WHEN MIA BERRIN began performing as Pom Pom Squad around 2017, clad in glitter, wigs, or a cheerleader ensemble, audience members would approach her after shows and admit they’d been surprised. “More than once, someone came up to me like, ‘I expected to hate you,’” she says, laughing. “Or the other one, especially from dudes, was often ‘I thought you guys were going to be a cute girl band.’”
Instead, Berrin was playing grunge-y punk, and began to understand what the cheerleader outfit especially represented to others. “This costume is a status symbol,” she says. “I completely changed the way people saw me.”
On Pom Pom Squad’s raw debut, Death of a Cheerleader, Berrin, 23, plays with those images of femininity and still-healing adolescent baggage. “The album title was…
