An affinity for pop punk brought Bobby Dellarocco and Krystal Davis together.

Getting to know each other while  working at Sweetwater, the pair had collaborated on some projects, but it was not until Avril Lavigne released Love Sux in February 2022 that the two decided to record their EP, Epiphany, which hit streaming services in December.

“He would have me sing on some of his stuff here and there, but it wasn’t until this past year when Avril Lavigne dropped her new album, and we were just so nostalgic for the pop-punk feeling that we had growing up,” Davis said of working with Dellarocco.

The two are the latest entry into the ALT 99.5FM/102.3FM Homegrown Spotlight. Their three-song EP features “Show Me,” “Alive,” and “Better Off Just Friends,” the latter featured on ALT’s Homegrown Showcase. 

Feeling nostalgic

Prior to recording with Davis, Dellarocco had put a couple of singles online, with his first entry, “2003 Called and It Wants Its Warped Tour Shirt Back,” jettisoning you back to the turn of the century when pop punk ruled the airwaves and Blink-182 was king of them all.

“They are the reason that I am in music,” he said of Blink-182. “It was the first music that I latched onto that I could say, ‘Hey, I like this.’  It wasn’t something that my parents instilled in me because they were listening to it in the car. It was like, ‘Oh, I hear this. I like this.’ I just dug it.”

Dellarocco eventually steered into EDM, which helped him when the Massachusetts transplant joined Sweetwater in 2014 and spent time in the studios, where he crossed paths with Davis.

“I’ve been making EDM since 2010, but the past couple years, especially working in the recording studio and being around actual instruments and actual musicians again, it was like, ‘Oh, yeah, rock. That is fun. I want to do that again,’ ” he said.

Unlike Dellarocco, who is focused on making his own beats on his own time, Davis has been active in bands since coming to Sweetwater from Michigan. She says she’s singing in three bands: Our Name Is Taken, The Part You Left Out, and another that is still in search of a name.

Finding time

Once the pair decided to work on an EP, things came together pretty quickly, with Dellarocco recording in his home studio.

“He had already had the song structures in place and all the musical elements,” Davis said.

According to Dellarocco, he had the structure and chorus set for “Better Off Just Friends” and had been sitting on the instrumentation for “Show Me” about a year and a half, before Davis added the lyrics. The two worked side by side on “Alive.”

Once the three songs were completed, they felt it was time to put the EP online.

“It was nice to have something compact and digestible,” Davis said of the three songs. “Committing to a 10-track album, that can be a little daunting, especially with our time restraints. With three songs, its super easy to achieve, and they are all impactful.”

Along with it being “compact,” the two kept it at three songs for a practical reason.

“We’re both busy people,” Davis said, with Dellarocco adding, “I think we’re both drowning right now.”

However, when they do find the time, there could be another collaboration.

“We will do something again,” Dellarocco said.