Punk Band Destroy Boys Talks Aliens Ahead of Opening Blink-182 Concert

Alexia Roditis is sitting somewhere in the bowels of Rogers Place, home of the Edmonton Oilers, talking about aliens and her own close encounters with the third kind.

The lead singer and guitarist of popular California punk band Destroy Boys is animated and adamant, using her hands to sketch the shapes and unearthly flight patterns of the UFOs she’s spotted over the years in the air in front of her.

She and bandmate Violet Mayugba were first contacted when they were teenagers, shortly after they formed Destroy Boys in 2015. They were driving from Oakland back to their hometown of Sacramento after a gig when Roditis woke up from a nap and spotted an odd aircraft.

“We were about to get off the freeway to get to our house, and we both see this crazy huge triangular thing in the sky. It had purple lights backlit, almost like an LED TV,” Roditis recalls, as her fingertips touch three times to indicate the corners of a UFO that she says looked similar to San Francisco’s de Young Museum. “I remember it being super low to the ground, and being like, ‘Bro, what the fuck? Do you see that?’ She was like, ‘Yeah, I see that. What the hell are we looking at?’ Then it disappeared. It fucking disappeared, but it’s hard to forget.”

Prior to seeing the purple pyramid, Roditis says she always assumed that “there’s got to be some fucking weird shit here.” The sighting affirmed that hunch.

“There are so many new species being discovered, new animals, new plants," she continues. "We don’t know what the hell is in the ocean. There’s so much unexplored territory that I think it’s silly to think that we know everything."

Martians and intergalactic spaceships were not at the top of the question list when Destroy Boys agrees to chat. Roditis initially talks about the band’s crazy tour year, which includes two trips to Europe, the current North American run with Blink-182 and several festivals such as Coachella. There’s some new music coming, too, after Destroy Boys released the single “Beg for the Torture” in April. Surrounded by bandmates and other members of the Destroy Boys touring crew, Roditis is readying for the night's show, and at one point asks if anyone has a tampon.

The band is scheduled to play Ball Arena on Monday, July 3, with Blink-182 and Turnstile, and Roditis is proud to open for the influential pop-punk act, but the conversation takes a turn for the weird.

“It’s been so fun. I can’t really ask for a better tour to be on, to be honest,” she says, adding that while Mayugba is more musically influenced by Blink-182 than she is, she appreciates one particular member's work outside the band: "I’m really big into Tom DeLonge’s UFO work. Sincerely. I’m super into weird shit like that. It’s been really cool to be around the guy who's telling everyone everything.”

It’s well documented that the Blink-182 guitarist is a firm believer in aliens. In 2015 — the same year Roditis and Mayugba started Destroy Boys in high school — he co-founded an entertainment company, To the Stars... Academy of Arts & Sciences, that has aerospace and science divisions dedicated to researching their existence. When Roditis and DeLonge get together, their conversations aren’t about four-chord progressions, what it takes to become a mainstay in the scene or the bands they’re currently listening to. (For the record, Roditis has been on an Argentinian punk kick after spending time recently in her dad’s homeland.)

“It’s been the craziest fucking shit of my life. In the small amount of time that we’ve gotten to chat with [DeLonge], it’s been really mind-opening,” she says. “He’s super open, which is really cool, which makes me trust what he has to say. He doesn’t try to hide anything. Tom’s UFO shit is so insane.”

She doesn’t divulge any more details of what he’s told her, wishing to respect his privacy. But Roditis, like DeLonge, often scours the night sky in search of the unusual while on the road. Desolate places like Kansas, “in the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere,” are best, she explains. Roditis recalls that in 2019, Destroy Boys' tour manager suggested they all go outside and check out the cosmos. It didn’t take long to spot something out of place.

“We were like, ‘Oh, shit.’ All three of us see a fucking star that’s moving around in a way that a star or a spacecraft that I know of simply can’t do. It would go one way and turn around and go the other way. Go up. Go down. Defying gravity-type shit,” she says, again using her fingertip to map out an unorthodox route. “We were watching it for a while, and then we see it shoot off into space away from us. There was a little trail of light it left behind from going so fast or whatever. I don’t know. That was fucking weird.”

The allotted time to speak seems to slip by faster than usual, but Roditis is gracious when it goes a little over: "I can talk about this shit all day."

Destroy Boys, 7:30 p.m. Monday, July 3, Ball Arena, 1000 Chopper Circle. Tickets are $67-$1,300.