On Aug. 30, East Hollywood pop/punk teen trio LED are playing the inaugural CAMP — The Next Gen Fest, a festival at Los Angeles’s Underground Museum featuring rock stars of tomorrow like Kim Theory and Japanese viral drumming prodigy Yoyoka. But LED’s wholesome origin story actually plays out a like a real-life version of Camp Rock.

“It was a film camp that we did two summers ago, in 2024,” singer/guitarist Edie Yvonne recalled, during an LPTV interview right before one of LED’s first public gigs at Studio City’s Licorice Pizza Records last year. At that camp, Yvonne and future LED drummer Lockett Pentz portrayed casino gamers, while singer/guitarist Layne Brisbois (aka Layne Olivia) was cast as an assassin, in an amateur action/mystery caper. And while that short film, The Chain Gang, didn’t even go straight to video — “I don’t even think the movie’s out!” Brisbois laughed — it was a “fun bonding experience.” But more importantly, the song they wrote for the end credits, “Lies All Lies,” became LED’s debut single. And then LED became a real band.

“I actually didn’t think that we would become a band out of it,” admitted Yvonne, who is also an actress (her non-Chain Gang credits include Kitty, Chloe Sevginy’s directorial debut) and had attended the Shanelle Gray Studios Movie Camp to study acting. “I thought it would just be a one-time song. But I was secretly hoping that they’d want to keep collaborating, so I was really happy when we all got together and kept writing.”

Technically, if The Chain Gang even got a brief theatrical release, “Lies All Lies” — named after an Austin Powers catchphrase that Pentz used to randomly shout around the house at age 5, and eventually became his impromptu background vocals on LED’s debut recording — would qualify to be nominated at the Academy Awards for Best Original Song. “Oh, but they had a little mini-Oscars thing [at the camp],” laughed Brisbois. “They would hand out little Oscars.”

“And everyone got Best Something,” Pentz chuckled. “I think I won Best Shoe Game.”

LED at Licorice Pizza Records, Oct. 11, 2025

It makes perfect sense that Pentz had style from a young age, since his father is fashionable superstar DJ/producer Diplo. Pentz and Brisbois have played together in various kiddy bands since they we were age 10, and their first show actually took place about five years ago at one of Diplo’s Halloween house parties. It was on that fateful night that Diplo’s wardrobe malfunction, which nearly sabotaged that living-room gig, ironically might have predicted Pentz’s future band’s name.

“My dad’s LED mask got caught in the speaker, and it was messing with the sound. Everything sounded super-terrible-loud,” Pentz recalled.

“And then everyone thought it was the fire alarm!” laughs Brisbois. “They’re like, ‘What is that? What is happening?’’”

“And we’re like, ‘Oh, it’s your mask. It keeps touching the wires,’” said Pentz.

Pentz acknowledged, “My dad has probably influenced me a lot. … . He’s taken me to some of his shows. I’ve seen him perform. It’s not really my style, but I feel like that really made me think, ‘Oh, I want to be like him and make music.” However, while Pentz has been “kind of learning how to DJ and do tech music” and likes to “dabble in everything,” as he figured out his own musical identity, he and his LED bandmates, who are now all around the ages of 16 and 17, gravitated towards alt-rock.

Pentz said he’s “more of a rock kind of guy” whose drumming style is influenced by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Green Day; Brisbois, who honed her guitar skills during the COVID-19 pandemic, cited Bring Me the Horizon as her favorite band; and Yvonne, who started writing songs during COVID lockdown, loves ‘90s-era indie-pop.

“I feel like a lot of teens our age are really into the ’90s and crave that era or that nostalgia, and maybe don’t resonate with some more modern music,” Yvonne told LPTV.

“In my personal opinion, today’s music doesn’t have that same feel. It’s kind of like, ‘I put this together quickly,’ in a way,” muses Pentz. “With older music, you can feel the work and time put into it.”

“I think the answer [to why teens love classic rock and alternative rock] is because rock is freakin’ amazing, but that’s just my opinion,” Brisbois stated bluntly.

An experience involving a famous ‘90s band, and Diplo, actually inspired “Goodbye Eric,” the second song LED ever wrote. [DJ Eric Hamilton] is one of my dad’s friends,” Pentz revealed. “The story is we went to a Limp Bizkit concert, and he went into the moshpit and we were like, ‘Ohhhh, he’s not coming back! That moshpit is crazy!… Goodbye, Eric. You made it this far. You’re gone.”

“He was gone for 30 minutes!” Brisbois chuckled. [Editor’s note: Hamilton made it out of the pit unscathed. He’s OK!]

Yvonne enjoyed an especially magical moment with two ‘90s rock icons, which set her on her own creative path. In 2018, at the third annual Girlschool festival — the same L.A. fest where another local teen band, the Linda Lindas, made their live debut, and where Garbage’s Shirley Manson was joined by surprise guest Fiona Apple for duet of “You Don’t Own Me” — Yvonne sang in front of a rock audience for the first time. Much like the Next Gen Festival, the Girlschool event was a perfect example of the importance of mentoring young talent.

“It was such an amazing experience,” Yvonne reminisced. “Anna [Bulbrook, founder of the Girlschool organization and a violinist who has played with Beyoncé, the Airborne Toxic Event, and Edward Sharpe] put a group of teens or kids together, including the Linda Lindas. I had never really performed on a stage like that; I came from more of a musical theater background at the time. I got to cover ‘Fade Into You’ by Mazzy Starr, and that was really when I knew I really wanted to do music.”

Along with their Licorice Pizza Records in-store showcase, LED have since played the Whisky a Go-Go, Aviator Nation, and the Hotel Café — “the more we get up there, the more comfortable we get, so we’re trying to play as much as possible,” Yvonne explained — but they confessed that their most daunting gigs, even more daunting than being on the same bill as Shirley Manson and Fiona Apple, have been on L.A.’s battle-of-the-bands circuit, which is “really huge” among local teens.

“I think we’ve done two so far,” Yvonne said. “I feel like those are actually our hardest performances, because there are some really heavy metal bands and it can be very intimidating! There’s a lot of moshing! It encourages me to play better, which always makes me nervous.”

LED did not win those two battles, but they’re clearly winning at life; maybe an Oscar (or Grammy) really is in their future. In the meantime, you can catch LED, plus a solo set by Edie Yvonne and many other future stars, at CAMP — The Next Gen Fest, on Sunday, Aug. 30. Tickets, full lineup, and other details can be found here.