Sarah Hyun, a sophomore majoring in music industry and communication, still remembers the night it almost didn’t happen.

It was September 2024 — her freshman year at USC — and she was at a house show when the Department of Public Safety arrived to shut it down over a noise complaint. The crowd migrated to another house, and Hyun struck up a conversation with bassist Eric McMullen, a junior majoring in popular music performance. She mentioned she wanted to start a band. He said they should jam sometime.

The casual conversation, born from a shut-down show and a late-night walk across campus, eventually became Ponytrick — an indie rock band that has since played at The Viper Room, Femfest and soon, the main stage of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

The band’s first real test came in November 2024, when a student in the “Live Music Production and Promotion” class reached out to Hyun in a panic after a band dropped out of a Battle of the Bands house party.

Hyun quickly assembled a setlist, joined by McMullen and Zach Fryer, a senior majoring in popular music performance, the group learned three of Hyun’s original songs and performed under the name “Triceratops” — a pun on Hyun’s first name that McMullen suggested on the fly.

Sean Coughlin, a junior majoring in popular music performance and the band’s lead guitarist, originally joined as a fill-in for a December 2024 show. Coughlin has been in the band ever since.

Hyun writes all of Ponytrick’s original songs, she said, drawing inspiration from artists like Lizzy McAlpine, Phoebe Bridgers and Adrianne Lenker. Her acoustic demos begin in an indie-folk space. She then brings the songs to Fryer, Coughlin and McMullen, whose heavier metal instincts differ sharply from Hyun’s.

“They bring their own edge to it,” Hyun said. “They make my slower-paced, acoustic-y songs more upbeat. They add more life to them.”

The result is a sound that doesn’t fit neatly into one box — indie rock with a metal backbone.

Ponytricks’s newest song, “Dizzy,” which the band will debut at the Festival of Books, marks a shift toward more collaborative writing, Coughlin said.

Positioning vulnerability at its core, the band hopes that their music will resonate with their audience.

“Sarah tells these stories about really small moments that have felt very big in her life,” said Sammy Lee, a backup vocalist for Ponytrick. “That’s the part that speaks most to our audience.”

Lee, a sophomore majoring in philosophy, politics and law as well as public relations, said that ultimately, this sense of relatability is shaped by the members’ diverse paths.

“Diversity in terms of what we’re studying has really influenced how I understand the band,” Lee said. “A few of [them] are pop majors, Sarah’s music industry and I’m pre-law, and I think the way we interact is different from how pop majors interact with [other pop majors].”

From telling jokes before sets to laughing between songs, Lee said, the band’s light-hearted nature brings together a close community of friends.

“It’s about blurring the line between the band and the audience, and just trying to bring them into that moment,” McMullen said.

Having played around Los Angeles and numerous house shows, Ponytrick is no stranger to live audiences, but their upcoming main stage set at the Book of Festivals will be their largest audience yet.

“The more people we can get in front of, the better,” Fryer said. “Around here, [bands] tend to play for the same group, the same show every time. It’s fun to play for your friends … but you’re not going to go anywhere.”

For Coughlin, the festival’s diverse lineup — and diverse audience — feels validating.

“It’s such a big event and there’s so many different people that are going to be playing that day,” Coughlin said. “For us to be able to be a part of that is pretty cool.”

But ask any of them for a defining Ponytrick memory, and they don’t point to a big stage. They point to the band’s unofficial encore tradition. At some shows, Ponytrick ends with a completely unrehearsed cover.

“It started [because somebody yelled] ‘Free Bird’ from the crowd,” Fryer said. “And we were just like, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’”

Their willingness to be loose, to be fun, to risk failure on stage — that might be the most honest description of who Ponytrick is, Coughlin and Fryer said.

“We take our songs very seriously,” Coughlin said. “At the same time, we like to keep it fun.”

Ponytrick’s stage presence is high-energy. Their music, combined with McMullen’s signature headbanging and dancing, creates an auditory and visual experience.

“Whether it’s for five people or 500, I feel it’s the same,” McMullen said. “I’ll try to deliver my best performance, so other people can feel the same things I’m feeling or, at least, feel really excited to be there.”

After every show, the band heads to Avenue 26 for tacos, a late-night ritual that, for Hyun, captures the spirit of Ponytrick: less about the future, more about the joy of making music together now.

“We’re all best friends,” Hyun said. “We’re not seeing this as, ‘We have to make it big with Ponytrick.’ We’re just doing this for fun, because we love music and we love playing with each other.”

Ponytrick will perform on Saturday at 12:20 p.m. at the USC Stage.