My Point of You Is Poised for Nationwide Takeover

To make a quick, crude city-to-city analogy, the Denton music scene is like Dallas’ angsty, artistic, Cap’n Jazz-loving cousin, and we wouldn’t want it any other way. Dallas tends to cast a wider net from act to act, while Denton seems to have specialized in rock, namely the more melancholic and progressive strands of emo and hardcore. The result has been some of the best local music any city could ask for: alwaysneverstays released a classic EP earlier this year. Nesting Doll is about to embark on its first multi-state tour, and thousands of fans mourned online as bulletsbetweentongues disbanded in September.

There’s no doubt that Denton’s brand of rock is something special, which is why we couldn’t be more proud to see the band my point of you represent the city on a national level. The garage band from Little D recently announced their Winter Tour ‘25-’26 alongside San Antonio’s at first, at first, which will hit cities in Arizona, Nevada, California, and more before wrapping up with a hometown show at Rubber Gloves on Jan. 13. This new string of dates comes only a few months after the band’s shows in New York and Philadelphia on their tour of the East Coast.

Alongside the tour, they’re also releasing Texas, Hold Me, a two-single split with at first, at first that comes out on Dec. 19.

MPoY seems hellbent on hitting every corner of the country, so, in true Texan style, we sat down with the band for some chilaquiles and mole at a Cuquitas to gain insight into their plans for national domination and how it all started. The story began two years ago with a list of puns scraped together by guitarist Christopher Henley as potential names for their new band.

Punny Thing

“I wish there was more to it, but I just like puns a lot,” he says with a shrug.

Henley rattles off a few he remembers out of the 20-something he’d jotted down: “Wonder If Olive” (Wonder If I’ll Live) or “Gannon Main,” a play on bassist Gannon Shaffer’s first name and Ganondorf, the Smash Bros. character. No matter how many scrapped ideas it took to get there, eventually, Henley hit it out of the park. They’d be hard-pressed to find another moniker that captures the band’s emotionally driven, cathartic nature quite like my point of you.

The five-piece band signed with Ritefield Records in May, and its support has become an indispensable asset for the band, helping with everything from touring and physical media production to merchandising and more. With all the horror stories of inexperienced bands getting stuck in bad deals, it’s refreshing that everyone at the table has nothing but good things to say about the label.

Admittedly, a good deal of credit must be given to whoever scouts for Ritefield, because MPoY only had one song out at the time of signing, so most of their material was only heard live at shows.

Shaffer, the band’s go-to storyteller, lays out how a string of jokes about smuggling drugs through an airport in New Orleans led to the bassist jokingly claiming, “This is my first heist,” a phrase that stuck with the band and became the title for their debut EP. The four-track project released the following month under Ritefield and showcases a substantial amount of variety in a brief but cogent 14-minute runtime. 

Jonah Hall opens “eviscerate” with a driving, abstract beat, then Henley and Ian Anderson bleed in with intertwining riffs as Shaffer alternates between longer chords and short, plucked notes. After a steady buildup in “where are the birds,” Shaffer and Hall lead the band in and out of spastic bursts that resolve in nice, open moments while vocalist Frida Valenzuela’s voice cuts through the low noise and is accented by ascending guitar lines. “redeemer” is a slow burn that heats up near the end, while “footfalls” starts a bit faster after a gnarly drop-in and leads to a syncopated breakdown from Hall while Shaffer and Valenzuela trade off, echoing each other vocally over piercing chords from the guitars.

Their use of dual male and female-led vocals was baked in from the start, they say. Henley was the only one vehemently opposed to being on the mic, while both Shaffer and Valenzuela had sung before and were happy to take up the reins. Their voices complement each other nicely, with Shaffer acting as a deeper, sometimes more brash undertone to Valenzuela’s higher-pitched, dream-like voice.

Another reason MPoY stands out is its dynamic fluidity within a song. Multiple tracks have moments when the band nails a time change or smoothly transitions between styles in a way that’s impressive to hear and addictive to listen to. They’re all pretty modest when this is brought up: Henley throws up his hands, “We just don’t know how to write,” he says, laughing. Shaffer piles on, revealing that the real secret is “losing your sense of meter while playing.”

On the Road

While everyone’s excited to hit the road and rock the West Coast, they learned this summer that tour life has its ups and downs. To make every wild, packed-out show happen, they spent hours crammed into a dingy van and ate countless meals consisting of nothing but gas-station food.

Valenzuela cringes as she recalls driving around and turning on the overhead lights to see at least 20 mosquitoes flying around them like bats. Shaffer, the one who manages their finances, lost his wallet on their first day on the road. “Thank God for tap to pay,” he says.

They all quickly agreed that their saving grace for the tour was a football someone had brought along on a whim. No joke, everyone’s eyes lit up like they’d seen an old friend when Hall brought it up.

“It would’ve been a catastrophe if we’d lost that football,” Hall says.

“We would have gone and gotten another one,” Shaffer responds sharply, as if offended by the mere thought of continuing without the football.

It’s mind-blowing to think that my point of you has amassed such a wide-reaching fanbase with less than 20 minutes’ worth of music available for streaming, but the sold-out shows and gigs in cities around the country speak for themselves. Sometimes, less is more, but at this point, we’re looking forward to Texas, Hold Me almost as much as Christmas, not to mention their hometown show on Jan. 13 at Gloves.