Be Your Own Pet Brand Emo Bands 'Pretentious'

Be Your Own Pet have revealed that they turned down a place on the Vans Warped Tour in the US because they didn’t want to play with a bunch of emo bands.

The Nashville quartet were approached to take part in the hugely popular tour this year but the bill just wasn’t for them.

"It's not really our thing," Nathan Vaquez told the Washington Post. "We didn't want to be with all those other bands that are playing. All this emo-screamo stuff seems so overdone and pretentious and not real."

Instead they’ve been opening for their label boss, one Thurston Moore, and his band Sonic Youth and he respects them for their choices.

"Any rock band of 17-, 18-year-olds would love to do the Warped Tour. But they were like: No. Way. They see it as fabricated, moronic music and a propagation of dumbed-down youth culture, and it's who they tried to set themselves apart from in high school."

He added: "They just want to be in the van playing doughnut shops across America with their friends. They know that right now, that's the coolest thing they can do."