If After's Music Is 'Nostalgia Bait,' It's Working: Meet the Duo Drawing Comparisons to Michelle Branch and More (Exclusive)

Good things come in pairs, and After is proof. The trip-pop duo, made up of Justine Dorsey and Graham Epstein, is one of the best Hinge success stories to date — and they're not even a couple.

After matching on the app, lifelong performer Dorsey, 30, and artist-director Epstein, also 30, quickly realized that they have a lot in common, including a shared birthday — down to the year. But above all, they have a twin reverence for a few thin slices of ‘90s and 2000s sound that they have since channelled, full-force, into After.

“It's really hard to find people that you really trust their taste, I think, and we both implicitly trust each other and it's rare for both of us,” Dorsey tells PEOPLE, as Epstein adds that "with other people, it's harder to bounce ideas off of each other.”

The duo began making music together in 2022, initially sticking to the “satisfying” pop sound pioneered by Michelle Branch and Ashlee Simpson, an obvious choice for Dorsey’s angelic vocal tone. Then came the “crazy aesthetics” now synonymous with the band before, finally, they stumbled upon the PS2 Japanese visual novel (After...) that inspired their name.

Following several years of friendship, about two years of After and for Dorsey, 25 years pursuing a career as a performer, the duo went on tour for the first time in 2025. Armed with just a guitar, laptop and fan — ensuring wind blows through Dorsey’s blonde tresses for maximum pop drama — the pair is nothing short of electric onstage.

On TikTok, meanwhile, their sound — which the vocalist bills as a blend of ‘90s trip-hop, early-2000s pop and trance — inspires comments like, “Reminds me of gloomy Saturday mornings in 2004 when I was in kindergarten.” Others contain accusations of “time travel” and confusion about whether the melodies arrived this year or two decades ago. (“You're telling me this wasn't released in 1999?”)

After wrapped their first tour — a stretch of opening sets for cult '90s band Kitty Craft, plus some headlining shows — in mid-November. Ahead of their San Francisco stop, the pair hopped on a Zoom call with PEOPLE to chat about the past, present and future of the band — and weigh in on whether their music counts as “nostalgia bait.”

The following interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

PEOPLE: How has touring been? I couldn't help but notice how simple the set-up was at your New York show.

EPSTEIN: It's all we want to do is just perform. It's just two of us, so it's so easy, and the equipment is a laptop and a guitar. It'll probably be bigger in the future, but it's really chill right now. We've had a drummer before at a couple shows in L.A., but I don't know. It'd be cool to have a full band, maybe for a festival or something — just to make it sound beefy.

DORSEY: Some people will be like, “You really need a full band,” and then other friends are like, “You should never change, just always have a laptop.” So everyone's different.

PEOPLE: I see so many comments on your posts saying things like, "You guys are the only people doing the 2000s right.” While everyone's trying to do Y2K, why do so many listeners find After's take authentic?

EPSTEIN: I don't know. I think I've just been into it forever. I was part of these weird Facebook groups on Y2K aesthetics [particularly cars and website design] in 2014, really early on. I guess that's why it feels better. It's just a lot of research and love for it.

DORSEY: You're OG. Graham knows the difference between a 2002 aesthetic and a 2005 aesthetic, you know what I mean? He's very granular.

PEOPLE: You describe After’s sound as “trip pop,” but how else do you describe your music to someone who’s never listened?

EPSTEIN: Yeah, it's pop music — the Michelle Branch stuff — and then we have the Massive Attack drums. That's kind of the sauce, is in the brick. And synths. Yeah, early ‘90s; We were originally really into new-age music, so a lot of those synths and stuff from those random Pure Moods albums and stuff like Enya and Enigma. We still want to put Gregorian chant in our music.

DORSEY: We're very not into the ‘80s, so if it sounds remotely '80s, we're out.

PEOPLE: Is the ‘80s aversion specific to the After sound, or does it play into your personal listening habits as well?

DORSEY: I'm not listening at all.

EPSTEIN: I don't listen to it. I used to love it. I still love some bands from the ‘80s obviously, and ambient stuff like Harold Budd. But ‘80s pop, it's just seeped into music and everyone keeps thinking, "We're back in the '80s." I'm like, "No, we've been in the ‘80s for 20 years. Everything is ‘80s."

PEOPLE: It takes so much more than music taste to have chemistry like you two. What do you connect on outside of music?

EPSTEIN: Art. The visuals in our band are so important, too. I'm glad that you are down for the things I'm into. Also, I feel like if I was making music alone, it wouldn't sound exactly like this either.

DORSEY: Movies. And my personal [music] library is not as expanded as Graham's is, so I do feel like he shows me stuff all the time that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. We really connect through that. I'm not a crate-digging person, but I think that I'm really good at digesting that stuff and externalizing it quickly. I don't know how to explain it, but it just happens that what I naturally do well fits really well with what Graham loves. It's cool, because so much stuff that I'm discovering later in life, I'm like, "Oh man, I would've loved this when I was a kid and I just didn't know."

EPSTEIN: It’s the opposite for me. I was so deep into specific music and now as we're making music, I'm so into really basic pop music. Like The Fray and Coldplay. I think it's better than anything I've listened to in the past.

DORSEY: Justin Bieber. Ariana Grande. And yeah, we love Coldplay.

EPSTEIN: I used to think I was too cool or something for it. Now I'm like, "No, it's the best music." There's a reason why it resonates with millions of people.

PEOPLE: You've both been so open about your influences, and After is constantly in conversations about nostalgia, but people aren't really accusing you of copying or being unoriginal. It's a rare situation.

DORSEY: It just feels like a natural fit for both of us, for both of our tastes. Everything we've ever loved gets to be funneled into After, and then there is a lot — genuinely a lot of, I think — of heart in it. It's not just like, "Oh, it looks cool." It feels authentic for us when we're making it. So hopefully that is received by people. I feel like it is received by people.

EPSTEIN: Sometimes, there are people who are like, "It's nostalgia bait," and stuff on TikTok. There's been videos, but that's fine. If someone comes out with an album that's influenced by ‘70s rock, why is that person not nostalgia baiting?

DORSEY: I think it's just too close for comfort for people.

PEOPLE: So many comments say that your music evokes the feeling of being at a Kohl's or Barnes & Noble Café in the 2000s, and other things like that. Some artists would view that as a negative thing, but you guys embrace it.

DORSEY: There is a degree of people who are like, "Oh, it reminds me of simpler times," and I don't think we're necessarily trying to capture that feeling, but there's all these promised futures in design — or, I feel like, maybe even Barnes & Noble music, when you go there as a kid — where you're like, "When I'm an adult, I'm going to be like this person.” It's almost like a parallel timeline.

EPSTEIN: An alternate timeline, if capitalism didn't just ruin everything.

PEOPLE: Do you feel like you are part of the so-called resurgence of recession pop going on right now?

EPSTEIN: I don't know, probably unintentionally. I feel like everything's a reaction unconsciously and the world's crazy right now and we're making super optimistic music.

DORSEY: That wasn't even a goal when we were first starting to write songs, but definitely with lyrics, some of that hopefulness just naturally happened. I don't want it to be like, "The world doesn't suck right now," because the world is insane and scary for so many people. But I think After does provide ... I don't necessarily identify with escapism, but comfort to people. That's a part of After that just kind of happened that is very unexpected for us, and very moving to me. It's funny because in terms of the earnestness, I'm earnest naturally as a person, and then Graham almost... 

EPSTEIN: I just don't like 90% of things.

PEOPLE: To me, the through line in After’s music, whether it’s the poppy-bubbly songs or the moodier, belongs-at-The Bronze-in-Buffy the Vampire Slayer stuff, is a bittersweet feeling. Is that intentional?

EPSTEIN: Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. The main part. I think we'll always have that feeling, even if we changed genres a little bit. Anime and a lot of [Hayao Miyazaki] films have that same feeling. I don't know why I'm connecting the two, but I like how those movies bottle up that feeling, and I want to make up every song packed with that same energy.

DORSEY: You get cringed out when things are earnest or something, but then the music is a way to channel it. Art is the way that you channel all of that, and that's just a mode that I find myself in often.

EPSTEIN: I'm earnest deep down, but I'm not sentimental.

PEOPLE: After gets compared to a lot of musicians: Branch, Avril Lavigne ... I swear the other day I heard a flash of Foo Fighters. Have any comparisons taken you by surprise? Or are there any artists that you didn't realize were influences until someone pointed it out?

EPSTEIN: Foo Fighters. [Laughs] I don't know. I guess when people say 2010s music.

DORSEY: What's something we get and we're like, “Oh?” I'm trying to think. ... To the Foo Fighters point though, I love a lot of ‘90s rock. Hole is my favorite band and I love Courtney Love, Smashing Pumpkins and a lot of the early ‘90s male voices and their melodies. I think those come into play.

PEOPLE: I'd love to hear just a tiny more about After’s music video influences.

EPSTEIN: [Filmmakers] Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham. Björk’s “All Is Full of Love” video is so good. It looks better than most videos now, and it's from the ‘90s.

DORSEY: We definitely were referencing the Natalie Imbruglia “Torn” video for
“Outbound,” but I'm actually just going to shout out Jelani Miller because he directed “Deep Diving.” He edited the “Ever” video, and I think he's a great director. I think he's underrated and he should be huge. He does the 2000s visuals so beautifully and comes from such an authentic place.

PEOPLE: Style-wise, especially after hearing about the “crate-digging” dynamic, I’m wondering: Are you big thrifters? Are your After looks similar to how you dress all of the time?

DORSEY: I only shop secondhand for the most part, and I'm really inspired by Marithé + François Girbaud. The 2000s collections are super inspiring. Having a sense of comfort and wearing an outfit that you could take off running in is really important to me with After. I'm never in a heel, even. I just want to be comfortable and have a sense of play. The clothing is very personal to me actually.

EPSTEIN: I just go onstage in what I'm wearing that day. I want to get better clothes. I was recently inspired by all these old Chris Martin photos.

DORSEY: There are incredible paparazzi shots of Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow walking down the street from when they were together. Their outfits are perfect.

PEOPLE: After CDs were selling like crazy at the New York show. Are you two big physical media collectors?

DORSEY: I work at a record store and I have a car that has a CD player, so yeah, just naturally. And it's really fun to go shopping for that stuff on tour.

PEOPLE: Do either of you remember your very first CD?

EPSTEIN: Maybe [an album by] The Ataris, this pop-punk band that I used to like. Room on Fire by The Strokes I bought when I was a kid, and I was obsessed with that. Those were the first two albums I bought in 2003.

DORSEY: I feel like it was probably something weird, like The Broadway Kids. We listened to so much musical theater when I was a kid.

PEOPLE: Real. Mine was the High School Musical soundtrack or something.

EPSTEIN: I probably had that too. I was obsessed with High School Musical.

DORSEY: You still are.

EPSTEIN: I listened in the car, when my dad was gone. I secretly played it. It's really funny. My older brother's a big influence on me. He's such a collector of everything and I think that's really cool. But he's a metalhead. He collects a lot of black metal. I think his dedication to it is sick.

PEOPLE: What has his reaction been to After’s success so far? And the rest of your families’ reactions?

EPSTEIN: They're just super proud of us. My brother, he just texts me a lot, asking me a lot of questions. I used to look up to his taste and everything and it's cool that he's so supportive and posts our songs. He's also a tattoo artist, so he posts on his tattoo page on Instagram and stuff. It's so sweet.

DORSEY: My parents watched me try for so many years to have a music career, and were always so supportive, but I think they're just like … it's really crazy to see it happen the year we turned 30. I've been doing it for so long all of us are just like, "Oh my God, it's actually happening.”