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Halfway through their set at Friday Night Live in downtown Champaign, The Underwerewolves abruptly cut the music. Lead singer Jeremy Pessin picked up a phone call on stage from Stegotron—a missile-firing dino-robot known for terrorizing major metro areas. After a brief operational update from the creature, Pessin and his bandmates launched right back into the track (predictably titled “Stegotron”) without missing a beat, treating the interruption as completely routine business.
It was a quintessential Underwerewolves moment: absurd, meticulously executed, and designed for maximum amusement.
“It really is about entertaining,” says bassist Jay Creek, summarizing the group’s ethos. “We want people to come out and see how serious we are about not taking ourselves seriously.”
On their Facebook page, the band self-deprecatingly labels their music “dumb garage rock for dumb people.” It’s a hilarious misnomer. The band’s sound is far tighter, more versatile, and more polished than garage-band boilerplate. The underlying musicianship is sharp, the vocal harmonies are precise, and the songwriting relies on clever narrative hooks.
As for the Friday Night Live audience on Park Avenue, the crowd showed zero signs of cognitive deficit—just good sense in appreciating a great set. People sang along, danced on the pavement, and cheered enthusiastically between numbers.
The four-piece delivered a high-energy 16-song set that blends classic punk rock with a infectious 1960s garage-pop sensibility. Fronting the outfit with a self-aware falsetto and theatrical energy, Pessin brings a mini-Jack Black charisma to the stage—cracking jokes, dancing, and belting out tunes about aliens, mad scientists, and giant robots. (“Calling it ‘singing’ is a bit of a stretch,” Pessin quipped during soundcheck.)
Performing in front of the side entrance to Hamilton Walker’s as dusk settled over downtown, the band rolled through fast-paced originals like “You Can Play the Cello,” “Clone City,” and “Make Like a Heck.” Midway through “Heck,” Pessin channeled an overly dramatic Jim Morrison, sarcastically bellowing that “rock and roll is destroying America!”
Pessin and Creek were anchored by drummer Conner Buenting’s snappy tempo and keyboardist Will Arnold, whose organ and synth lines elevate the band’s sonic identity. Arnold’s work adds texture that shifts seamlessly from dark, Doors-esque grooves to quirky, retro-futuristic synth tones.
“It’s just really fun to pick some obnoxious, weird noises and figure out how to make them work in a rock song,” Arnold says of his setup.
The band—all sporting full beards, brown hair, and matching black-on-black stage attire—originally met through Windsor Road Christian Church. While writing tracks like “Party All Night (‘Til Someone Ruins Their Life),” the members have also played together in the church’s worship band, forging close personal and musical bonds through their faith community. Buenting also serves as the church’s student ministry director.
“At church, the purpose is to glorify God and serve the community,” says Pessin, who previously fronted the local mid-2000s band Vvvvv! “With rock and roll, the goal is to serve the audience and give them a great time. That’s what we aim to do every show.”
“At church, the purpose is to glorify God and to serve the community. Whereas with rock and roll, it’s just really to serve the audience and give them a good time. So that’s what we try to do.”
-Jeremy Pessin
The conceptual framework of The Underwerewolves stems from Pessin, who saw an opening in the local Champaign-Urbana music scene for a theatrical rock act that prioritized fun over rock-star posturing. Offstage, the bandmates balance music with family life and full-time careers. Given those packed schedules, they focus on releasing concise, story-driven EPs centered around Pessin’s bizarre sci-fi universe.
The primary saga follows the destruction wrought by Stegotron and his arch-nemesis Felicia—a trans-dimensional cosmic force disguised as a domestic pet turtle—battling for the fate of human civilization. A follow-up prequel EP introduced Dr. Cyber-John, a rogue scientist attempting to build a time machine to rewrite history.
Arnold expanded this universe by illustrating and publishing companion comic books for two of the band’s releases, Felicia Versus Stegotron and Adventures in Time!, translating Pessin’s lyrics into visual narratives.
Where the overarching plot goes next remains an open question. The band claims they are far too “cheap” and “lazy” to issue a full-length vinyl or CD release, choosing instead to drop short narrative EPs directly to digital platforms. They have zero interest in changing course.
“I’d hate to evolve,” Pessin jokes. “If we could regress, that would be ideal.”
After the crowd coaxed them into a single-song encore, The Underwerewolves closed their set with a frantic, triumphant cover of R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” In a world that often feels like it’s spinning out of control, The Underwerewolves provided an hour of pure, lighthearted escapism—leaving downtown Champaign feeling just fine.
Top photo and video by Sal Nudo. Close-up photo of Jeremy Pessin by Logan Kurtz.