Geese Finally Respond to “Psyop” Allegations

Geese, the indie rock sensations whose breakout last year benefitted from an alleged astroturfing campaign, have addressed the fallout from their association with the publicity firm Chaotic Good.

They do not seem terribly upset about the narrative that fake fans fueled the band’s stratospheric rise behind Getting Killed. “I thought the same thing, I really did,” Cameron Winter said, laughing, in a new cover story with Rolling Stone.

Two weeks later, Wired published a report headlined “The Fanfare Around the Band Geese Actually Was a Psyop.” The attendant discourse risked flattening some context of the Geese explosion: Winter had released the cult-making solo debut, Heavy Metal, in late 2024 (and is working on a follow-up, per RS); Getting Killed had already been festooned with critical plaudits upon its release last September; and the clips promoted by astroturfing accounts depicted shows attended, naturally, by thousands of real fans.

In the band’s first interview since the hoo-ha, a typically acerbic Winter appeared happy to broach the matter, telling interviewer Simon Vozick-Levinson that he, too, struggled to get his head around the success of Getting Killed.

I don’t know. It was probably robots or something.” Amid the astroturfing discourse, the band sought answers from its team. Chaotic Good, they explained, had been hired to share Geese concert clips, but “it wasn’t comments or fake fans or bots or anything,” Winter said.

It depressed the shit out of me, because that’s not what I was trying to do. It’s not like I wanted to play a fucking song in a weird time signature that’s really loud and repetitive, and then just be like, ‘Ha, ha, you don’t get it like we do.’.

A lot of what we do gets seen as that. I don’t know how to fix that.” One Geese narrative that needed no PR push has been dating rumors around Winter and Olivia Rodrigo since they were photographed together in April.

Apparently uncomfortable with the topic, Winter waved away the interviewer’s offer to skip a question about what the pair had discussed. “Oh, we just talked about the Founding Fathers,” Winter said finally.

The fake-fans debate had begun swirling back in April, when singer-songwriter Eliza McLamb posted a Substack, Fake Fans, cross-analyzing a Billboard interview with Chaotic Good’s founders.

I don’t know. It was probably robots or something.”.

Bassist Dominic DiGesu added, “Come to the show, and fucking tell me how many bots you see.”.

Winter appeared more concerned by the perception that Geese’s Saturday Night Live appearance was willfully antagonistic. “It really fucked me up just how hard people took it,” he said.

A lot of what we do gets seen as that. I don’t know how to fix that.”.

One Geese narrative that needed no PR push has been dating rumors around Winter and Olivia Rodrigo since they were photographed together in April. Apparently uncomfortable with the topic, Winter waved away the interviewer’s offer to skip a question about what the pair had discussed.