The Path To Moonroof’s Triumphant Debut Album
Samantha Colleran, July 2025
Philadelphia based Moonroof have been making waves in the indie world since their 2018 debut. They’ve garnered over six million Spotify streams, toured with major names in music such as The Lumineers and Death Cab for Cutie, and their debut EP Dream State debuted at No. 2 on the Alternative Album charts behind Coldplay’s Music Of The Spheres in 2021. Dave Kim (vocals), Dan Rendine (drums), Kevin Randolph (bass) and Johnny Fordyce (guitar) have been touring relentlessly and honing their sound under Free Dive Records, resulting in a well rounded and striking debut album that will capture listeners from the first note. Consisting of thirteen tracks settling between a space that the band describes as “too pop for punk and too punk for pop”, Moonroof tackles topics including mental health, monotony in daily routine, relationships, and navigating life in your 20s.
Prior to the release of the album, I had the chance to chat with the quartet about their early success, the album creation process, and upcoming tour dates. Read the exclusive interview below!
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Samantha Colleran: Today I’m here with the incredible Moonroof. They’re based in Philadelphia and have been touring and releasing music under Free Dive for the past few years and will be releasing their debut album on July 11th! If you guys want to introduce yourselves…
Dave Kim: My name is Dave Kim, I sing in the band.
Kevin Randolph: I’m Kevin, I play bass.
Johnny Fordyce: I’m Johnny, I play guitar.
Dan Rendine: I’m Dan, I play drums.
SC: Who are some of your overall inspirations? Whether it’s early on in your music careers or now as a group and how have those inspirations evolved since being in a band?
DK: I would say The 1975 and The Killers and Two Door Cinema Club match us pretty well.
DR: I think we all have individual influences in addition to the overall ones, not sure if everyone wants to go through their individual ones?
KR: I feel like we all have our all thing, and the bands that Dave mentioned we kind of combine the sounds of those three bands to make our sound.
JF: You guys summed it up pretty well, a combination of the inspirations we all share. The original goal of Moonroof was to make indie pop, and we all have our own inspirations we grew up on that we bring to the band. All that fuses, especially on the debut album, it’s the most representative of all of the inspirations we draw from.
SC: You guys met in college. How did you guys decide to form the band?
DK: Me and Kevin were roommates and Dan was living in the same dorm. They were part of bands in high school and I never was. I sang, and Dan asked if I wanted to sing in a band and I was like “Oh, maybe”. I found out Kevin and our former guitarist, Nick Cellucci, were friends with him in college. That’s how the band formed. Years later, we joined Free Dive and Johnny was part of a band under the label called Tea Head. We knew he was talented, so we asked him to play with us. We also liked him as a person so we asked him to officially join us, and yeah, it’s been picture perfect.
That’s really our story, it’s cool. We’re from a small town called Bloomsburg, it’s a Pensyl-tucky kind of area.
SC: I love it! What drew you guys to Philly as opposed to other cities on the East coast, or even the West coast?
DK: You guys can answer that.
JF: I lived in Philly before these guys did. It’s a slept on music city. New York, L.A., Nashville, they’re very much like that metaphor of a small fish in a big ocean. Philly is a bit of a smaller ocean, you’re not just used as a utility; it’s a community because everyone has been here their whole lives. At this point, we’re playing with people we’ve known for fifteen years. I think that’s cool, these guys moved to Philly from Bloomsburg, but I think that’s the reason Philly stands out as an East coast music city.
DR: It’s a middle ground. We all went to Bloomsburg, Dave is from outside of Northern Philly, Kevin’s from Harrisburg which is two hours west, and I’m from New Jersey which is two hours east. It’s a middle ground, you’re still near your family and friends, the music scene is thriving and there’s so many people playing in bands with each other.
SC: A sense of community is so important, especially in music and especially now with social media and TikTok taking over. You guys have debuted alongside really big names like Coldplay on the Alternative charts, and you’ve toured with some really cool people like The Lumineers and Death Cab for Cutie. What was it like to debut so high on the charts and what were your experiences opening for these acts?
DK: It was life changing. We’re from a small town and a small college, early on we were so surprised by the support we got. Shoutout to Tyler Ripley at Free Dive because it was his idea to push our EP for chart consideration. We didn’t know we could do that stuff. People were on board with supporting us and we’re excited for what’s going to happen with the album.
When we moved from Bloomsburg to Philadelphia, it was kind of hard to transition to playing in Philly. The festivals got our names out there and more venues were interested in us. Opening up for The Lumineers and Death Cab, we had only played like, five shows as Moonroof, and then we were playing in front of thousands of people. We were like, “Let’s do it!” We’re proud of the journey we’ve been on. It gives us motivation to be the headliners of major festivals and things like that. We’re super blessed for those experiences, and we’re excited for what’s to come.
KR: It was crazy because it was early on. We didn’t really know what we were doing yet, but it was a great way to kick things off and it gave us motivation to grow. We’ve played more shows and gone on tours since then, but at first it was a little overwhelming.
SC: I can see how it can be overwhelming. Going from small crowds to playing for thousands of people, but go big or go home, right? In terms of songwriting for the album, what inspired the songwriting? Was there a set theme or idea you wanted to talk about, or did everything naturally evolve as you spent more time in the studio?
DK: We were just talking about this yesterday. We’ve been a band for some time, but this is the most collaborative music we’ve made in our lives. Going off of all of our ideas for what we want the songs to be, it became a whole project. Our typical way of writing, we would just go to the studio and figure out what the sound was. For the album, we came together and said “We’re going to start with this” or “We’re going to try to do that”. It feels like Moonroof’s real music.
DR: There’s a mix of ways we created songs for the album. For certain songs we wrote a lot together, especially lyrics. There would be times where Johnny would come with lyrics or a melody or a guitar part, or Dave would come with a lyric in his head, or Kev. There’s a mix of how each song was made, but we were able to practice and hash it out from there.
KR: We didn’t have a set theme in mind beforehand, maybe something broad at first. We were all contributing different ideas, and at the end we realized there were some ideas and themes that overlapped; relationships, mental health, monotony of routine and daily life. We created songs in different ways and at the end we realized what the common threads were.
JF: Our honest, genuine perspectives came through and became the themes of the album. Like Kev said, when you look back at it you can connect themes. We didn’t necessarily lock ourselves into the idea of “We want to talk about this theme on this song”. Everything naturally came out through our personalities as we wrote together that these things are on our minds so it’s what we talked about. It was super collaborative, most of the songs we’d workshop against each other for ten or fifteen minutes and then the vision of the song formed quickly enough to the point where we could record a little part of it and use it as the basis for what we were making in the studio. It’s a collective, collaborative effort.
SC: You can feel the heart and the collaboration when listening, I’m super excited for people to hear it! You’ve said that some of the themes on the album are finding your way through the dark and dancing through it, navigating life in your 20s. Were these things you wanted to touch on or did lived experiences as you were writing change the lyrical direction?
DK: The lyrics reflect what people go through. I want to be the most relatable band, I want people to hear our music and think “Oh, they’ve been through that, too”. When lyrics can touch someone… to give an example, The Script has a song called “Breakeven” that I remember listening to and thinking “Wow”. At that point, I don’t even think I talked to girls, but I felt it. I want to be relatable to people and I want them to sing along. I believe in catchiness, if you repeat it enough times, people will remember it.
SC: “Breakeven” is such a throwback, but that is so real. Sitting in the back of your parents car, longingly looking out the window thinking, “Where is this person? Where did they go?” I really do think people will relate to the lyrics of your songs.
DK: That’s Kevin’s favorite song. *Everyone starts to laugh* We’re joking, we’re joking!
SC: A little bit more on songwriting. Do lyrics come first to you, do you work around a melody?
DK: Melody first, definitely. The instrumentations came through, and then the melody, and I came up with sub lyrics. Sometimes the lyrics were catchy enough where we would leave the sub lyrics. Johnny stepped up with lyrics with Kevin, Dan helped as well. I have a theme or message that we go through in our relationships, sometimes my lyrics can be a little cornball, so Johnny and Kev worked to make them a little more mature. I think that we’re growing up, the album has a way of saying “I love you”, but it’s also mature, Rated M.
DR: It’s definitely a more mature sound for us. We made a lot of the instrumentals at the studio and worked off of those. Each song is so different, if Johnny brings a part, if we workshopped something in the studio, if Dave has a melody first that we work on from there. It was a case by case basis.
SC: Do you feel like your live performances over the years informed how you approached creating in the studio? Were there any moments on stage you made a lyrical or note change that resonated with fans that you felt was important to capture on the album?
JF: Maybe a little bit. We played a lot together when we were making the instrumentals, and by the time we were writing the lyrics and recording vocals we had been through a full tour, maybe two, together. I don’t think anything happened on stage where we felt we wanted to recreate it on the album, but while we were recording there was ideas we had where we thought certain things would sound cool live. So, in that way, it informed what we did on the record. We record first and get the songs set, practice them, and then put them in the live sets.
KR: Performing together helped us write together easily. We play off of each other and collaborate in that way.
DK: We take a lot of pride in our live performances. I’ve seen a lot of artists, they have tracks playing behind them. Our live performances are our strong suit, it’s like a first impression. If you don’t catch an audience’s attention in the first minute or the first song, you’ll lose them. We try to throw a fun and lively live performance.
DR: Even when we play live, I know I’ll make some slight changes to the drum parts. Over time, I adapt them. It’ll sound a little different than the record. There’s some little changes and nuances there.
SC: Off of the album, is there a collective band favorite, or a song you think encapsulates the overall identity or message of the album? Or even individual favorites?
JF: For me, it’s “Again”. It’s one of my favorites, and it encapsulates the theme of repetition of trying to get better and how the struggle of doing that seems as if it happens over and over again. The cycles of life, it’s a theme that runs throughout the whole album. “Again” captures the energy; the highs, the lows, the tensions and releases of what music is.
DK: Good answer.
DR: Mine kind of goes hand in hand with “Again”, it’s “Running In Place”. Same idea of the monotony of day to day struggle and grind, the lyrics resonate with me. I’m actually sitting in the parking lot at my job right now. It definitely is relatable; you go to work and end at 5:30, you go home and do whatever, and repeat it all.
KR: I feel like lyrically “Running In Place” captures the themes well. As far as a favorite overall, our most recent single “Over It” might be mine. “Can’t Say No” is another one we all like. Those are slightly different themes, they cover the relationship aspect as well as the monotony theme.
DK: It depends on the mood. Every song is different, we have some indie pop and some indie rock, and some people might confuse us for pop punk. We haven’t played these live yet, but we are going on tour soon and I’m excited to see how people react to these songs. That pop style singalong like “Over It” and “Can’t Say No”, and then “Running In Place” is a bit heavier. I just want to see what the people think. I love these songs. “Again” is the first song we’re going to play, and I think it shows the new, mature Moonroof. Your guess is as good as mine, but I agree with these guys!
SC: I’m sure people are going to love it. If they don’t, their opinion is totally wrong, and they suck. Is there anything else we didn’t touch on that you feel people should know about you as a band or as individuals or the message you hope to convey as a band? Maybe where to catch you on tour…
JF: Going backwards, we’re releasing the album on July 11th, the next day we’re having our release show at this really cool venue called Johnny Brenda’s in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia. It’s going to be awesome! We’re playing with So Long Surfer and Local Honeymoon. If you’re around Philadelphia, come celebrate our album release. You can also catch us in the Midwest.
DR: We have seven shows. Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, Ann Arbor, Dayton, and Columbus. Those were out of order, but those seven cities.
JF: And then later this summer, we’ll be in Boston, New York, Roanoke, and Bloomsburg.
SC: When are you guys playing New York?
DK: August!
DR: August 14th or 15th.
JF: Yeah, the 14th. At Berlin Under A.
SC: I’m from Queens, so I’ll definitely be at the New York show!
DK: We’ve been a band for a while, but we never released an album. The TikTok world has ruined people’s attention spans, they’re not as long as they used to be. We’re excited for the album, a lot of our fans and friends are also excited. It’s a big step up for us.
KR: It shows a lot of different sides of us. Some of the songs we started a while ago and just finished recently, others we started jamming to as we were writing and working on the album. It shows a lot of different sides of where we came from and where we are now. It’s a culmination of all the phases of Moonroof.
SC: I think you can feel the heart and the love and excitement when listening to the album. People will connect with it for sure. I’m super excited for it to be out officially, and I can’t wait to see all the success!
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Moonroof’s debut album is officially available on all streaming services including Apple Music and Spotify. Be sure to follow the band on Instagram and TikTok to stay up to date on future releases and tours.