Sociology student becomes radio personality

Caleb Beck

Hannah Pico, sociology junior, broadcasts during her Thursday Hellraiserz Power Hour Show. Pico is conscious to include music that celebrates intersectionality and diversity in her music and topic selection.

Caleb Beck



A dedicated music fanatic has transformed her residency at Loyola’s Crescent City Radio program into her own curated online music and talk show.

Hannah Pico, sociology junior, gets behind the mic every Thursday to produce and host the Hellraiserz Power Hour Show, where she conducts interviews, leads discussions and plays music late into the night.

Pico said that taking the production reins was a natural progression for her, and she gets a lot of joy out of continuing the weekly night broadcasts.

“My sophomore year, I transitioned into creating a radio show where I could hang out with my friends and share music. Since then, I don’t work at Crescent City Radio, and the radio show has turned into something that I enjoy putting work into as a hobby,” Pico said.

Roger Siver, music industry junior, has been featured as a guest on the show in the past and spoke to Pico’s ability for making the long show interesting from start to finish.

“She’s just a really calming radio presence and has a great, diverse taste in music,” Siver said.

Pico said she goes to great lengths to incorporate diversity and different flavors of world music to the show’s central themes.

“I like to include genres that may be ignored by mass culture in the U.S. I include amazing musicians of color each week because I don’t think my show can exist without intersectionality. I find it very interesting to see how American/English music has shaped genres in other parts of the world,” Pico said.

Pico said the distinctive Hellraiserz moniker was an ongoing joke between close friends that stuck.

“The Hellraiserz Power Hour Show is the name because myself along with some other women are part of a girl gang that we created our first year of college; it only made sense to name the show after this since we would all hang out in the radio station and play each other’s cool music,” Pico said.

Because the show broadcasts during the week, Pico said that it’s tricky to feature a revolving door of guests as she and her peers become buried in schoolwork, but she doesn’t see herself stopping anytime soon.

“My goal is to feature Loyola musicians each week and have them play the musicians that they are currently listening to, their own music and other music that they are inspired by. I have only gotten Roger of Killer Dale and Zap Bain to come by. I would like to continue to push to do that, but it’s very hard for everyone to be free on a Thursday night,” Pico said.

Pico is in the process of continuing the show from its current online player format to a dedicated podcast feed, as the 2-3 hour broadcasts are difficult to store and upload.

“I’m not sure why I wanted to transition, maybe to continue to challenge myself to work with different technology. Also, it puts more pressure for the show to be interesting, organized and clean,” Pico said.