Vancouver City Council just got a little more punk rock, as hardcore vocalist Sean Orr won a by-election over the weekend (April 5).
Orr is the lead screamer in NEEDS, a Vancouver hardcore band who have been releasing music since 2012. Now, he's officially a city councillor, since he was elected as a representative of the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE), running on a campaign focused on affordable housing and climate action.
According to unofficial results posted online by the City of Vancouver, Orr earned 34,448 votes. He was elected alongside fellow progressive Lucy Maloney of OneCity, who got a reported 33,732 votes. This was a major blow to right-leaning Mayor Ken Sim's ABC Vancouver party, whose top candidate got just 9,267 votes.
As Orr's political career has ramped up, NEEDS have been largely inactive in the past couple years; their most recent release was a split EP with Ape War in 2020, and they haven't posted on any of their social media channels since a 2023 show with Dead Quiet. Their lone full-length came out in 2015.