It seems like every young adult movie in the 2000s started with a montage of high-schoolers getting ready for school as “Dirty Little Secret” by the All-American Rejects played in the background. The band, founded in 1999, has always rocked. After releasing four albums, they’ve been on an unofficial hiatus since the mid-2010s but have put out covers and played at some festivals. The band never announced big plans to record a fifth album; but as a gift to everyone who grew up in the 2000s, the All-American Rejects released a new album, Sandbox, last month.

The alt-rock group has since embarked on a nostalgic North American tour, and it’s genius. In between concert venues, the band has been going around the Midwest playing pop-up shows at house parties. Their surprise appearances include a performance at a barn in Iowa and a bowling alley in Minneapolis.

Lead singer Tyson Ritter says the tour has been a “weird synchronistic happenstance of reactivity.” One “random house party” became, “of all the shows we played in the last ten years, . . . this big wake-up call to the reality of, ‘Oh, this is why we started doing this.'”

At their most recent pop-up, in Columbia, Mo., on Sunday, the band performed in the front yard of what appeared to be a fraternity house, as partygoers sat on the roof singing along. When the cops showed up, Ritter convinced them to let the band play one last song: “Gives You Hell.” The Rejects are showing fans, new and old, what “punk” means. What a comeback.