Punk, TikTok, and Nickleback meet-and-greets: the dizzying world of Cowboy Hunters
What does being a punk actually mean in the modernistic age of 2026?
You certainly don’t have the same scene as half a century ago. There aren’t as many venues in the first place, let alone the punters to fill them. In an increasingly divided world, people are more likely to spend time on their phones rather than connecting with their community and heading out to a gig.
That’s a rather depressing fact when you really stare it down – but on the flipside, what happens when you actually embrace it? Take all the punk wrath and ire of old, combine it with a Gen Z disposition that dominates the algorithms, and suddenly see whole new hordes of young people looking towards a new way of life. That’s the mantra of Cowboy Hunters.
The Glasgow duo of Megan Pollock and Desmond Johnston have stormingly made a name for themselves in the scene over the past few years, releasing a steady slew of singles before their 2023 EP From One Speck of Dust to Another, and now their latest effort, EPeepee. They are unbridled in their approach, but steadfast in their vision to save the world.
We’re sitting in a pub on Glasgow’s shoddy equivalent of a strip, otherwise known as Sauchiehall Street, on an unusually balmy March day. It’s the morning after the night before, with the EP having been released the day prior, and the band are still clearly in the mood for celebrations. They order pints of Tennent’s – it’s 11.30am. I, woefully, abstain.
Maybe I should have indulged in the intoxication, however, as you need a certain level of wild imagination to get on the pair’s wavelength. I ask what brought them together in the first place, and their simple, unanimous reply?
“Hunting cowboys.” No shit.
“Most other cowboy hunters are gone, apart from us,” Pollock muses, before Johnston interjects, “There are a lot of them. They’re dead to us. We’re self-taught cowboy hunters – there is a cowboy hunting academy, but fuck that place.”
Pollock agrees, echoing, “Fuck that place.”
It’s a familiar pattern which peppers itself throughout the rest of the conversation. They finish each other’s sentences, cut each other off, and riff off each other in a way that, largely, a duo only can do. Oh, and if it wasn’t clear enough already, pretending to be the cowboy-hunting saviours of the world is kind of their shtick.
However, when listening to the tracks on EPeepee, it struck me that there seemed to be a certain resonance to the little corner of the world – we’re all young people in Glasgow, at the end of the day; we see the city change in ways good, bad, and ugly on a daily basis. Take the track ‘Money For Drugs’ as the prime example: in a country with the worst drug death rate in the Western world, it’s a trope we all know.
I put this to the band, on top of how they feel about representing the local punk scene, and the look I get back is slightly aghast. “I don’t really want to represent it. I’m not qualified,” Pollock replies, to a shout of laughter from Johnston.
He jumps in: “It’s more just about honesty, because at the end of the day, everyone is just trying to get money for drugs. It really depends what your drug is, be it coffee or something else. Everyone’s sedated in some way.”
OK, so they’re punks, but not such big punks that they have to be the leaders of anything – that seems fair. What about their song ‘Cuntry Girl’, then? Nothing like being blatantly on the nose, of course. Or ‘Have a Pint’, with its lyrical reference to the TikTok sound “Bus, club, another club,”: surely it’s pretty clear that they’re aiming towards a Gen Z cultural presence?
“I think any of the references to Gen Z culture probably just happens because we see it and are kind of part of it,” Pollock says. “I don’t know, that’s the culture we were exposed to.” Johnston then adds: “Those two songs are more queer-coded than Gen Z-coded, but Gen Z is quite a queer bunch.”
It would be easy for Cowboy Hunters to paint themselves as martyrs for trying to take punk into a new generation – they use OnlyFans as a marketing channel, after all – but this is again something they push back against. “I think a lot of people are flying that flag, so to speak,” Johnston says.
“We’re definitely not the only ones. Punk in itself has always been queer as fuck, really, whether people want to admit it or not. That sort of marginalised group type beat.”
It’s clear that, no matter how serious they may be as musicians, the music itself is an area in which Cowboy Hunters aim to be completely free of inhibition. That doesn’t mean it can’t be political or still have a searing point, but there’s a sheer head-banging liberty that overrides its heart.
Let’s get back to their dizzying greatest talent – the ironic comedy bit. It’s ten years from now, they’ve become the biggest band in the world (and defeated all the cowboys): how do they celebrate? “Have a big black jet with a bathroom in it,” Pollock says, before adding, completely off the bat, “King-sized tub big enough for ten plus me.”
Completely in unison, they recite, “Sign a couple to the Playboy Mansion,” as if they’ve rehearsed this. Johnston proceeds: “I’d love to be able to sign autographs, get my meals for free. Drug dealer on speed dial. Stay skinny, because we’re not gonna eat even though we’re getting all these free meals.”
Pollock chimes in: “Yeah, and Nickelback meet and greet. Enough money for that. Yeah, it’s all about the money.”
Somehow, that might be the most punk thing about Cowboy Hunters of all.
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