FIGHTING FOR PUNK AND PLEASURE

Vermont's Thus Love just made one of 2024's most wildly exciting rock albums. Will their dreams come true?

- SIMON VOZICK-LEVINSON

There's no mistaking Echo Mars for anything but a rock star. It's in the way they carry themselves through the world, with a quick, confident step and a star-child aura that evokes Marc Bolan, David Bowie, and multiple characters from the 1998 film Velvet Goldmine. It's in their ink "drama" scrawled on their neck in stick-and-poke capitals, spiderwebs and jesters snaking down their arms, "bitch" jumping out across their chest when they rip off their shirt onstage. Most of all, it's in their voice, leaping from a throaty growl to a wolfish howl you can't ignore.

All of this makes Mars, 26, the perfect frontperson for Thus Love, one of 2024's most exhilarating bands. The Brattleboro, Vermont, four piece recently released a raging garage-glam wildfire of an album called All Pleasure, and if you catch one of their shows, you'll walk out a fan. Even so, Mars' defiant punk energy can draw some stares from the neighbors back home. "All these fucking ladies with their labradoodles," they say. "I think they see in me an old version of themselves. They see somebody who clearly doesn't have any money, covered in tattoos, and they get defensive."