Written by Shea Roney | Photo by Shannon McMahon

Instigating that old New York draw, once southern now NY-based Badger Hunt are a natural concoction of punk rock dirt and pop-soaked nourishments. Started as a solo project for Miles Lee Ellisor to collect songs on an old 4track, their debut LP Bullseyes & other Lucky Stuff was released back in 2025. Since then, Badger Hunt has gone through scenic routes of shifting genres, filling out a full country band to the latest two-piece power incantation with drummer Jamie McCarthy. Badger Hunt returned earlier this year with Full Moon in My Pocket, a performance of some old back pocket magic that bleeds with both sincerity and grit.

Full Moon was recorded last summer in Chicago with the help of friends Grace Bader Conrad & Kai Slater. After these songs were recorded, the album was set on the back burner as Lee Ellisor went off to Madrid to study for a semester. But what’s rooted with sharp pronunciations of formative noise and kinship obsessions, Badger Hunt leads with a gnarly bite. The sweet, lucid melodies that the duo invest their time in belly up to the choppy guitars and percussive movements of a punchy tambourine and potent refrains, allowing the excitement to linger long after its discovery. Full Moon in My Pocket never feels indebted to the bounds of its lo-fi tracking or the brevity of its pacing, but finds the duo pushing at the seams of their creative collaboration.

We got to ask Badger Hunt some questions about the project, putting the album on hold, music videos and the practice of archiving.

Badge Hunt consists of you two, Miles and Jamie, but this is only the latest configuration of the project’s journey. Starting as Miles’ solo project, then a four piece country band to the rock n roll duo we are talking to, tell me about the significance of the shifts this band has taken. 

Miles: Okay, so the origins of Badger Hunt actually started around this time in late 2024 when I was feeling really stressed out with another band, and I wanted a little escape for myself to make songs and just have fun in doing so. It was just for me and I could write as short or silly or simple stuff as I wanted! At this time, I was also trying to get better at acoustic guitar and I began to learn about the wonders of stuff like the twelve-bar blues and John Fahey’s finger-plucking.  

Jamie: It’s worth noting that at the time, early last year in 2025, both of our main bands actually broke up within a week of each other.

M: It was around then I learned about Bandcamp, and then I started hearing about this thing called a 4-track, and Jamie taught me how to use one. And then I was gifted one over winter break, thank you to my mother! The week before spring semester 2025, I recorded a bunch of songs, and it was really fun. I was releasing it solely for myself and I really felt very free in that. And then it was very natural that Jamie got involved, because he helped me with the 4-track, our old bands were always playing shows together, and Jamie was also always staying in my dorm because he was and is Shannon’s girlfriend! After releasing the record, I wanted to play a show with a full band so it kind of just turned into a country band. And Jamie, as the wonderful drummer he is, just ended up playing in it. What did you think about the country band part?

J: My band had broken up, and I had no other gigs. *Both laughing* It was natural. When you were like, “Oh, do you want to do this?” I was like, “Yes, yes, of course.” The country format was cool. I don’t think it fully got to mature in that form–we played like two shows, right?

M: Yeah, we played one in February 2025 for the release of the album and that was super fun, but it was scrappy for sure. And then we played one in April 2025 in Riverside Park for our Barnard friends of the Poetrees sphere, Ana Sofia and Penny. That was also super fun, but I definitely don’t think it did get to fully mature. We were still very much figuring it out. We ended up becoming the rock and roll thing we are now, because two of our members, who were freshmen, went home for the summer, and so it was just us two. I remember we were actually considering maybe becoming a punk band with our friend Rafer, we were talking a lot about Snõõper. But then I was like, “What if we just, you know, became two-piece with the songs we have now?” And then we did, and it’s been super fun. I think now the Badger Hunt duo is sort of matured, but I am sort of sometimes curious what it would have been like if we really have gotten our shit together with the country mode of it.

J: I mean, I don’t know, if we ever get sick of this, we could!

M: Bro, we can be like The Byrds, you know, when they released ‘Sweetheart of the Rodeo’, and all of the sudden got super country. And it was because that guy Gram Parsons joined for just that album and then left. Afterwards they mostly stopped being as country… But yeah anyway, now we’re fully rock, punk, roll, stuff. 

You recently released your latest album titled Full Moon in My Pocket. How did you two want to approach this album as a newly solidified force? What sort of things did you each bring to the table? Did you challenge each other at all in the process? 

J: You brought pretty much all the songs, save one, to the table. I remember when we got together and started turning them into rock n roll songs, it came pretty naturally. 

M: Yeah, it was surprisingly easier than I thought to take the songs from acoustic folk to punk/rock n roll/loud and fast. I think there’s that same sort of ethos between the two ends that makes it easy to translate the bones of the songs from one to the other. It’s all about the spirit!

J: Yeah, folk is like three chords and soft, and rock and roll is those three chords but hard.

M: And then we started doing a lot of little jam stuff during practice, especially as we were trying to get more comfortable playing with each other one-on-one. A lot of those jams ended up going on to the album, because we finished our other songs a lot faster than we thought we would when we were in Chicago recording them. So we’re like, “Fuck it. Let’s just add more!” Also, it’s so important to say that if I tried to record this album on my own, it would have sounded completely different. Jamie, in his drumming style, brought something special or maybe just crazy to the table.

J: When it’s just two people, weirdly, you have to do more and less at the same time as a drummer. You have to write more hooks as a drum part, but they can’t be so crazy that you forget to hold the beat down. You have to find a way to keep the beat, but also write a catchy part.

M: I feel like we have to think about that balance a lot. We were just trying to play ‘These Boots Are Made for Walkin’’ and at the end, with that little lick they play, if I were just to play it clean, it would completely gut the sound of the whole thing, and it would sound very empty because we’re working with just one guitar and no bass. So it’s definitely a balance where neither of us can get too crazy. A lot of times, simplicity really is best.

J: I remember when we were recording ‘Bullet’, there was a middle section where I was trying to be all jazzy and tripletty. And then I remember, I looked at Kai–

M: He was like scrolling on reels on his phone! 

J: Yeah he was just curled up on the couch on his phone, only half present, and I asked him, “What do you think about this part?” And he just locked in. He said, “One of you has to hold it down.” I think about that sometimes. That was a good way to put it. 

M: He made a reference to, um, was it The Gories?

J: Yeah!

M: Oh wait, um, did we challenge each other? I think yes.

J: I believe so. 

M: I believe we challenged each other.

You put out some very unique and fun videos to correspond with this album, including the music video for “Be Yr Man”, shot 50% in Madrid and 50% in NYC, as well as the full album video. First, about “Be Yr Man”, Miles, you were studying abroad at that time in Madrid. What was that like for you, keeping that connection to the band across the ocean? Jamie, what sort of things from home in NYC did you make sure to include in the video?

M: We decided to really put everything on pause when I went to Madrid, especially because I’m a very busy bee sort of person who always has too much on their plate. So when I went to Madrid, I really tried to just chill. We recorded the album in August 2025 and initially I wanted to put it out in the fall, but Jamie convinced me to wait till the spring so we could have a proper release, which I’m glad we did. 

J: I think that was the right call, but it was also hard or just awkward to grind all summer and finally come out the other end with fifteen recorded songs and then wait six months to release them.

M: I wouldn’t say the connection itself was too hard, we were just going about doing our own things. The hardest thing was just figuring out the song mixes with the four of us being in different time zones. 

J: Yeah Miles in Madrid, me in New York, and Grace and Kai in Chicago. 

M: Crazy! And we’re all very busy people all the time. So we that was difficult, but it all worked out in the end. 

J: Shoutout Grace and Kai. 

M: Yeah, major shouts. But yeah, by the time I got back to New York in December, I was just really feral for an amp and drums. I was really excited to pick it all back up and start going again. 

J: As for the New York video, our friend Darlene did the New York part. We just got some friends together and hung out and walked around and did silly things and we pulled up on Silas Five at his work to film him hopping around. 

M: We tried to make a plan before–

J: The plan was just vaguely like–

M: Go get pizza, go find flowers–

J: Oh yeah we wanted to alternate between each city with the lyrics. 

M: We made a storyboard, it was actually a couple pages long! And it was just like, “You get these shots, I get these shots, and then we both just get miscellaneous hanging out and dancing and partying.” Some of the transitions worked really well, and then some of them, well, made no sense. And it was just kind of funny, because it was like, “What the hell are we watching?” Also Jake Henkel and Zoe Avraamides filmed the Madrid part.

As for the full album video, I feel it’s the perfect visual for Full Moon in My Pocket. Did you put any plan into what you wanted to do, or was it just camera rolling? Was it hard to keep moving for that long?

M: I had an idea, and I told Shannon and Jamie something like, “Guys, instead of just putting the album on YouTube, we should totally just have a camera rolling and play the album, and dance for 30 minutes straight.” And they were just like, “Okay… Sure…” 

J: It should be noted that that video was filmed after midnight, and it was my worst day ever, and it was the day before we needed to have everything ready for the release. 

M: Yeah it was crazy. I remember I was so tired and brain dead, and then I ate Cane’s and I was like “OK. I’m ready to dance.” And at the same time, we had friends in the other room helping make our buttons for us, which was really kind. But anyway, Shannon brought her camera and we just set it up in my room. We actually didn’t have any plan for what we would do–

J: And I think you can tell. *laughing* But it was really fun.

M: It was hard to keep moving for that long, but it was also just hard to think of stuff to do. I ended up just looking around and finding objects to pick up and play with, like the Cane’s arnold palmer, umbrella, hats, acoustic guitar, books, Walkman, a whole lantern. We were just messing around. And it really was a one take thing. The only reason why there’s a stop in the middle is because Shannon wanted to stop the camera so we didn’t accidentally lose footage. So she just stopped it and started it again immediately.

J: It was just very like, “Alright, we’re gonna do this thing,” and then we did it. And then it was like, “Alright, we did the thing.” Lol. 

M: We were just having a giggle fest the whole time. I don’t think there was much time I wasn’t laughing or talking in that video. I think it was because we were sleep deprived.

J: Yeah there was an element of hysteria in there…

Miles, in the past, you have put together two compilations called Free Noise, which were recordings from open mic events that you helped put together that featured performances by trans, queer & non-binary artists. Tell me about these events and what they mean to you as an artist, a documentor and a fan of music and community in general. 

M: Well, I volunteer at the Interference Archive, which is a horizontally-organized, all-volunteer, open-stacks archive in Park Slope. It’s full of donated print material from all around the world going decades and decades back, and it’s all related to social movements and generally radical organizing. The volunteers also put on events, and what I put on is Free Noise. And we actually just had the third one, and that was a great time. But just with all the disheartening, horrible things going on in this country, especially all the incessant political attacks against trans people, it feels important to have somewhere where we can just have fun and enjoy each other’s presence and art and community for an evening. There’s something so beautiful about that. When there’s a bunch of people that are going through the same struggles all sitting in a room together and sharing things that bring them joy, it’s very uplifting. There’s always so much warmth in the room when we do these open mics, it feels like a respite, a relief, a little sanctuary for the time being. And actually Jamie played one.

J: I played the first one and it was the first time I played guitar in front of people. It was fun! 

M: Yes! And doing the open mics is good practice for design, organizing, music tech, all sorts of things. Archiving is really important to me too, so I make sure to record all of them so that they go on Bandcamp afterward for free. It serves as a document that trans people will always exist forever and ever, as will their art. And here it is, and it’s so beautiful!!! Alright that’s all. Ready?

J: Yeah.

M: We’re Badger Hunt. Badger like the–

J: Animal. 

M: Hunt like the–

J: Gun.

M: Rock n roll baby freedom of speech!

You can listen to Full Moon in My Pocket out now.