comes out.”
In May, Arcy Drive wrapped up The Pit Tour after playing a string of mostly sold-out rock rooms and theaters such as New York’s Webster Hall and the Troubadour in West Hollywood. The group’s summer plans include a high-profile July 4 performance at Rolling Stone’s Stateside Festival in New York’s Hudson Valley as well as opening slots for Mt. Joy in August at Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre and Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre — both in the outskirts of Denver. A European tour awaits in September that includes stops in Glasgow, London, Hamburg, and Antwerp.
As impressive of a slate as that may be, the built-in competitiveness has Arcy Drive viewing it as a stepping-stone. The band has yet to peak, and based on their own ambitions, that’s still a long way off.
“Our own Red Rocks show, and our own stadium show,” Mateyunas deadpans, only slightly wistfully. “We’re gonna take over. We’ve got good music.”
Tuozzo reminds him there’s more music on the way. The band has spent the better part of the past year working on the follow-up to The Pit, and Tuozzo is confident there’s a “next level” for Arcy Drive that their next record will usher in.
“Also, it’ll just release a fucking feeling,” Mateyunas says. “The songs are very much an extension of myself, and I can’t wait to get rid of it. It’s all still so real and still so hot to the touch, and I feel like I need to get rid of it to move on in my life.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose upcoming book, Sonoran Sounds, is set for release in March 2027 via Back Lounge Publishing.
