Nashville indie rock band Post Sex Nachos meet the growing pains of adulthood with resilience and hard-won optimism on their fifth album ‘Big Bad,’ a full-bodied, collaborative record that pushes their guitar-driven sound forward while capturing five close friends at their most cohesive. In conversation with Atwood Magazine, drummer Hunter Pendleton and bassist Chase Mueller trace how slowing down, leaving ego at the door, and welcoming a new member into the band helped Post Sex Nachos reconnect with what they love about being a band.

Stream: ‘Big Bad’ – Post Sex Nachos

Post Sex Nachos are everywhere.

Since Atwood Magazine last sat down with the Nashville-based band, they’ve toured around the country, released an EP, and made and released an LP – it’s only been 18 months. While their resume in the last year and a half alone is genuinely impressive, their work ethic, humility, and talent are at the core of their latest work, Big Bad, their fifth studio album, released on September 18.

The band’s five members – Sammy Elfanbaum (lead vocals/rhythm guitar), Mitch Broddon (lead guitar), Chase Mueller (bass), Hunter Pendleton (drums), and, as of May 2026, Jack Hazel (keys) – are incredibly close-knit. Elfanbaum, Broddon, Mueller, and Pendleton began the band at the University of Missouri in 2018 and have stuck together since, from packing house shows in college to selling out a national tour and playing major festivals like Lollapalooza and Summerfest.

Post Sex Nachos Are Having More Fun Than You

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“Since we started as a group, we’ve put out something every year,” Pendleton says. Big Bad was different. From pulling demos together on the road to recording tracks in the studio in Nashville, much of the previous year consisted of perfecting the project.

“I think you can definitely feel it,” Pendleton adds. “It feels a lot more cohesive than a lot of our previous records.”

Big Bad - Post Sex Nachos — Big Bad – Post Sex Nachos

Big Bad consists of 10 tracks that touch on the idea of staying positive through trying times. The instrumentals lend themselves to empathetic joy while the lyrics touch on the growing pains of your twenties and thirties.

“Almost everything we have done was in one consecutive sitting,” Mueller says. Their fourth album, Prima/Vera, was recorded in “9 or 10 days” at their house with producer Isaac Flynn. “Spreading this one [Big Bad] out to come up with new ideas and maybe revisiting parts after hearing the song 50 more times, going, ‘Oh, wait, this would work better’ – I think it was incredibly beneficial.”

In between tour dates with artists like The Strumbellas, Stolen Gin, Allen Stone, and Valley, Post Sex Nachos created what would eventually become Big Bad. “I think our initial goal was having it at least all recorded by the end of the year,” Mueller says.

The band got two consecutive weeks in the studio in November 2025. “I remember sitting there on like day four and being like, ‘Holy crap, we’ve spent so much time here,’” Pendleton shares. “Because in reality, we just spent bits and pieces, like two or three day blocks [in studio].”

Aaron Wagner, a longtime Post Sex Nachos collaborator both in and out of the studio, produced and mixed Big Bad. In addition to producing, Wagner is a member of the band Veaux, who joined Post Sex Nachos on The Minor League Tour in 2025.

Post Sex Nachos also invited Jack Hazel to permanently join the band on keys after joining them on The Minor League Tour.

“Oh, he’s a diva,” Pendleton says. “We can’t stand it.” It’s clearly the pull quote. Mueller immediately erupts into laughter. “We’ll print it out and tape it up on his door, and he’ll have it as a badge of honor,” they confirm.

“Hazel’s really brought out a new love for touring in all of us that I don’t think was ever lost, but maybe taken for granted,” Mueller says. “The Minor League Tour was Jack’s first whole country run, and he loved it. Seeing him love it reminded me, ‘Oh, wait, I really love this too.’ We needed that. He’s a blast.”

“And on top of that too, he’s got such an incredible ear for composition,” Pendleton says, “but also he plays with such taste. Jack [Hazel] never tries to be the focal point, even when he deserves to be. You meet a lot of really incredibly talented musicians in Nashville. Jack [Hazel] is incredibly talented in so many ways and is also very, very humble for how young he is.”

“It’s all off the record, by the way,” Mueller adds. Their love for each other is truly at the root of their composition.

Ahead of Big Bad’s release, Post Sex Nachos released four singles: “All For You,” “Sound of You,” “Pop Tarts” feat. MARIS and Annelise Gonzalez, and “A Lot To Lose” feat. BAILEN. They began teasing the project as a whole at the end of March on socials with the tagline “the Big Bad is coming,” a reference to the villain in tabletop games, from which the album gets its title.

“A Long-Winded Love Song”: Post Sex Nachos Bring It Home With “All for You”

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When asked about how they selected the singles, Pendleton jokes, “Oh, a lot of bickering. Just nasty, nasty fights back and forth.” (Atwood told them we’d update fans that “Post Sex Nachos is No Longer Having Fun.”)

Post Sex Nachos consulted Wagner, each other, and people close to them to help select the singles. “I feel like for all the other records, you just listen to the album internally ad nauseam until you know every hit and every lyric,” Pendleton says, “then you take a break from it and you sit, and you think about which songs stick with you.”

“‘Pop Tarts’ was one of the ones where we were like, ‘Okay, that stands out as the pop-iest, most fun, palatable sort of party banger,’” they add. The singles showcase range but exist in “the same sonic world.”

For the Big Bad singles, someone on Post Sex Nachos’ team recommended a few tracks; the band quickly agreed on all of them, asking only to swap one out. “I think it was pretty well understood among the group,” Mueller says.

It was a similar road to selecting the album order. A few tracks had dedicated transitions, namely the first two, “Living A Lie” and “All For You,” and the last two, “Thanks To You” and “Comin On Back.”

While they have “A to B” instrumentals, they weren’t always the opening and closing pairs. “I think it was pretty well understood after making them that that’s where they perfectly fit,” Mueller says. “I don’t think we ever said to ourselves like, ‘Oh, we need to write an intro track.’”

“It’s kind of like making a set list for one of our shows,” Pendleton says of creating the album order. “It’s this weird, subtle art of, ‘How do you artificially create flow and make things feel like they are supposed to be back to back to back.’ And you just have to, again, listen to it in that order a bunch of times until you can sit back and be like, ‘Oh, yeah, that does make sense for that one to flow into that one.’”

The band members spent their free time brainstorming anywhere they could, whether in the studio, rehearsal spaces, or the tour van. These brainstorm sessions led to songs like “Silver Line,” “Comin On Back,” and “Living A Lie,” the latter of which came from an old recording Elfanbaum had saved on his laptop.

The band knew from the original demo that “Living A Lie” had to be on the album, highlighting the core lyrical elements longtime Post Sex Nachos fans turn to the band for, but also showcasing their instrumental growth through the harmony between keys, synth, and bass.

“All of what we do is very collaborative with each other. It’s just people bringing ideas to the table and then talking them through,” they continue. “It’s very tedious, but it ultimately, I think, yields the best result.”

Collaborations are second nature for Post Sex Nachos. From working closely with their tour openers to inviting their peers to join them in the studio to uplifting rising artists on their social media, it’s no surprise Big Bad has two key collaborations as singles.

“MARIS recorded everything [for “Pop Tarts”] in Los Angeles with Isaac Flynn, the guy who did our last record. So it’s really a full circle, you know? That’s kind of the moral of the story: we work with our friends, and we give our friends as much work as we can,” Mueller says.

“You make an album with the same people over and over again, and you sort of fall into these like patterns of writing and recording,” Pendleton says, “and then you bring in new people who, especially vocalists, throw a melody down that you never in a million years would have pitched or thought of, and it just totally reinvents the song for you.”

**Post Sex Nachos truly hold their own on Big Bad through a sense of authority in their evolution and narrative as artists.**

“Junk” is undoubtedly instrumental and lyrical genius, standing as the third track on Big Bad. Its blend of futuristic keys and bass from Hazel and Mueller and nostalgic guitar and drums from Broddon and Pendleton presents a familial warmth. The lyrics are incredibly personal for the narrator, but Elfanbaum’s vocals create a sense of relatability in the narrative. “Junk” invites listeners not only to engage with the song in its singularity, but also the album as a whole, through verbalized sentiments about how people develop personal relationships with physical people, places, and things.

On “Silver Line,” the album’s eighth track, the rock-focused sound captivates listeners in a new light. The chorus is undeniably catchy, enticing listeners to listen on repeat with no end in sight. Electric guitar, steady drums, and a crisp bass create a pathway for Elfanbaum’s vocals to harmonize in a way that invites audiences to dance, making it easy to picture at a live show.

“I think we’ve all been and worked in studios with each other enough to be able to leave any sense of ego at the door and just try to make the best song possible,” Pendleton says.

On early Post Sex Nachos songs like “Coffee” and “Drive Home,” tracks featured lots of guitar and spotlighted the keys. In their next albums, Grandpa Stinks and Your Second Favorite Boy Band, listeners can hear more playfulness in the keys and how it harmonizes with the guitar. “Keys have become a huge part of our sound,” Pendleton says, “but other than that, it’s guitar-driven rock, and that is pretty true to even the first record we put out.”

Big Bad is a masterclass in modern rock, and Post Sex Nachos knows how to play a live show. The Big Bad Tour kicked off with a hometown show in Nashville on September 25, and closes in Chicago in early November. The band will tour several cities in North America, including their first shows in Vancouver and Vermont, as well as cities they love but at new venues.

“We’re very, very excited,” Mueller says. “I’m nervous and anticipatory of what people think about hearing the new stuff live. That’s nerve-racking.”

“Listen to the album, come see us on tour,” Pendleton says. “Call your mom. Let your parents know you love them, et cetera. All that good stuff.”

“Cohesive” is truly the adjective for Big Bad. Not in a redundant sense, but rather it feels full, impossible to miss, and honestly “Post Sex Nachos.” There isn’t a bad song on the album, let alone a weak one.

**There are no skips on Big Bad. The album stands out due to its sonic novelties within a mainstream genre, creating a narrative of resilience and joy in a darkening world.**

It’s the first full-length LP backed by Post Sex Nachos as an independent artist, only reaffirming many of the larger themes on the project.

While Big Bad touches on the complexities of anxiety and how it manifests in modern society, especially as it compares to our pasts, it is ultimately a work that reminds you to be optimistic as you move forward.

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