THIRTEEN: Tell me a little bit more about Houndsteeth and its members! How did you come together to create Houndsteeth?

HOUNDSTEETH: Jolee and I (Grace) met in Boston while in school together and formed Houndsteeth in 2018. Our first album, Stain Your Tongue, was recorded by Izzy, who was a long time high school friend of Jolee’s studying audio engineering at Purchase. Before mixing the album, Izzy recorded drums on two tracks. We had never considered expanding the band until hearing Izzy’s drumming on our songs “Sway/Stay” and “RIP,” but adding Izzy felt like such a natural and obvious thing! 

The three of us are honestly a bunch of goobers. Our songs explore some pretty tough subjects, but there is a lot of joy and playfulness that goes into crafting our sound and identity as a band. 

THIRTEEN: Hold Your Horses will be your debut album, can you tell us what inspired this album?

HOUNDSTEETH: It’s actually our second album! The bones of the songs are similar to the first album in the sense that we (Grace and Jolee) write a lot about feelings of anxiety or the nuances of love and friendship and everything in between. Hold Your Horses is our first album as a trio, and it feels both brand new and inextricably connected to where we started as songwriters. It’s hard to say there was one particular idea that inspired this album. It almost feels like Hold Your Horses is the product of our communal coming of age as musicians and also just as Guys In This World. This album is really a showcase of all that we know and all the directions we hope to take together. 

THIRTEEN: Why did you choose “Rodeo” and “Gave You” to be the lead singles off the album?

HOUNDSTEETH: Our writing process at the moment involves Grace and Jolee writing separately and then arranging the songs as a trio. We felt it would be nice to have one song by Grace and one by Jolee to showcase the different writing styles on the album.   Hold Your Horses is certainly a genre bending collection of songs and we also wanted to give listeners an idea of the different directions we take. Rodeo is definitely the most indie rock we get on the album and Gave You is the one where we committed the hardest to making disco-ey, borderline-anthemic pop tracks.

THIRTEEN: The singles, artwork, and photography around this album are very playful and childlike in a very nostalgic way. What inspired this visual direction?

HOUNDSTEETH: The album artwork was done by Margaret Berry - an artist that we felt drawn to because of her playful and maximalist style. We’ve gravitated towards visuals that mirror the sonic realms we encounter in our music. Seeing Margaret’s artwork actually reminded us of our own music, but in a way that felt refreshing and actually kind of validating. 

THIRTEEN: What are your favorite lyrics on the album and why?

HOUNDSTEETH: 

Grace: “Feeling burnt out I’ve tried but my efforts are compromised / What’s the point of the coterie now that you’ve made a fool of me”. I really love these lyrics that Jolee wrote for a couple reasons! First off, the words are simply very phonetically satisfying to sing and annunciate when following the melody. Also, I find the actual content of the lyrics are pretty relatable. With the identity of the subjective “you” remaining ambiguous, it’s easy to feel like I’m in my own version of this scenario. The whole phrase is a cathartic release of emotions and sound that I look forward to in every live performance.

Jolee: My personal favorite lyric is one of Grace’s, “Waste my breath to tell you what I’m hoping / Softly is the way that I am spoken”. These words stand out to me because they're earnest, tender, and self aware. It’s a relatable sentiment for anyone, but also, knowing Grace as a friend, it feels like they are sharing something extremely vulnerable with the listener and us as bandmates. 

Izzy: I really like “Don’t fall off of your horse / Rodeo’s just begun,” but really all of Jolee’s lyrics in “Rodeo” - I just love the imagery the lyrics create in that song, blended with how the vocal parts all interplay and repeat at the end of the track. This lyric, to me, feels like it calls out how this commonly imposed sentiment of having to keep up with everything is overwhelming and unreasonable. 

THIRTEEN: What is your collaboration process like? Do you all tend to think alike or do you often find yourselves mixing and matching ideas? 

HOUNDSTEETH: Somewhere in between, sometimes we have very similar instincts and similar taste in things. When we’re collaborating, things come together pretty organically. We all have different musical upbringings but similar current interests/taste in music. When we (Grace and Jolee) are writing together, our similarities are a great starting point, and once that is established, all 3 of our musical influences help shape the music and inspire one another. 

THIRTEEN: What do you hope listeners take away from your music?

HOUNDSTEETH: Whatever they need or want from it! Though our lyrics are based on personal experiences, they remain pretty vague and often metaphorical, leaving a lot of room for personal interpretation on the listener's end. Hopefully people will be able to process their own feelings and see themselves in the worlds we create with our songs. If the songs aren’t emotionally resonant, we hope that our listeners can just groove along and dance a bit. Our lyrics might be about anxiety and relationship qualms, but there’s still a good deal of joyous and silly energy that goes into our arranging and recording process! Hopefully our listeners can tap into those feelings as well.

THIRTEEN: Tell me a little bit more about the DIY music scene in Boston! What did you learn from this community and how is it helping you further your career today?

HOUNDSTEETH:  The spirit of DIY in Boston felt very alive and well as we were coming into it and coming up, which was a great thing to feel as a new band. Before forming Houndsteeth, Jolee and I (Grace) attended a lot of shows and felt super creatively stimulated and inspired by some of the staples of the scene at that time, such as Brittle Brian, Birthday Ass, Mel Weikart, Squitch, Rong, Dirt Buyer, Lady Pills, and so many others. It really felt like we were graciously accepted into the scene and supported by our muses. 

It seems like Boston’s scene both benefits and suffers from being such a college oriented town. On one hand, fresh creative minds are funneling into it in order to attend the music schools there, so there’s always new and exciting bands/house venues coming to the surface. On the other hand, the longevity of these spaces isn’t the priority as many of the scenes members are likely scooting to the next place once they’re done with school. It feels like Jolee and I really lucked out during the 5 years we spent there. The community we participated in was a great mix of long time residents, students, and people who stuck around after school. The commitment to creating and tending to creative spaces/entities has been a driving force for us from the start and continues to be. Even though our current long distance situation has made it harder to feel solidified and active in one particular scene, the spirit of our friends from Boston and beyond feel ever present in the music we write and the shows we book. We look for every opportunity we have to involve and reunite with friends of past and present in our tours or while making new content like music videos and album art. 

THIRTEEN: How has your music been received as of late? Female or non-male groups can sometimes be pushed aside based on their gender alone. How do you continue to fight this narrative?

HOUNDSTEETH: With all due respect, we’re a bit tired of this question! Narratives have certainly been imposed on each of us as individuals and on our collective project, but we’ve found solace in turning our attention to writing our own. Friendship and exploring the space between our respective musical upbringings and current interests are the animating forces behind this project. We happen to be a band of best bros who are not actually bros, and we are flattered to have friends and strangers out there who resonate with what we’re doing. 

THIRTEEN: It’s noted that you really value exploration. With that, what direction do you hope your music takes in the future?

HOUNDSTEETH: We wanna just continue exploring and inspiring one another in making things together as we grow :) We have a pretty vast range of influences between the three of us, ranging from indie rock, jazz, pop, brazilian music, western swing, folk, emo, bluegrass, choral music, free improvisation, serial/new music… We each have so much to learn and so much to share! Hopefully, continuing in this path can inspire music that feels both unprecedented and deeply personal. 

THIRTEEN: Speaking of the future, what’s next for Houndsteeth?

HOUNDSTEETH: In this phase of our individual lives, it feels best to just take things one step at a time. Being long distance definitely complicates the writing process but we’ve been scheming on setting aside a week where we can meet up somewhere and workshop/polish up a new album. We’re currently on tour around the midwest and northeast and definitely tossing around aspirations of touring Europe, haha. Who knows what the future really holds! We are somewhat slow moving but in it for the long-haul and full of ideas.