Weston Estate Is Doing It Their Way
Weston Estate isn’t your typical boy band.
The North Carolina natives gained a cult following with their breakout hit, “Cotton Candy,” two years after the band’s conception in 2017. They went on to produce a number of beloved alt-pop singles and two EPs over the group’s nine years together, but this September marked the release of their first-ever album as a group–a rock record.
The genre shift came as a surprise to some fans, but Weston Estate has garnered a reputation for their unconventional approach to the music industry: to celebrate the release of their second EP, Superbloom, the boys hosted a music festival at the Knockdown Center in Brooklyn, featuring acts across different genres. Now, continuing that legacy, the group hosted an Open Season Battle of the Bands, bringing some of New York’s rising rock acts to Bed-Stuy. The energy that night was palpable–Market Hotel’s walls pulsed with bass while the floor shook from the force of a devoted mosh pit, entropic in the way a good rock show should be.
Each band delivered an electric set, but it was Brooklyn-based band Mary Shelley that came out on top, with lead singer Jackson Dockery clad in nothing but a loosely-tied hospital gown. Guitarist Sam Pinson stepped up to the mic for the second half of the slot, hands outstretched like a preacher delivering a sermon. Get low, he bellowed on the final song’s bridge, and the audience dutifully complied–Mary Shelley’s win was a well-deserved one. As the competitions victor, Mary Shelley will be opening for the Weston Estate at their New York show on November 20th at Racket NYC.
OTR sat down with Weston Estate the week after Open Season’s release to talk battle of the bands, their songwriting evolution, and what went into their long-awaited debut album.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
LAPOINTE: Well, before we actually get into it, there’s one moment I want to revisit in your history that I kind of just need to ask for me: you guys surprised Logan Paul at his wedding in 2025. I was just wondering if Off the Record could get a storytime–how did this come about?
TANMAY: Basically, we got reached out to by Nina, his wife, and she DMed us and was like “hey, me and Logan spent some of our first moments listening to your songs and we would love it if you came out to surprise him at our wedding.” It was in Lake Como, Italy–it was one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to in my life. It was like a dream.
It was like this Mission Impossible type of thing where we were brought from our hotels, driven in cars, and all the drivers had these thick British accents, wearing black suits with mics and giving hand signals. They were like, “usher these guys in, do it quietly,” and we were put in this nice green room and told to change. And as soon as the wedding ceremony finished, they walked [into the reception area] and we just started playing. It was really fun.
MANAS: I mean, yeah, it was a cool experience. For us, it was like, alright. Free trip to Italy. Hell yeah, that sounds freaking awesome.
SRIKAR: We spent a week in Milan before that and just explored the city. We’d wake up in the morning and go to the main square, the Duomo area, and just get Hugo spritzes and drink the whole day and vibe.
M: I think there’s a clip of us performing and Logan was just like, “oh, boys, welcome! Not a bad place to be!” And that clip online is literally the only words exchanged between us.
Did he have any requests, or did you have full control over the setlist?
M: They had requests, yeah. I don’t know if they really thought about it, but they requested “Slowly” as their first dance. And it’s a sweet song, but–
S: –it’s like a really sad song about losing someone. And then they wanted us to play “So Good,” so they weren’t really love songs that we were playing. It was really cool though.
Okay. We can get on with the actual questions now, I just had to get that out of the way.
Where or when would you say that you guys truly clicked? I know you were balancing classes and shows as the band rose to prominence, so when did you know it was the moment to commit full time? Did you have a breakthrough moment of this is going to be something special that you can remember?
T: I don’t think that it ever fully felt that way until just recently. Even the Logan Paul wedding, for instance, it was just something that happened to us. We were like holy fuck, this is pretty cool, but it wasn’t like oh shit, we made it. I don't think there's ever been a moment other than more recently–with this album, this, I would say is our first intentional body of work. Pouring ourselves into the creation of this album helped solidify that this is something that we actually are. We really embody the music that we’re putting out, we really stand by it. And so I think that mindset is kind of what made us be like, oh, yeah, this is us.
When we threw Battle of the Bands we got onstage and knew that it was our stage. The bands were amazing, of course, but it was also amazing that everyone was there for us. We felt that. We’re getting comfortable with the fact that we really do this shit.
M: Yeah, I would say that it happened pretty recently, too. Even the larger moments that happened throughout college, like when “Pairs” or "So Good” started doing really well and we were playing festivals, it just felt like oh this is super sick, this is really cool. But at the time we were also still kids. I don’t think we really understood the gravity of it until we left college and we were like woah, we’re doing this full-time now–this is something that’s really important to us. We always knew that it was something special, but we didn’t realize how far we could take it until after we left college and were doing it full-time.
You guys have been making music together for almost a decade, but you haven’t released an album until now. Fans have been asking for a full-length project for years–why this moment? What was it about this time that felt right for Open Season?
M: A lot of the early music we were making in high school and college, and we were balancing being students and living that part of our lives and also trying to explore our artistic sides and fully forming our identities as individual artists and as a band.
2024 was the first year that we were doing music full-time and we lived in LA, and we were still figuring a lot out. That was the year we made Superbloom, which was our last EP, and that was a very weird, tumultuous process. I think we’re all really proud of what came out of it, but it didn’t feel like it was necessarily a cohesive process. We were kind of just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what would stick.
But I think last year, starting in October 2025–which is when we started making the songs for Open Season–I don't know. All of us just subconsciously were like OK, we have to be doing this with more intention. And also we were like yeah, we haven't put out a full length album! And we’ve been making music for so long, we knew that that was what the fans wanted, we knew that that’s what we wanted and that it was time for that to happen, so we all sat down and were like, OK. Let’s figure out what we want to do here.
We all started getting really into rock–The Strokes, The Cure, bands like that–so we came into the process very intentionally with that mindset which allowed us to have a more cohesive direction to delve into when making a full-length album. That was the first time I think any of us were comfortable enough to feel that way.
T: I would also say we grew up listening to all of that rock music alongside our other influences. Everything from R&B to Hindustani classical music that our parents put us onto. We had all different kinds of shit–we’re Brown kids who grew up in the deep parts of America where you see all kinds of cultures mingling. So we’re listening to trap music, but the next thing in my shuffle is Sam Smith. And the next song is a Bollywood song that my mom put me onto.
All this to say, when we thought about making an album, I think there was also some conversation about–there’s a lot of distortion on this album, vocally it’s in-your-face, trying to be bold, so I think our first debut album, our baby, is something that we were like OK. Now that we’re really trying to make an album, let’s be loud. Let’s be bold. And I think that’s where the idea of a rock album came from. So we were trying that. And the next album will be even more refined.
So what did the songwriting process look like, then? How are you balancing your five perspectives and then also those influences? What does that look like?
M: For all of these songs, I think the music came first. We pretty much write every song together. We’ll put down a beat, and then someone will put down a scratch melody, and then some lyrics will come from there. The exact minutiae vary with each song, of course, but someone will come forward like, OK, this is what I think the song should be about. Maybe we’ll tell a story, or we’ll just give an idea, and the duty falls on everyone else to see that vision, and we all come together to write each part from there.
And a lot of these songs are very abstract, so a lot of them are sort of writing exercises. “Neon Genesis,” for example, isn’t about any of our personal experiences. It’s a song about–imagine it’s the year 3000. The Earth is totalled.
S: On some cyberpunk shit.
M: Society exists in space now, and everyone’s in spaceships. The song is about falling in love with an AI sexbot and going to this space brothel. I’d just say listen to that song with the idea in mind. Even the sex sounds at the end–we got a lot of flak for that, but listen to the song; it’s not random, it makes sense.
I’ll keep the space brothel in mind next time I listen.
Now, I want to ask you guys about Battle of the Bands, which doubled as an album release party and a way to choose your opener. Last year you hosted a festival for Superbloom’s release–where are all of these unconventional album rollout ideas coming from, and what is it about those kinds of events that interests you?
ABHI: Community is everything. I feel like the thing that makes music different from a lot of art forms is the fact that having influences and taking inspiration from other places is encouraged rather than looked down upon. You can have ten alternative singer-songwriter girls that are making really similar music, and everyone will still be supporting each other in that scene.
So we’re really in pursuit of creating and finding community in the music spaces we're in. Last year we did a mixed bag of acts–rap, rock, hyperpop. But this year, since the album we created was a rock album, it just made a lot of sense to put on a show of some local New York bands. And Book Spirit, or even Mary Shelley, are taking inspiration from other genres, too–it’s not like they’re an indie band making solely indie music.
S: Yeah, that night was pretty representative of that, too. I think Manas said something that night onstage that was like, this night is a celebration of rock music. It’s a celebration of all these different influences that all these different bands are bringing in from all sects and niches of rock, the amalgamation that they bring into this one thing that they’ve created, which is so cool.
And yeah, we also just want to throw interesting, cool shit for our fans. A casual release party where we just sit and play the music and people listen is nice, there’s a time and place for that–we also discussed that idea–but we were like nah, we have to do some cooler shit for our album release. We’re putting our baby out in the world–it should be something worth paying attention to. So we just wanted to do something cool, and the battle of the bands idea came up and we were like this is sick. We had another idea, I don’t know if I should say it–
T: –don’t say it! We’ll save it.
S: Okay, we had some really cool ideas.
M: Someone’s gonna steal it if you say it right now.
S: Exactly, okay, I won’t say it right now.
Keep it on the down-low.
M: We’ll tell you off the record.
T: Ohhh shit!
I see what you did there! So, what was the process of putting it together? Were you already fans, or did you find the bands elsewhere?
S: We were really just doing research. We had a spreadsheet of bands we were interested in, and as time went on, we discussed–we were looking for New York local bands, so we really just went through our Spotify looking for people we thought were cool and got it down to those five. And they were all awesome, so it was great.
Okay, last question: in an interview in 2025, you guys described Superbloom as a “shedding of your old skin.” What do you think Open Season is, in the context of the band’s evolution? Where do you want to go next?
T: It’s the same thing–we’re shedding our old skin again. Yet again, we’re older, we’re wiser, we care about our musical legacy more.
Where we’re going next? Shit, I don’t know. I’m really excited.
M: Yeah, we haven’t really talked about the direction from here
S: But we’re excited about it regardless. I’m itching to make new music now that we’ve rolled out this album. I’m ready to start the next thing and figure out where we’re going next.
A: Might be deep house. I caught a crazy vibe the other day to this one deep house song. It made me feel like an actual tough lil’ boss.
S: Dude, I would be so down to make a house album. I’m so down.
ALL: That would be fire.
A: I’m not saying that’s next, though!
T: It could be!
S: They’re influences.
A: I’m not even saying we as Weston Estate should make that. We should just make it separately.
I’m ready for it! I would listen to a house album.
S: Whatever comes out, it’ll be fire.
T: I’m also excited about this–in the past, we’ve always put out music and then made new stuff and put that out but we’ve never pushed the music. I just want to show these songs to more people, too, so whatever that looks like–filming more cool videos for some of these songs, throwing events that help the album, but also just are fun. We were talking about throwing some shit in different cities, not just New York, so yeah–lots to come.
S: This music is stuff that all of us are incredibly proud of. We don’t want to let it fall by the wayside just yet.
