And who are The Runarounds, you ask? Well, in a COVID world, the director of the TV show Outer Banks, Jonas Pate, set out to find and create a band for the hit show. He found William Lipton, Axel Ellis, Jeremy Yun, Zende Murdock, and Jesse Golliher. Thus, the Runarounds were born, and it’s pretty safe to say the world was not prepared.
Pate decided to give the band a chance to thrive on their own, and the TV show The Runarounds was commissioned for one season at Amazon Prime, premiering September 1st, 2025, but was sadly cancelled in late April of this year. The band, however, has thrived despite it and continues to make music and tour, seeing their popularity grow at a surprising pace. Yun also stepped away from the band for reasons unknown, presumably to focus on his studies.
The show tells the story of five friends from an upper-middle-class North Carolina town who graduate high school and decide to follow their dreams of being musicians, changing their name from “Futhermucker” to “The Runarounds.” Season one follows the journey the band takes alongside their friends on the road to getting signed, as well as dealing with the repercussions of post-high school life. Another interesting fact to note is that the boys wrote all of the songs that they play in the show together, bringing an originality that is slowly coming back to music-centric media.
In the show, the band consists of Charlie Cooper (Lipton), Neil Crosby or Budda (Ellis), Wyatt Wysong (Golliher), Bez Willis (Murdock), and Topher Park (Yun). Important side characters include Sophia Kinney, Charlie’s love interest (Lilah Pate), Ruthie Bender, Neil’s love interest (Marley Aliah), Amanda, Topher’s girlfriend who turns out to be gay (Kelley Pereira), and Pete (Maximo Salas), the original drummer for the band when they were known as “Futhermucker,” who ends up becoming their manager.
In August of 2025, shortly before the show premiered, the band announced a tour that would span 17 cities in a few short months. After the show came out, their popularity was at a high, so much so that their venues had to be upgraded and more dates in multiple new states were added. Lilah toured with the band on the first leg, often making appearances to sing on stage, and her chemistry with Lipton was incredible. The demand continued so that the band toured well into 2026, with the last show being in North Carolina, the state where the band is based, on June 21st. Their success over the past year has been so great that they even played Bonnaroo, one of the biggest pop music festivals in the country, held in Tennessee.
Their opener for the Orlando show was Foxtide, another up-and-coming band. The LA-based indie rock band recently put out their third album, Entropy, and the boys in both bands are really good friends with each other, and during their set, Lipton and Ellis both came out to perform with them.
Seeing the Runarounds live is something that should not be contained to a 2000-person venue like House of Blues, but the next time that they tour, I am fairly confident that they will be playing much bigger venues. The walkout to Bad Bunny’s “MONACO” was a highlight and not something that I was expecting to hear before an indie-rock concert, but it set the vibe, and everyone was so hype and excited that when they started the set by playing “Ghost,” the crowd went wild.
My personal favorite off of this album and of the night was “Arrhythmia”, and there’s something about the way it was written that just gets to you. That, and the transition from “Beautiful Stranger”.
Their most recent single, “Bleachers,” was also on the setlist, as well as “Someday” (which isn’t on streaming yet) and “Wild Kids,” the first song that the band wrote together, which is also not on streaming as of yet, but hopefully will be soon.
They closed off the set with “Senior Year”, a song that hits any type of graduating senior in the room, be it college or high school.
The encore was one to remember. Ellis takes the spotlight to sing “Valerie” and goes down into the barricade to interact with the fans, something that is slowly coming back into concert culture in a post-COVID world. The show ended with “Downtown,” and honestly? It does feel like the end of an era.
The Runarounds may not be touring for a while, but they won’t be gone forever. They haven’t had their big moment yet, but they will. They have the potential to be the next One Direction, and soon, their playing small venues will just be a memory.