The problem with being in a band in New York City is that bands are a dime a dozen. Even as tech/finance/crypto bros and girlbosses continue to infiltrate (read: ruin) the city by making it unaffordable and pushing artists to its periphery, there thankfully remains a vibrant cultural scene (for now). Of course, that means it’s no easier for bands in NYC to stand out, just harder to survive. Thankfully, though, the cream does sometimes rise to the top.
Sharkswimmer—guitarist/lead vocalist Justin Buschardt, guitarist Kate Moyer, bassist/vocalist Kenny Monroe, and drummer Jason Bauers—have been on the ascent for a while now, and are a staple of New York’s indie/punk scene. They released their debut album, Serenity, in 2023, and followed it up at the end of 2024 with Primary, a collection of the band’s first three EPs together, back when Buschardt’s now-ex-wife was in the band, together with a new song.
“NIKI” is the band’s first new music since then, and the lead single from the forthcoming EP Course Correcting, which is being released on influential NYC independent label Trash Casual. It treads, as Sharkswimmer songs so often do, that line between brusque punk and catchy indie-rock, while diving, as Sharkswimmer songs so often do, into a sea of turbulent, heart-on-sleeve-emotions. We sat down for a coffee and a catch-up with Buschardt to learn, first of all, that “NIKI” isn’t the name of somebody in all caps, but an acronym.
It feels like “NIKI” is less you internalizing your emotions than it is a song about someone else that you’re singing directly to. Is that the case?
I mean, I think it’s inward in certain ways, but it’s basically about putting yourself in a new situation after being holed down in a really tough thing—a divorce, at the time. I literally wrote this in, like, 30 minutes about two to three years ago, but it’s a song that we’ve just been kind of working on and reworking. Almost all these songs on the EP came out of nowhere. I just wrote it very quickly and presented it to the band. But there’s a term that’s repeated over and over: “Now I know I, now know I can,” which is what “NIKI” stands for. Then the chorus is just about enduring life and the feelings that you have about yourself. So it’s not really about somebody else. I can write that away sometimes, but often a lot of this is flipping the script and pointing the mirror at myself.
This is the first single from the new EP. Do you see this as a stepping stone toward something else?
I think it’s an introduction to a sound. Serenity comes from a time when I was just so alone. It was COVID, I was going through divorce and all this stuff. And this is kind of me rising from the ashes, so to speak.
Because you kind of went back in time with Primary.
Yeah. And that was a lot to do—having to reach out to my ex-wife, who just had a baby a year ago, and ask her if it’s OK if somebody puts out these songs that we’re both screaming back and forth at each other on. So there’s a lot that’s happened: relationships with new people that have been really wonderful, finding out new things about who I am and what I’m capable of being in a relationship and on my own. This feels like a rebirth. And musically, it feels more like I’m returning to my roots, to when I first started playing music.
Does it feel like a wave of momentum is sort of on the cusp of happening for Sharkswimmer?
When I look at the scope of it all, we’ve been playing in this band since 2017—a long time—off and on in different iterations, and it feels like people have been coming into our little realm, especially bands that we play with and have become good friends with. I feel like we’re almost becoming a household name in a small way in New York, which is cool. When I moved here from Austin 10 years ago, I never would’ve guessed that we’d be playing at one of my favorite venues and almost selling it out, which is what we did at Warsaw when we played with Bear vs. Shark. That felt like such a huge win. When we played Baby’s All Right for this video, we turned it into a birthday show, which I think is why a lot of people came out. But there were also new faces—people I don’t know that were going off in the pit, which was really cool. Nobody was paid to move that way. There was just this energy about that show that made me feel if this is how we’re starting our year, then it’s really positive. I think we needed a little lift like that. All of us do, to be honest.
How does the band fit in inside this current dystopia of American fascism? Especially when this song started life before things got really bad like they have recently.
One of the lines in the song is about doomscrolling, sitting here and trying to figure out ways to do your part, whether that’s checking in with your friends or asking, “Is it weird to promote a show right now?” But we can’t ignore the little bits of joy that we have, and we have to really rein it in, I think, because there are moments where we can speak about it in those spaces where it’s not just online, it’s just not yelling into the void. These new songs move in different directions over time, but I feel like they’re a reflection of what we’re feeling as we’re enduring the shit that’s happening around us. And that’s what’s good about it being kind of open to interpretation—it’s like, “Oh, is this about a relationship, is it about fascism?” The title track of the EP is literally about picking up the pieces of what our country has become and trying to have this victorious refrain at the end that offers a sense of hope.
It seems that this iteration of the band is particularly solid. Does it feel that way to you, as well?
This is our second time working with our friend Brian DiMeglio, who recorded and mixed the EP, and working with him has been really amazing. Everybody in the band shines really brightly on this EP, and I feel it’s more of a collaborative effort. Serenity, I pretty much just wrote those 10 songs in a divorce-fueled haze, in a very lonely state, and the band that I pulled together with Kenny and Kate—because we had to reform—they all learned their parts very quickly to go record these songs that I essentially just threw at them. The songs we’ve recorded for Course Correcting are way more collaborative as far as writing the music and getting in a room and making changes together, and I think that you can feel that in these songs more. We’ve been doing it together for long enough that there’s a good amount of trust—it’s just really fun, and we have a good time, and it’s taking things to a different place than they would have gone if it was just me being like, “Here, throw some shit over this,” you know?
