All Campus Entertainment (ACE) held its third annual Battle of the Bands on Feb. 16 — though the competition looked a bit different than it has in past years. For the first time, Battle of the Bands was held separately from the actual Spring Fling concert. In Goodrich Hall, six student bands competed for the chance to open for this year’s Spring Fling headliner bbno$, an honor won by bands Space Bar, Period, and Desert Gothic, who placed first, second, and third in the competition, respectively.
Mindpalace, a rock group, opened for the event. The band, which consists of Sachin Kirtane ’26, Josh Lipp ’24, Peter Miles ’24, and Tzevi Schwartz ’26, started with a cover of “Kilby Girl” by The Backseat Lovers, followed by “Blitzkrieg Bop” by the Ramones and “Toxicity” by System of a Down. Miles, the band’s vocalist, said he especially enjoyed playing the first two songs, since they were better known. “There’s something really special about performing and having a whole group of people sing along and have a great time with you,” he said.
Kirtane, Mindpalace’s drummer, said that it was a challenge to build a setlist with the competition in mind. “It’s difficult because we have to navigate between playing what you want to play and what people want to hear, because often there’s some dissonance there,” he said. “For Mindpalace, we were really just playing what we wanted to play.”
Next, Desert Gothic — made up of Sean Bottomms ’24, Liam Giszter ’25, Kai LaMothe ’27, Diego Mongue ’25, and Rein Vaska ’25 — performed two original songs, “The Booty” and “LAIKA.” Mongue, the bass guitarist, wrote “The Booty” for his 2021 album Gross-Mongue, while “LAIKA” is an unreleased song written by Giszter. The group finished its set with Stevie Wonder’s song “Superstition.”
Period — made up of Auren Boynton ’27, Yoheidy Feliz ’26, Jon Hartanto ’27, Sabrina Lewis ’26, Sophie Messinger ’27, Alex Moon ’27, and Savanna Shettler ’27 — performed a mix of pop songs, ranging from the ’60s classic “California Dreamin’” by The Mamas & The Papas to the Neon Trees’ “Everybody Talks.” Lewis, a vocalist, said that the audience played an integral role in choosing songs for the band to perform. “We realize all these performances are more about the people we’re playing for than anything else and wanted to make sure we’d pick songs that would make the audience feel included,” she said.
Fire Hazard — made up of Sachin Kirtane, Jahnavi Kirtane ’24, Nawon Lee ’24, Lipp, Mike Ma ’26, Mongue, and Kedar Veeraswamy ’24 — began with its original song “Spring Street Blues,” a collaborative effort spearheaded by Lipp, who wrote the lyrics.
Fire Hazard then played a mashup of “Latch” by Sam Smith and “Massive” by Drake and ended with a cover of “Killing in the Name” by Rage against the Machine, the band’s classic hit from their performance at WCFM’s Covercella event in November.
“We like to end with a bang,” Sachin Kirtane said. “We like people jumping, moshing, so it’s just a good tradition at this point.”
After Fire Hazard’s set, Marcus Lee ’26 — under the stage name Marcus — performed two original rap songs with backing tracks he produced and for one of which he was accompanied by Paul Kim ’24. The duo previously performed at the CASO Lunar New Year Gala earlier this month.
Space Bar — made of Katherine Bai ’26, Cooper Johnson ’26, Prom Kingchatchaval ’26, Sachin Kirtane, Ma, and Schwartz concluded the show. This year, the group’s pop covers won them first place in this first iteration of the competition — a continuation of their second place finish last year. The band began its performance with a cover of “I Knew You Were Trouble” by Taylor Swift, which featured vocals by Bai and Johnson. Ma said that the band members’ eclectic musical background motivated them to incorporate jazz and rock influences into the classic pop song.
“We replaced the chords with a jazz chromatic descension,” he explained. “Instead of the traditional chords that you’ll hear in the [Taylor Swift] album, there’s some funky descending of the chords, and they land at the first beat — that’s kind of the beat drop, and that was intended to kind of rile up the audience.”
The band then performed a playful rendition of “Into You” by Ariana Grande, which featured Johnson’s performance of an Ariana Grande-style riff during the bridge.
“The energy in the room was absolutely insane, and those more intimate moments made me feel it so intensely,” Johnson said.
“These are really popular pop songs that are well known and fairly simple songs, harmonically,” Sachin Kirtane added. “We were able to do so much with them and make them a lot of fun to play, and that is something I really appreciate about Space Bar.”
“Everyone in our group individually has spectacular musicianship and a knack for musical creativity and versatility,” Bai added. “A fun band with cohesive performances hinges not on any individual’s brilliance, but on the collective effort of the whole.”
At the end of the night, attendees voted for their favorite performance via a Google form. Moments later, ACE announced the headlining artist for Spring Fling, bbno$, and the top three performances of the night.
“It’s very important to have these social events where people can play music and connect to each other that way, not only like musicians within a band, but also from the musicians to the audience,” Ma said. “I think my favorite part of the performance was seeing so many of my friends and [the] people I care about in the audience, holding their hands out and dancing, as I was playing the music to them. I think that’s something really special.”
Reflecting on Desert Gothic’s performance, Mongue said that he was excited to bring the same energy to the Spring Fling concert later this year. “We got funky,” he said. “We shall continue to get funky. And we won’t stop the funky. ’Tis our duty to your booty to give you all the groove you deserve.”
“We need more events like this on campus,” Mongue added. “Having a real sound crew making all of the bands sound really nice, and having a space for half a dozen phenomenal campus acts to perform was one of the most beautiful Williams moments I’ve seen.”
The three winning bands will compete again at Spring Fling on April 27 for the chance to play en encore before the headlining artist.
[Editor’s note: Emily Zas, who is a member of the editorial board and co-president of ACE, was not involved in the writing or editing of this article.]
