About Us

The jangly, jittery indie rock of this Patrick Phillips-fronted Brooklyn trio, Namesake, 

is more fully formed and pop-focused than the ramshackle punk approach of their previous incarnation, Honduras

Columbia, Missouri-raised childhood friends Phillips and Tyson Moore were in bands together in school and formed Honduras in 2012, in New York, with Josh Wehle on drums and Paul Lizarraga on bass. Over the course of eight years, they recorded multiple singles, three EPs, and a 2015 album, Rituals -- even supporting Blur on a rare trip to New York by the Brit-pop act. Most of their recordings betrayed a punk and garage rock core, with Moore's choppy, angular guitars often mixed to the fore. 2016's EP, Gathering Rust, was a more melodic offering, pointing toward the band's future direction, while Moore's final single with Honduras, 2020's "Remains," leaned on the stop-start dynamics of original punks Wire.

In 2021, Phillips, Wehle, and Lizarraga regrouped as Namesake. By this point, some of the rough edges in their sound had been smoothed out and, as a trio, they started to incorporate power pop and jangle pop overtones. Many of the lyrics for their first album as Namesake, October 2021's Redeeming Features, were written by Phillips during a period of ill health in which he was experiencing panic attacks and agoraphobia. This contributed to the skittering wordplay and frenetic rhythms evident on singles from the album such as "I'm Sick" and "Population."