Pre-show Interview with Tea Eater in Philadelphia at Nikki Lopez 8/13/25
words/photos: Izzie Chausse
Tea Eater is a New York City-based art punk band fronted by Tarra Thiessen, known for her work with Gustaf and Sharkmuffin, with guitarist Vramshabouh (Vram) and (sometimes) drummer Charmaine. Since forming in 2022, the band has carved out a distinct niche in the punk scene with its chaotic, surf-tinged sound, razor-sharp lyrics, and theatrical flair.
Their debut album, Obsession, was released in October 2023, followed by I Don’t Believe in Bad Luck this past March. With seven music videos already released from Obsession and new singles on the way, Tea Eater continues to expand its art-punk universe with campier visuals and sharper humor.
Tea Eater has earned a reputation for high-energy—and at times bizarre—live performances, paired with a strong DIY ethos and otherworldly signature looks. They’ve even toured extensively across the U.S. and Europe.
Last night’s show at Nikki Lopez in Philadelphia was no exception. The performance leaned into its own absurdity with grating vocals, punk-rock antics and unfiltered fun. Tea Eater doesn’t ask you to take them seriously, only that you come along for the ride with an open mind. The finale invited fans to squeeze a stick of butter during their titular track, “Butter,” concluding a truly surreal experience.
Check out photos from the show below and the Q&A with the band to hear more about their creative process, multimedia ambitions and sharks.
What inspired the formation of Tea Eater, and how did the name come about?
Tarra: Tea Eater basically started as my solo songwriting project back in 2020/2021. My last name is Thiessen and I did ballroom dancing in high school, and my ballroom dance teacher was Polish. He told me that my last name literally translated to “tea eater” from German to English. I learned later that that’s not true, and also that my last name is Dutch, not German.
Basically, we recorded a record in Athens, Georgia at Chase Park Studios with Drew Vandenberg in 2021 during COVID, with Vram and a different drummer named Alex Tuisku. Tea Eater has just been me and Vram and whoever is available, sometimes it’s a four piece and sometimes it's a three piece.
Your lyrics have such a sharp and surreal quality to them; is that the type of songwriting that comes naturally to you or was it an intentional decision?
Tarra: I feel like it comes naturally. I take a lot of lyrics from bad movies, a lot of lines from text messages and conversations I've had, and I have a running note in my notes app of song and lyric ideas, and sometimes from when people pass down the street, random stuff like that.
Do you ever write songs that feel too personal or strange to share, and if so, what happens to them?
Tarra: I have a journal. I journal every day, and hopefully nobody ever reads those. In the song “Saint Sardine,” from our first record, I felt very vulnerable singing that one, even though it's not even exactly that personal. I have a fan club on Band Camp where I upload a lot of demos, and I feel like a lot of the random, personal or weird stuff kind of sits on there for my 17 subscribers. (Thank you to my 17 subscribers!) The lyrics tend to be more sarcastic, funny and surreal.
Do you see your music videos as companions to the songs, or as standalone art pieces with their own narratives and moods?
Tarra: They're usually intertwined. It can be pretty literal, like “Little White Dog (in a Gated Community)” is filmed in the gated community that my mom and grandma still live in.
What is the quintessential Tea Eater video?
Vram: “The Waffle Song.” It just feels the most DIY-ish, where it's just all your friends in waffle costumes and anyone who's around; just throw them in a costume and film them together.
Tarra: My mother-in-law and father-in-law are in it. I filmed it on a 2000’s camcorder and banded it together in Davinci Resolve.
Do you notice differences in how Tea Eater is received in the U.S. versus abroad?
Vram: Generally, abroad has better hospitality. I think there is more funding. It’s not like venues in the U.S. are trying to screw bands over, it’s more there’s not enough money to go around. I feel like people are generally more excited when you travel a far distance. So, I guess people are just a little more excited abroad. And we're also doing a lot of smaller places, in smaller towns, where people are like, “How is a band from New York here right now?” That kind of fresh excitement is always a little extra fun. They’re both fun and people are cool all over the place, but I feel like people are more excited abroad.
Do you envision other multimedia expansions of Tea Eater, like a graphic novel, animated series, or an immersive theater experience?
Tarra: Right now, I’m making a tarot card deck, and I want to make little coloring books with the tarot cards. We were talking about making an animated series the other day.
Charmaine: Our conversations are pretty silly. We’re silly people so maybe a podcast or an animated series. We’re entertaining people.
Tarra: She can do a headstand.
Vram: Tarra does stream on Twitch. On Monday we watched 25 hours of shark movies.
Tarra: There are at least 30 shark movies on Tubi and I found a bunch on YouTube. I did sleep, so I made a YouTube playlist for when I went to sleep and just left it running. I came back and a lot of people were still watching. I couldn’t believe it. “Shark Side of the Moon” is great. “Sky Sharks,” surprisingly, is not just about sharks that can fly. It's about zombie Nazis that have flying sharks.
What is a creative risk you haven’t taken yet but would love to explore in the next few years?
Tarra: I want to jump out of a cake. It might not be risky, but it could be messy…what if I can’t get out of it? A lot of what-ifs with that one.
Vram: I want to wear a costume that is almost too big. I want to find out where that line is.
Charmaine: I want to play drums underwater!
Vram: Sound travels farther underwater.
Charmaine: Exactly, so it can travel everywhere, all over the world.
Dream collab?
Vram: Ozzy. I can dream.
Charmaine: Probably Prince. I either want to do something soulful or something like Skrillex. I love dance music and electronic music.
Tarra: Cher. Basically my mom.
Most memorable live show to date?
Tarra: Coventry. I loved Coventry. We played in a little record store, and I traded one of my records with the owner of the record store for Hole’s Live Through This, which is one of my favorite records from when I was a teenager, and that felt very special. Coventry is a small town in the UK, and it felt like the whole town showed up. It was really awesome. Nice DIY vibe, very cool.
Charmaine: For me, Paloma in the South of France. It’s a yearly festival but it was 2020, COVID times, so when we played it, everyone and their grandma came. Everyone was very happy and excited, and I loved hearing a lot of thank you’s.
Tarra: We crowd surfed our butter. We had giant butter pool noodles.
Charmaine: And we played well that show. I got stung by a wasp and my hand was so swollen. It was like the hand from the Foo Fighters’ music video, “Monkey Wrench.”
Movie or video game a Tea Eater soundtrack should score?
Charmaine: Something sci-fi.
Tarra: I want to say a shark movie now.
Vram: “Shark Side of the Moon.”
Tarra: “Shark Side of the Moon 2.” They have to make it, and we can score it. A psychedelic version.
Charmaine: The Wednesday Adams show. I don’t watch it, but the music can be kind of eerie and mysterious, and I can envision Wednesday exploring something like a graveyard with Tea Eater music in the background.
Unofficial band motto?
Tarra: “Fun Forever.” We’re tattooing it on our butts.
Charmaine: “Loud Burps Forever.” We burp a lot. We have no shame. We don’t hold back.
Their debut album, Obsession, was released in October 2023, followed by I Don’t Believe in Bad Luck this past March. With seven music videos already released from Obsession and new singles on the way, Tea Eater continues to expand its art-punk universe with campier visuals and sharper humor.
Tea Eater has earned a reputation for high-energy—and at times bizarre—live performances, paired with a strong DIY ethos and otherworldly signature looks. They’ve even toured extensively across the U.S. and Europe.
Last night’s show at Nikki Lopez in Philadelphia was no exception. The performance leaned into its own absurdity with grating vocals, punk-rock antics and unfiltered fun. Tea Eater doesn’t ask you to take them seriously, only that you come along for the ride with an open mind. The finale invited fans to squeeze a stick of butter during their titular track, “Butter,” concluding a truly surreal experience.
Check out photos from the show below and the Q&A with the band to hear more about their creative process, multimedia ambitions and sharks.
What inspired the formation of Tea Eater, and how did the name come about?
Tarra: Tea Eater basically started as my solo songwriting project back in 2020/2021. My last name is Thiessen and I did ballroom dancing in high school, and my ballroom dance teacher was Polish. He told me that my last name literally translated to “tea eater” from German to English. I learned later that that’s not true, and also that my last name is Dutch, not German.
Basically, we recorded a record in Athens, Georgia at Chase Park Studios with Drew Vandenberg in 2021 during COVID, with Vram and a different drummer named Alex Tuisku. Tea Eater has just been me and Vram and whoever is available, sometimes it’s a four piece and sometimes it's a three piece.
Your lyrics have such a sharp and surreal quality to them; is that the type of songwriting that comes naturally to you or was it an intentional decision?
Tarra: I feel like it comes naturally. I take a lot of lyrics from bad movies, a lot of lines from text messages and conversations I've had, and I have a running note in my notes app of song and lyric ideas, and sometimes from when people pass down the street, random stuff like that.
Do you ever write songs that feel too personal or strange to share, and if so, what happens to them?
Tarra: I have a journal. I journal every day, and hopefully nobody ever reads those. In the song “Saint Sardine,” from our first record, I felt very vulnerable singing that one, even though it's not even exactly that personal. I have a fan club on Band Camp where I upload a lot of demos, and I feel like a lot of the random, personal or weird stuff kind of sits on there for my 17 subscribers. (Thank you to my 17 subscribers!) The lyrics tend to be more sarcastic, funny and surreal.
Do you see your music videos as companions to the songs, or as standalone art pieces with their own narratives and moods?
Tarra: They're usually intertwined. It can be pretty literal, like “Little White Dog (in a Gated Community)” is filmed in the gated community that my mom and grandma still live in.
What is the quintessential Tea Eater video?
Vram: “The Waffle Song.” It just feels the most DIY-ish, where it's just all your friends in waffle costumes and anyone who's around; just throw them in a costume and film them together.
Tarra: My mother-in-law and father-in-law are in it. I filmed it on a 2000’s camcorder and banded it together in Davinci Resolve.
Do you notice differences in how Tea Eater is received in the U.S. versus abroad?
Vram: Generally, abroad has better hospitality. I think there is more funding. It’s not like venues in the U.S. are trying to screw bands over, it’s more there’s not enough money to go around. I feel like people are generally more excited when you travel a far distance. So, I guess people are just a little more excited abroad. And we're also doing a lot of smaller places, in smaller towns, where people are like, “How is a band from New York here right now?” That kind of fresh excitement is always a little extra fun. They’re both fun and people are cool all over the place, but I feel like people are more excited abroad.
Do you envision other multimedia expansions of Tea Eater, like a graphic novel, animated series, or an immersive theater experience?
Tarra: Right now, I’m making a tarot card deck, and I want to make little coloring books with the tarot cards. We were talking about making an animated series the other day.
Charmaine: Our conversations are pretty silly. We’re silly people so maybe a podcast or an animated series. We’re entertaining people.
Tarra: She can do a headstand.
Vram: Tarra does stream on Twitch. On Monday we watched 25 hours of shark movies.
Tarra: There are at least 30 shark movies on Tubi and I found a bunch on YouTube. I did sleep, so I made a YouTube playlist for when I went to sleep and just left it running. I came back and a lot of people were still watching. I couldn’t believe it. “Shark Side of the Moon” is great. “Sky Sharks,” surprisingly, is not just about sharks that can fly. It's about zombie Nazis that have flying sharks.
What is a creative risk you haven’t taken yet but would love to explore in the next few years?
Tarra: I want to jump out of a cake. It might not be risky, but it could be messy…what if I can’t get out of it? A lot of what-ifs with that one.
Vram: I want to wear a costume that is almost too big. I want to find out where that line is.
Charmaine: I want to play drums underwater!
Vram: Sound travels farther underwater.
Charmaine: Exactly, so it can travel everywhere, all over the world.
Dream collab?
Vram: Ozzy. I can dream.
Charmaine: Probably Prince. I either want to do something soulful or something like Skrillex. I love dance music and electronic music.
Tarra: Cher. Basically my mom.
Most memorable live show to date?
Tarra: Coventry. I loved Coventry. We played in a little record store, and I traded one of my records with the owner of the record store for Hole’s Live Through This, which is one of my favorite records from when I was a teenager, and that felt very special. Coventry is a small town in the UK, and it felt like the whole town showed up. It was really awesome. Nice DIY vibe, very cool.
Charmaine: For me, Paloma in the South of France. It’s a yearly festival but it was 2020, COVID times, so when we played it, everyone and their grandma came. Everyone was very happy and excited, and I loved hearing a lot of thank you’s.
Tarra: We crowd surfed our butter. We had giant butter pool noodles.
Charmaine: And we played well that show. I got stung by a wasp and my hand was so swollen. It was like the hand from the Foo Fighters’ music video, “Monkey Wrench.”
Movie or video game a Tea Eater soundtrack should score?
Charmaine: Something sci-fi.
Tarra: I want to say a shark movie now.
Vram: “Shark Side of the Moon.”
Tarra: “Shark Side of the Moon 2.” They have to make it, and we can score it. A psychedelic version.
Charmaine: The Wednesday Adams show. I don’t watch it, but the music can be kind of eerie and mysterious, and I can envision Wednesday exploring something like a graveyard with Tea Eater music in the background.
Unofficial band motto?
Tarra: “Fun Forever.” We’re tattooing it on our butts.
Charmaine: “Loud Burps Forever.” We burp a lot. We have no shame. We don’t hold back.
