How we stay stoked
Music is how
Stoke Club is an indie surf rock band from Newport Beach, Southern California, known for composing in the Mixolydian mode and for the song Polaroid. The name isn't an accident. Stoke is the thing we're after, and music is how we stay stoked.
The name
Stoke is an old word for feeding a fire. Surfers took it in the 1950s and 60s and made it mean the feeling after a good wave. We tell that story in What stoke means. The part we care about is the fire. Stoke isn't something you have once. You keep feeding it, or it goes out.
And the club part matters too. A club is people. Nobody joins one alone.
The start
We're a group of friends who started making music together while we were at the University of Southern California. We lived together in college, and the band came out of that, in 2025. We write and produce our own records.
Music as fuel
We make music to create an atmosphere you can be part of. That line is on our site, and it's the closest thing we have to a mission. A song is how we feed the fire for ourselves. Playing it for a room full of people is how we pass it on.
That's why so much of our sound is open and bright. We lean on the Mixolydian mode because it keeps the major-key sunlight and drops the tension. Songs like Polaroid and Crocodile Tears float instead of landing hard. We break down how in The Mixolydian mode. The goal is a feeling you can stay inside for three minutes.
Shows and people
Surfers talk about sharing the stoke. Cheer for someone else's wave and the feeling doubles. A show works the same way. The music is only half of it. The other half is the people standing next to you.
So we play house shows, and we keep a list of people who want to come. If you want in, leave your number on the Stoke Club shows page and we'll invite you to the next one.
Ways in
- Listen. Stoke Club is on Spotify. Start with Polaroid.
- Come to a show. Sign up on the shows page above.
- Bring a friend. That's the whole idea.
More about who we're is in About Stoke Club.
We're Stoke Club, an indie surf rock band from Newport Beach, Southern California. All our songs and upcoming shows are at stokeclubband.com.