For a festival largely filled with indie rock, folk, and pop acts, Gouge Away may not have been a name that festival-goers expected to see on the Hinterland lineup. The Florida band embodies its hardcore influences well, but the bold mosaic of tracks they have released over the past decade has never been boxed into just one genre. With the name of the band drawn from a Pixies song, Gouge Away pulls from the far corners of ’90s alternative and noise rock just as readily as punk, gradually expanding that sound across three albums. Their latest, 2024’s Deep Sage, gives more room to melody and carefully defined vocals without losing the harder edges that they’ve become known for.

For Hinterland listeners encountering them for the first time, their set offered a convincing bridge between the hardcore scene Gouge Away came up in and the indie and alternative music that regularly fills much of the festival’s lineup, highlighting the common ground between two worlds that are often treated as more separate than they actually are. Given the final slot of the entire weekend, closing out Hinterland’s late-night Campfire Stage, Gouge Away had a lot to live up to and more than delivered. If the crowd’s response was any indication, the set was an absolute hit and an electrifying, resounding sendoff for the festival.

For anyone already wanting to relive the festival weekend, there’s another question worth asking: What does Hinterland look like from the other side of the stage? NYOTA wondered the same, so we gave Gouge Away a disposable camera to document their time in Iowa. Here’s a look backstage, through their eyes.