Pop punk is back! Placing second in the 2026 Smokefreerockquest national finals and getting their adolescent crush second single Cornerstore Queen onto NZ On Air Music’s NewTracks compilation adds up to a pretty successful September for Tauranga high school band GO GETTER -with the release of third single Almost There a cherry on top of the month’s pie.
GO GETTER is Tre O’Sullivan (vocals/guitar), with Connor Cummins vocals/bass, Izzy Cameron on guitar and Ike Reid playing drums. All pupils at Bethlehem College, Isaac, Izzy and Connor are in their final school year, while Tre is in Year 12. They’ve been mates for years, skating and surfing together around Tauranga / Mt Maunganui for almost half their young lives.
“Tre moved from South Africa in 2022. We met on the bus and found out he surfed and skated too, so we just started hanging out, spending every night at ATK skatepark. One day we just had a jam on some instruments and it went from there.”
Already good enough to make the Rockquest band competition national finals in 2025, this year GO GETTER went one better by placing second. But even more notably the band have dropped three punchy pop punk singles since June, starting with Boring Again, then Cornerstore Queen in July, and most recently Almost There. Their last year of high school is proving to be a huge one for the boys, with a five-song studio EP also expected later in 2026.
Yeah. The music department at Bethlehem College is so sick. Shout out Mr Crump, Mr Shorter and Mrs Hayward for always helping us out, fixing our guitars and making sure we tune before we play!
Rockquest has been something we just did because it’s what you do if you are in a high school band in NZ. But we found out it was so much fun playing through big amps and the whole team is so encouraging and make a cool place for bands to play and grow. We were really stoked to get second place this year at the national final.
That came from our manager, Connor’s uncle Mitch, he releases music under the name Bluey Green. He had a song called Go Getter and we liked the way it looked on paper and thought we may as well use it. No idea why we did it full caps haha, I guess we just thought it looked sicker.
Boring Again is about dreaming about something bigger, but still being stuck doing the same stuff every day. You can picture the future version of yourself so clearly, but right now it just feels like nothing’s actually happening yet. It’s that weird mix of being hopeful as, but also frustrated ‘cause you’re not there yet. It got recorded with help from Rockquest as part of our being finalists last year.
It’s hard to go past Blink 182, especially the earlier stuff. Connor was lucky enough to see them when they came to NZ. We also all really love Turnstile and although the music is a bit heavier we get really inspired by the live performances they put on and the inclusive vibe at all their shows. We really want to create that same feel at our shows.
Very… watch this space!
Coming second at the Rockquest national final last week was pretty dope. We had the best time being surrounding by high school bands from all over NZ. Also finishing recording a five-song EP we are really proud of has been sick, especially while we are still at school. It was a lot of work. Getting some decent streams so far as well!
So far, mostly just around the Mount, school shows, plus a few Totara St shows. We did a last minute EP fundraiser show a few weeks ago and about 150 people turned up which was awesome. We have a bunch of shows coming up later in the year including in Auckland and Wellington, so keep an eye on our insta!
Yeah Nate’s the absolute man aye. He has a great studio at his home in Mount Maunganui. We’ve actually recorded a 5-song EP, so more songs will come out. We’ve spent heaps of time in Nate’s studio and there’s lots of fun memories. He is NZ’s toughest producer by far.
Right now we’re pretty small. We’ve got our manager ‘Uncle Mitch’ who’s been working real hard to help give us the best shot. Thanks to his wife Erin for letting him work real hard on us instead of the house… And we’re lucky to have some super creative friends helping us out, obviously Toby killing it behind the camera and also our friend Tai Sammuels helping design sick graphics and posters for GO GETTER, and just all our friends helping out whenever and telling us straight what we need to hear.
Oh chur, yeah the videos are pretty loose and not really thought out, but I think that’s what people like about them! They were both filmed and edited a week before the release date, it was just, “Ohh shoot, we need a music video.” So we hit up our friend Toby Vanhuenen, just a good friend to all of us from school who we skate and hang out with. He borrowed his brother’s camera and we just made a quick plan the night before and did them the next day.
We both have never really made anything like this so it was a first for all of us and Toby killed it behind the camera. I just used my very limited editing knowledge to chuck them all together, but yeah, pretty pumped with how they came out.
Gotta be Izzy, aye.
The future for GO GETTER is looking real good in our goals book, haha! Nah, next year Izzy, Isaac and I are going to uni in Tauranga and Tre’s got one more year of school so we’re all sticking round. The dream for next year would be to do a schools tour during uni breaks, so hopefully get a sponsor and some brands on board and do that, but yeah, just keep going step by step and having fun.
Everyone’s invited!
