Ronnie Hillix knows what you want. She’s counting on it.
It’s the third time she’s leaned over her curly, green-haired bassist, Gabi Araujo, onstage and straddled them with her cowboy boots.
Araujo kneels for a noisy, improvised solo and bends backward, shoulders near touching the floor. The drummer rides his cymbals harder, and Hillix parts her mouth the slightest bit.
The band’s wall of sound is now almost as intense as the two musicians’ sexual tension.
People cheer and take out their phones. Photographers from the band’s record label rotate the lenses on their DSLRs.
She’s gonna do it this time.
And then, Hillix instantly abandons the whole thing. She and Araujo get up and walk to opposite sides of the stage, smirking. You can practically hear the groans of unreleased tension in the crowd.
The audience is getting blue-balled, and they know it. They want more.
They want the spit.
If you’re not tracking Buzzed Lightbeer, they’re an SF-based punk outfit that’s been making its way through the Bay Area music scene since 2018. The band is fronted by Hillix (guitar) and Araujo (bass), who share songwriting duties, with Michael Negrete on drums.
On their Bandcamp page, they advertise themselves as “San Francisco asshats who like to be loud.”
Buzzed Lightbeer is currently in a grand show experiment—one that could alter the trajectory of their career as a band.
As part of their act, they’ve started spitting into each other’s mouths.
Well, Gabi and Ronnie do. Their drummer stays out of it, as far as I can tell.
It’s taboo. It’s queer. It’s decidedly punk. And it’s made for some cool-ass word-of-mouth publicity. And people are catching onto it.
Buzzed Lightbeer recently opened for Shannon & the Clams at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco in October, marking one of their biggest breaks yet.
“Shannon and the Clams have been my favorite band since I was four,” Hillix says onstage with a bashful grin.
Shannon was definitely the bigger name on the billing that evening. And you can read all about them in more reputable music magazines.
But that night, I actually came out specifically to see Buzzed Lightbeer
And I came for the spit.
The Most Fun Name in the Scene
I found Buzzed Lightbeer a few months ago when I was looking for local bands in the San Francisco punk scene. It was their name that jumped out at me.
“Our band name came from the way we bonded as a band: getting drunk on light beer!” the band told Playboy Mexico in 2024.
The band started sometime around 2018, when Hillix and Araujo started jamming in a local basement with drummer Kendall Carroll, whom Araujo knew from high school.
Buzzed Lightbeer released their self-titled EP in 2018, followed by another EP, Hell, in 2019. After a string of singles over the next few years, the band eventually signed to the SF-based Psyched! Records in 2024.1
The group is inspired by 80s punk acts like The Cramps and Blondie, but they’ve also blended their sound with garage rock influences (and a DIY recording ethos) to create a vein of Bay Area rock that’s vaguely pissed off, anxious, and at times beautiful.
It’s also straightforward punk rock that’s really fun to mosh to.
A brief history of mouth-spitting
It’s unclear when the band started spitting in each other’s mouths.
The earliest photo in May 2023 shows Gabi standing over Ronnie, whose jaw is open with pursed lips, ready to receive it mama-bird style. Although it’s not clear if they were just joking because there’s no spit in sight. It’s a similar story for another post in January 2024.
The first time spit shows up on camera is in April 2025, and after that, it starts showing up on the band’s social media.
By May 2025, the band is acknowledging it in interviews with local radio hosts.
Whatever the case, Ronnie and Gabi have leaned into it at their shows.
When they take the stage, Gabi immediately falls back on her knees and Ronnie stands over her, expectantly gazing down at the bassist. She’s dressed in only frilly underwear and cowboy boots. The people start to cheer.
They play a few more seconds… share a conspiratorial smile… and then get back up and play the rest of the song.
Then, a few songs later, the same thing. It’s the showbiz equivalent of edging.
And it works. The crowd is lapping it up.
Spit isn’t everything
For the record here, the spit thing wouldn’t work if Buzzed Lightbeer weren’t already a fun band to see.
Even though they’re just openers tonight, their set is pure punk.
Much of their set list is new or unreleased songs. They even debut a new song, “In My Hole,” which is at least partly about being interrupted while masturbating.
“Need I remind you who’s in control? It’s not me! I’m busy! I’m in my hole!” Ronnie shouts.
A quick peek at Ronnie’s pedalboard reveals that she doesn’t actually have a pedalboard. Just two pedals—one for fuzz and one for reverb—strapped to a flat piece of plywood with beige painter’s tape, then plugged into a Fender Blues Deluxe.
It’s a band that understands simplicity is key to punk. Your drum kit doesn’t need eighteen cymbals and your guitarist doesn’t need a kitted-out pedalboard that short-circuits an entire city block when you plug it in.
To put on a sick show, you just need a whole lot of energy. And they brought the energy.
During their set, Ronnie shakes her ass at the audience between guitar solos and randomly jiggles her tits with her hands.
At one point, she holds her guitar like a rifle and mimes shooting audience members out of the nosebleeds, smiling like a choppy-toothed, feral hyena.
Gabi often collapses to their knees and plays on the ground in an exaggerated backbend. After they get up, they’ll play their bass solos directly into the crowds’ faces by leaning over the stage edge.
It reminded me, in a good way, of the house shows I went to in college, where the point was to dance wild and have fun.
But the audience at Psyched! Fest is clearly saving their energy for Shannon and the Clams, which is a shame. Someone tries to start a mosh pit next to me, and we start two-stepping in a circle until it’s apparent that we’re the only two people doing that, so we stop.2
Here Comes the Spit
After teasing the crowd for their entire set, the band is finally ready for its main event.
Ronnie gives a nod to one of the label-approved photographers in the front row, and cameramen swarm the stage.
She straddles Araujo, now kneeling beneath her, and her saliva dribbles in a single, decisive strand from her mouth into her bassist’s. The audience cheers the mid-set loogie, and the event takes on a Super Bowl vibe.
The spit, on a larger scale, is emblematic of San Francisco. Of queer culture. Of that confrontational punk ethos that screams, “I will eat spit and you will watch.”
But there’s definitely a business side to it too. Spitting sells tickets.
Part of Buzzed Lightbeer’s cool factor lies in their queerness, which isn’t just part of the band’s identity. It’s a selling point for their label.
Their label, Psyched! Records, bills them as a “Dionysian fuzzy slop rock trio.”
The Greek god part could be to highlight the sexually charged energy between the bandmates. Or it could just be another buzzword for “queer.”
Dionysus was also the god of wine, so it’s definitely a nod to getting wasted too.
But the spit also seems more innocent than some label-led corporate scheme, because this band genuinely likes to party.
Buzzed Lightbeer’s first Instagram post3 in 2018 was just a video of a shower, likely belonging to one of the band members, that was overflowing with cases of IPAs, Angry Orchards and green grocery bags of booze.
(In San Francisco, this is a local phenomenon known as “being fucking rad.”)
Onstage, Gabi is smiling and swallowing. Ronnie is smiling back at them, and it feels like there’s warmth there. Tenderness, even. Play and pleasure onstage.
Maybe I’m thinking too hard about this. Maybe.
A couple of songs later, they’re done.
“Thank you!” Ronnie says, wide-mouthed and ironic, but then a genuine smile slips through. She really was jazzed to play tonight.
“I love you, Ronnie!” shouts an audience member.
“And I love you!” she shouts back, off mic, and she bends down to unplug her equipment.
Buzzed Lightbeer is just one of the supporting acts at Psyched! Fest—a two-week festival run by their label. On the event’s poster advertising their show, Buzzed Lightbeer is in the smallest font possible. They’re so small that they don’t even have any merch at their table.45
In many ways, they’re still searching for their audience.
And for the kind of partying and hell-raising queers that Buzzed Lightbeer wants to attract to their shows, spitting is an effective way to get them out there.
Buzzed Lightbeer seems like a band on the cusp of a breakthrough as they book larger and larger shows. They’ll be headlining at the Rickshaw Stop for the first time ever later this month.
So, will the spit go away as they get bigger? Or, maybe, will it be the reason they get bigger?
Ultimately, I don’t know what to make of the mouth spitting. Originally, I thought it would be grander, more like performance art. I thought it’d be more political. More of a statement.
But mostly? It was just a whole lot of fun to be in the same room when it happened. Chaotic and loud.
Did I pay $39 for it? Yes. Did I enjoy it? Hell yes.
And what does the band want you to take away from it?
“Those sluts sure know how to rock and roll,” Gabi answered in an interview.
“They sure were bad, but weren’t they hot?” Ronnie counters.
“The spit thing was cool,” Gabi concludes, and they both laugh.
Buzzed Lightbeer will be headlining at Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco on January 21, 2026 and performing at Dollfest: Volume IIin Oakland’s California Ballroom on March 29, 2026. Tickets are available online.
You can listen to Buzzed Lightbeer on Bandcamp, Spotify (if you like drone strikes), Apple Music and other major streaming services.
- Since then, they’ve only put out one single — “CASH GRAB,” which they’ve really been pushing. However, a full album release remains elusive. ↩︎
- To be honest, the only thing missing from their set was more dancing. If you like to mosh, I am begging you for the love of God please come to their next concert. I could use a good, queer circle pit. ↩︎
- The band has deleted this post since I started writing this article. Maybe they’re trying to clean up their image a bit? ↩︎
- When I ask about it, one of the merch table workers mentions that she’ll be sure to “crack the whip” on them backstage. I laugh nervously. ↩︎
- In any case, my prayers were later answered. A few weeks after the show, Buzzed Lightbeer started selling limited runs of band-branded panties at their shows. ↩︎
