Beauty School Dropout named their own genre. They call the mix of pop-punk, alt-rock, emo and glam Renegade-Pop, and across three full-length projects the Los Angeles trio has turned that self-coined label into one of the more durable identities of the 2020s pop-punk revival.
The Hoppus pipeline
The band built its rise on a direct mentorship from blink-182's Mark Hoppus, whose label Verswire, co-founded with Pete Wentz, has released all three of their full-length projects. That backing put a legacy stamp on a young band and connected them to the exact lineage they draw from.
The LA circle
Just as important was the scene around them. Beauty School Dropout came up inside the tight Los Angeles alt and rock crowd that clustered after the Overwhelmed remix era, a circle that ran through venues like On The Rocks and included Royal & the Serpent, Poutyface, phem, Slush Puppy and singer-songwriter Christian Gates. A recurring partnership with Royal & the Serpent and a 2023 collaboration with jxdn grew directly out of that world.
Scenes make careers. Beauty School Dropout came up inside one and never stopped showing up for it.
The fun bus
The band that never leaves the scene was forged inside it. Cole Hutzler met producer Bardo Novotny through a mutual friend at a show he was helping throw with Winston House, and the three have worked together nearly every day since. They call themselves the fun bus, assigning roles, Bardo the engine, Beepus the brakes, Colie the steering wheel, and they are prolific to a fault, generating 50 to 100 songs per project cycle before cutting to a tracklist. COVID scrapped their planned SXSW debut and handed them 18 months to figure out who they were, and their first real show came in 2021 at a thrift shop, a gig the band still counts among its favorites. That origin explains the loyalty. Beauty School Dropout was built by a scene, so it keeps showing up for one.
Built to last
A run of tours across the revived Vans Warped Tour, blink-182's arena dates and the 2026 Lost Americana World Tour with Machine Gun Kelly and Wiz Khalifa has kept the band in constant motion. The Renegade-Pop tag was a joke that became a thesis, and the LA circle that raised them is still the ground they stand on.