On any given weekend night at Stanford, the sounds drifting out of a dorm room or Row house might lean toward acoustic covers or a cappella rehearsals. But when Hot Pocket Nepo Baby takes the stage, the atmosphere changes. Suddenly, there are mosh pits, crowd surfing and walls of death packed into cramped student spaces.

Formed during members’ frosh year, the three-piece band Hot Pocket Nepo Baby — with Ethan Kirgan ’26 on guitar and vocals, Tyan Lee ’26 on drums and Molly Miller ’26 on bass — has become a staple of Stanford’s student music scene. 

The group recently won Stanford’s Battle of the Bands on May 2 and has played everywhere from row houses to Crochella to Cantor Arts Center events. Along the way, Hot Pocket Nepo Baby has built a reputation for their chaotic, high-energy performances rooted in grunge, punk and hard rock influences.

“There aren’t a lot of Stanford bands with shows that have walls of death or crowd surfing or anything like that,” Kirgan told The Daily. “We try to have really high-energy songs and have it be this space where people can just have fun.”

The band’s story began during New Student Orientation. “We all just found each other the first week,” Miller said. “We were friends first.” That friendship quickly turned musical.

“We all play instruments, and we all liked the same kind of music,” Lee said. “It kind of just worked.”

After the trio came together, the band’s name emerged from an unserious conversation: Kirgan recalled telling the group about someone from his high school whose grandfather had helped create Hot Pockets.

“I think [Lee] said, ‘Oh, he’s like the Hot Pocket Nepo Baby,’” Kirgan said. “And we were like, ‘That would be a funny band name.’”

At the time, Stanford’s student music scene felt dominated by softer indie sounds, jazz groups or niche genres, according to Kirgan. Hot Pocket Nepo Baby carved out a different identity, leaning into a heavier sound influenced by rock bands like the Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam and Tool.

The group’s distinctiveness extends beyond genre, as the members themselves embrace an unmistakably loose and spontaneous energy. “We’re a little more raw,” Miller said. “We don’t rehearse every single thing that happens. We kind of just play to have fun, and for our audience to have fun too.”

Some fan-favorite shows have happened in the least conventional venues. Tyler Snyder ’26 still remembers a performance that Hot Pocket Nepo Baby staged in his dorm room.

“It was one of my favorite music performances I’ve ever been to,” Snyder said. “It was awesome to have that special connection. It’s an intimate setting with people I love and music I cherish.”

For band members, those intimate performances are inseparable from the friendships surrounding them. Claudia Lewis ’26, who has watched both practices and live shows over the years, said the band’s chemistry is immediately obvious.

“You can tell that they all like each other because they actually do,” Lewis said. “They’re one of the only surviving freshman year friend groups that I have true faith in. And the music is good too.”

That closeness may also explain why the band has survived all four years of college. While many student groups dissolve as schedules grow busier, Hot Pocket Nepo Baby has continued performing consistently, even through senior year.

When asked what the band’s secret to success was, Lee put it plainly: “Us being such good friends.”

The trio’s bond now extends permanently beyond the stage. During a study abroad reunion in Madrid last fall, all three members got matching tattoos.

“We can’t break up now,” Miller joked.

Although Hot Pocket Nepo Baby built much of its following through covers, the group has also started developing original music. The band currently has one released single on Spotify and several unreleased songs they regularly perform live. Writing original music, the members said, feels fundamentally different from performing covers.

“If we’re performing a song and really nail it, it’s awesome,” Kirgan said. “But when we’re writing together and something comes together, and it’s like, ‘Whoa, that was really cool,’ that feeling is a step above.”

Their songwriting process tends to prioritize concepts and storytelling over autobiography. “They’re definitely very conceptual,” Miller said. “They’re not super personal.”

For example, one unfinished idea for a concept album traces the imagined life cycle of a Hot Pocket mascot from “birth to death,” Kirgan said. 

Even as graduation approaches, Hot Pocket Nepo Baby is not fully ready to lower the curtain. Though the members acknowledge uncertainty about how often they will continue playing after Stanford, all three expect music to remain part of their lives.

“Performing has been one of my favorite parts of my Stanford experience,” Miller said.

For Kirgan, returning to live performance during college felt personal. Music had been central to his identity in high school: “When I started performing again here, it felt like a return to self,” he said. 

As younger Stanford musicians continue forming new bands, the members of Hot Pocket Nepo Baby hope students resist the temptation to treat music as secondary to academics.

“Just make time for it,” Kirgan said. “It seems like a lot on top of everything else here, but we all work really hard and still find the time to do this.”

The trio further emphasized the collaborative nature of Stanford’s music scene.

“Most of the prominent bands know of each other or personally know each other,” Kirgan said. “There’s always people asking members of other bands to fill in for them at shows.” Miller, one of the directors of The Arbor, credited the organization with helping strengthen those connections.

Hot Pocket Nepo Baby will play at Ménage à Trois this Friday, followed by Day N Mayfield on Sunday, continuing to draw crowds eager to scream lyrics, slam into friends and experience the rare kind of catharsis that the trio has cultivated over four years.

“We like to have people dancing and moshing,” Lee said. “It’s supposed to feel fun.”

At Stanford, few bands have made chaos feel so communal.