The interview starts with parking tickets.
Witt Lindau ’27, drummer for student band Read Receipts, grabs something white from the windshield of his car and holds it aloft for one long second.
Nearly all of the rest of the band is sitting on lawn in front of Baker-Berry library after their set where they serenaded runners after the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’s 5k fundraiser. Lindau looks down the line of cars parked on North Main Street to guitarist Jackson Yassin ’26, who stares back for a moment, then scoots around his car from the trunk — where he was loading instruments and speakers — to his windshield. Yassin pauses and slowly raises his hand, also holding a white paper. After a long silence, they walk towards each other.
“Oh, this is so sad,” bassist Annabelle Toth ’27 says from her spot on the grass on this perfect spring day.
“But also so entertaining. It’s like a movie,” giggles keyboardist Simone Wuttke ’27, “But one of those silent cartoons.”
“They’re going to come here so mad. They’re going to come over stomping their feet,” singer Mina Batra ’28 adds.
Yassin and Lindau only stomped a little when they finally arrived.
Read Receipts is one of Dartmouth’s hand-me-down bands, filled by a cycling roster of students. It first formed in 2016 and is now on version five or six, according to Yassin. How do they determine when one iteration ends and another begins? It’s a good question, and one that has no solid answer. A new iteration is determined by “vibes,” he says, since the band’s members each join at different times. Current members were, in Wuttke’s words, “bequested” spots by graduating students with “blind faith” that they would keep the band going.
The band today consists of Batra singing, Wuttke on piano, Lindau on drums, Yassin on guitar, Toth on bass, and Harry Pearce ’29, who plays the saxophone but was away on the day of the fundraiser — possibly with rugby, though no one was quite sure. In fact, for his first few practices, no one was quite sure what his real name was. That day on the Green, a confused conversation about whether he is actually named Henry or Harry ensued. This mix up, rather than setting him apart, seemed to fold Pearce more closely into the group.
“I think the thing that stuck out to me the most is just how welcoming everybody was from day one,” Pearce said. “It makes every practice something I look forward to instead of a bit of a chore as it sometimes previously was [in other bands].”
Harley Hibbits ’28, the band’s bassist, is abroad, meaning he was unable to give his two cents during rehearsal that day. Toth has been playing bass for the band since this winter.
The band was brilliant that bright Sunday morning as the runners loped and straggled over, their setlist a mix of Clairo’s head-boppiness and The Marias’ dream-like sound. Batra has a sweet, compelling voice, crooning joyfully as the others dance along. They look like they’re having a lot of fun, and they invite the crowd to do the same, bringing an energetic, fun and joyful vibe to the exhausted runners.
The current setlist includes hits like Laufey’s “From the Start” and “Love Me Not” by Ravyn Lenae, but the exact songs/orders? change depending on the occasion they’re playing, they said. Before each performance, members (correct?) add songs that they would like to play to a Spotify playlist, and they narrow it down in person during practices?. Rihanna’s “Love on the Brain” has been a long-time favorite, as has “Still Into You” by Paramore. It all sounds quite democratic, but anonymous band members confided that the now-absent Hibbitts has quietly disappeared songs from sets before. What the crowd will like is a big factor in choosing songs, but they also try to do a few fun songs that the band likes.
“Shows where the crowd isn’t into it are not that fun,” Yassin said. That’s why they want their sound to be “loose and colorful.”
Things don’t always go off without a hitch, though. In fall 2023, while playing a goth-themed social event at a fraternity, none of the then-band members could see or hear each other, and so no one knew what was going on. Suddenly, Lindau disappeared with around five songs left: He had to go to the bathroom, but the line was too long so he relieved himself outside instead. But then the frat brothers wouldn’t let him back inside.
“I had to beg and plead…I think I just shoved my way through it,” he said.
The remaining members of the band “played the Florence and Machine song ‘Dog Days,’ where it’s just guitar for the first part, for like ten minutes,” Yassin said. Drumless, it was all they could do. The crowd was not happy.
I asked what some of their favorite shows were. Wuttke said their Microbrews set from winter term, where they performed some of their staples in a more relaxed venue. Microbrews, a College-sponsored event with drinks for attendees who are 21+, is held every Monday at One Wheelock in Collis Center from 8 to 10 p.m., and often features local craft brews and student bands.
“Microbrews is a very chill vibe, and it’s usually just people sitting and listening. But then at our Microbrews, everyone was dancing,” she said.
Batra said her favorite Read Receipts memory was playing this winter at a fraternity social event the night before her birthday. Her dad came to watch her sing, and he climbed onto a table in the corner for a better vantage point, filming the whole set on his phone. When the clock struck midnight, her friends in the front row held up their phones to show her the time.
“They were like, ‘It’s midnight; happy birthday!’ Oh, I would not want to be anywhere else,” Batra said.
Read Receipts plays almost every type of event. Just a few weeks ago, the band played a set at International Women’s Day at the Dartmouth Skiway.
It was “a very silly show,” Wuttke said. “[Yassin] kept trying to make me solo, and I feel like I was finally starting to understand how to play more.”
That same show, Yassin attempted the pond skim — a spring tradition where students have to ski over water — before the band was scheduled to perform. He failed both times, and then played sopping wet. He wasn’t planning to ski, he defended, so he had to quickly rent skis from the shop.
“I couldn’t get the tips of my skis up so they got caught,” he explained. The skis made it through unscathed, though. “It was only my body that took the damage.”
He walked away with wet jeans, pride and a bruised body..
“The video of your wipeout has been shared all across campus,” Lindau needled Yassin.
The band all started clamoring for the video to be shown. Tragically, no one could find it.
According to Lindau, the best part of being in Read Receipts isn’t the dramatic stories.
“It’s all the random in-between times and stuff. It’s not just practice and playing,” he said. “[It’s] when we’re setting up for a nice, random gig like today.” Everyone else chimed in agreeing, smiling and looking around at each other.
Keep an eye out for their next show. You won’t regret it.
