Snooper

Snooper was thinking about pressure. Blair Tramel and Connor Cummins — co‑masterminds of Snooper — had become fascinated by hydraulic press YouTube videos, watching object after object spin and contort before getting flattened. Their heads, too, spun from everything that had gone on during Snooper’s early years. Tramel could relate to the videos, but for the poignance of a difficult transformation, not the defeat of total compression. “There’s a sweet spot,” she says. “For a moment, push and pull create this beautiful dance.”

Over the past few years, Snooper has rocketed from Nashville DIY scene stalwarts to widespread adoration in the international underground music scene. The project evolved well beyond anything Tramel and Cummins had originally imagined, and faster than they could track — resulting in disorientation as much as exhilaration. Tramel and Cummins channeled all that energy into writing new material. Their new album, Worldwide, extends directly from the festering punk the band first made their name on, but documents Snooper becoming bolder, catchier, and more confident.

Cummins and Tramel began making music together during lockdown in 2020. They never even intended to play live, but they soon found a small, fervent fanbase developing around the scattered 7‑inches they’d released. A no‑stakes endeavor quickly turned into one of the rising, definitive names in the tight‑knit DIY rock scene thriving adjacent to Music City’s more renowned country industry machine. What started as a home recording/video project turned into a full‑fledged band, rounded out by bassist Happy Haugen, drummer Brad Barteau, and guitarist Conner Sullivan. Tramel went from never having performed in a band to keeping a set of European power tools on hand so she could build Snooper’s now‑infamous props and puppets no matter where the road took them. “The energy we were putting in was coming back to us, like a feedback loop” Tramel remembers. “We were going full‑on, and crazy stuff started happening.”

Following the summer 2023 release of their debut Super Snooper, the band maintained a sporadic‑yet‑frantic touring schedule, darting around Australia, North America, and Europe whenever they had a tiny window between day jobs. Fueled by a hunger for fresh material and the random acquisition of a drum machine, Cummins and Tramel used whatever time they could find to write new songs. With Super Snooper being a re‑recorded collection of pre‑existing material long since road‑tested and fan‑approved, the band in many ways views Worldwide as their true debut album.

In February of 2025, Snooper spontaneously found themselves in Los Angeles recording with John Congleton. Though Snooper had never previously considered working with a producer, Congleton was a fan. “It felt like we needed a syllabus,” Tramel cracks. “We didn’t know how to work with a producer.” Yet the band reflects on the process as being integral to their growth as artists.