Whatmore Steals the Moon; Next, They’ll Steal Your Heart [INTERVIEW]

Tara Byrne
3 hours ago
8 min read

A Penny Interview by Tara Byrne

Whatmore is a band made for New York, by New York.

Whatmore's tickets have never cost more than $10 and they even put on a bunch of free shows around town. In fact, at one show, I was able to snag a free custom t-shirt from the Kid Super Collection. In a city with rising prices and rapid gentrification, it’s evident that Whatmore does what’s best for themselves and for their city.

Whatmore put out their debut self-titled album in October 2025, and I had the pleasure of talking to Whatmore before their last show of 2025 at Baby’s All Right.

You guys were on tour recently. How was that?

Cisco Swank: Yes, it was amazing,

Jackson August: It was “the time of our lives tour, but it was also the time of our lives.

Was there anything that stood out to you? Any highlights?

Yoshi T.: I would say just seeing driving around the country, you know, making a full loop around and seeing the terrain change as you drive through desolate roads. During the night time when everything is dark, but the trees come in. Wow.

Sebastiano ($eb): It was crazy to see the stars, because I don't see the stars ever. We pulled over and were looking at the stars and that shit was crazy.

Cisco: I'll say one thing. There was a point where I think we were in Texas and we were driving; we saw the moon really bright. I'm like, “Bro, look at the moon”. And then who said, “That's not the moon”?

Jackson: I think everyone.

Yoshi: No, I said “Look at the moon”. And then, and then I was like, “Wait, that's not the moon”. And then you were like, “Wait, that is the moon”.

Jackson: We were going to get closer to it, but you can't get closer to the moon.

Yoshi: It was so close to the ground, and it was really big.

Jackson: I thought it was a billboard.

Yoshi: And it was literally next to a billboard. We're like, “Oh, that's a sign.”

I know that you guys have collaborated — like you, Yoshi and Jackson, made "It's Over" together.

Jackson: Yes, a classic.

When did you decide to all come together and form Whatmore?

Jackson: We have been friends since high school, and we've always made music together. One day, we said, ‘shit, we're broke’ [laughs]. But actually, we were just like, ‘we're just gonna make an album’, kind of for fun, honestly. It started out as a passion project, and we went to the Sticks in Pennsylvania, and we made the album. But we’ve been making music together since high school. [Cisco and Sebastiano] have songs together. [Sebastiano and Yoshi] have songs together. We [Jackson and Sebastiano] have songs together. [Cisco and Yoshi] have three songs. So, it's been a long time in the making.

Sometimes, I tell my friends about Whatmore, and they ask, “What genre are they?”, and it's a little hard to describe, because your music is often a mix of different genres. If you all had to describe your music to someone who hasn't heard you, how would you do that?

Elijah Judah: New York.

Cisco: New York.

Yoshi: The five boroughs.

Cisco: AirForce Ones, Pop, Jazz.

You guys are pretty inspirational, because you're from New York, and as far as I know, you don't have any nepotism-connects.

Cisco: Zero.

Jackson: Let's get that on the record, actually. We have literally negative nepotism connects.

Elijah: Nepotism-free.

Jackson: That should be on a shirt.

Cisco: Like, I still owe Elijah and Seb for asking for a dollar every day after school for chips. I didn't have a dollar to spend in high school.

How did you guys stay motivated when it felt like you were far away from your goal?

Yoshi: Well, Cisco couldn't buy chips, so that's what.

Jackson: But yeah, I would say we stay motivated at the end of the day because of the homies. It's easy to stay motivated.

That's good, having friends makes it easier to do creative things, because you can do it together. I tend to drag my friends into things with me.

Jackson: Yeah, exactly. It feels more like we're just doing it with the homies. Like, even interviews would be way less fun if I was just doing it by myself, but I get to do it with all my friends. That's how I feel about everything.

What did your families think about you guys pursuing music full-time?

Yoshi: Well, actually, we all met at a performing arts high school. So, you know, our parents had to at least support the idea a little bit. They're all pretty chill, I would say.

I bet they're pretty proud of you guys.

Cisco: Yeah, I think they think I'm practicing piano right now, so I had to lie to them.

I want to ask you guys about your music videos, because I think they're incredibly cool. I'm a film major and that drew me into your music, basically, how you each have individual videos spotlighting yourselves. What was the inspiration behind that?

Jackson: I don't know if you've ever seen one of those shows where they introduce each character — like, the ones that start with a narration. We definitely pulled from different film inspirations like that, but I also feel like [we wanted to comment on how] we all have mad unique backgrounds. We all come from super different places, even though we all met and do music the same way. In our daily lives, we put each other onto so much game — culturally, spiritually, in the sense of music genres. So, I feel like we just felt like we had something to say.

Yoshi: Have you ever watched Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story? That's probably the main inspiration we took from, Dewey Cox.

You also have a music video where there are girl versions of you guys. How'd you come up with that?

Yoshi: We had that idea pretty early on, and we were like, ‘okay this could be a cool one, once we do a bunch of videos with our faces in it, we kind of create this world of us’. Then we were like, ‘alright, let's flip it on its head and then have the girl versions of us now’.

Cisco: We did have that idea pretty early on, but it was one of those things that, like, you have to establish yourself as yourself first, before you could explore the girl version of yourself.

Jackson: So, we knew we were gonna do that, but we had to wait until we were a little more…

Established?

Jackson: Yeah, but all those girls [who played us] are basically our homies. Like, we didn't cast it, really. I bartend with the girl who played me. And we've known Toshi, who played Cisco, since high school.

Cisco: We went to middle school together.

I guess this next question is more for Elijah, since I feel like, normally, producers are in the background, but it's cool that you're also a part of the band and in the foreground. For you, what's it like being in the spotlight, as I know you talked about that in your personal video, too?

Elijah: Yeah, it's very strange, but I enjoy it. It’s really fun. My friends push me to be there, but it's a really good time. I'm learning a lot about myself. I'm learning a lot about being an artist.

Yoshi: This is a very new thing for all of us. And I think especially for Elijah, too. [He] was such a great sport, and we really wanted to capture that. We all have these round tables to write individual songs — it's pretty painstaking to try to come up with all the ideas — and so it was really cool we got to take time, especially with Elijah, since [his video] was the last one, just to kind of figure out how we wanted to go about it and what story we wanted to tell.

How do you guys accomplish the mixture between faster-paced songs, like “Jackie Chan”, versus something like “White Subie”?

Jackson: That's how we feel, I think. Sometimes, you want to run around, and then sometimes, you feel sad, and it really depends on the day, to be honest. We wrote “Jackie Chan” and “White Subie” on completely different dates, [with] completely different vibes. One was down bad. One was like, ‘I'm trying to run around’.

Yoshi: We try to cover all emotions that we have; you know, the limited emotional capacity that we have.

That's pretty healthy.

Yoshi: Yes, absolutely.

How does your songwriting process? Do you guys each write your own verse, or do you write things for each other?

Yoshi: No, not really. We mostly write our own stuff, and then we record it, and then we kind of see if there's a through line of any topical situations, and then we expand on that. But that hasn’t really happened.

Jackson: It's happened a couple of times.

Yoshi: Yes, it's happened twice.

Jackson: Both on “Empty”, because “Empty” had me and Seb originally on it, and they were like, honestly, this is going to be lit as Yoshi and Cisco, [so Yoshi] took a little bit of it.

Yoshi: I took half Cisco's verse, Seb’s verse, and then Jackson wrote his part.

Jackson: I originally sang Cisco's part, so then Cisco hopped on that. But then, it's happened before, with songs that didn't come out. [Yoshi] wrote the “Money Man” thing, right? That never came out.

Yoshi: That's, like, the only time we intentionally did it. It's pretty rare. Well, it might still come out.

Sebastiano: It might still happen. We do have some demos.

Yoshi: Some A sides, B sides.

Do you have a song you're most proud of?

Cisco: “Hit It”.

Why “Hit It”?

Cisco: It’s the best song ever. Elijah, what do you think?

Elijah: “Empty”.

Sebastiano: “Hit It”.

Cisco: Actually, most proud of, I'm putting "go!" on there, because I put in some hours on it.

Yoshi: And it is, so far, [our] biggest song.

Jackson: It has a million [streams] right now. It hasn't even updated on Spotify.

Are you excited for Coachella?

All: Yes, so excited.

Cisco: [To see] Justin Bieber, definitely.

Do you have a dream artist to collaborate with, apart from each other?

Jackson: Honestly, yeah — Justin Bieber.

Yoshi: [The late] Count Basie.

Sebastiano: Trey Songz.

Cisco: Yeah. I would like a Herbie song or solo on something. That would be awesome.

You guys also seem to do a lot of stuff independently. Like, you hosted a show in Chinatown. Has that changed since being on a label? What's the creative decision-making process now?

Jackson: We were playing in Chinese restaurants years ago, before anyone cared about us. So, I would just like to put that out there.

Cisco: That was September 2023.

Jackson: Yeah, no one cared. I mean, it was packed. The people there cared. But we had no label. We had nothing going on. Now, we're backed by Zohran Mamdani, so we're up for that. Yeah, we're a part of Mamdanistan.

Do you guys think anything has changed significantly since your early days?

Cisco: Our mentality stays the same. Our friendship, our love for the game - it always stays the same. The only thing that changes is, you know, the world around us.