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A late-night drive home from the beach with “Transpiring” by Stray Fossa on repeat sparked a new playlist. Luckily, the band was willing to continue the new indiewave collab series and co-curate the mix.
Stray Fossa consists of brothers Nick and Will Evans and their friend Zach Blount. Zach is in New England while the brothers are on opposite sides of Germany, so for the last few years the project has been patched together by Logic Pro files, iMessage and the Notes app.
However, for their August album Blossomer, they got back to their roots and reunited in their hometown in Tennessee for a month:
“We made a conscious choice not to track the record from afar. Even if most of the songs were written individually, I would say most of our favorite moments on the album came out organically from those live sessions – the fade in on Still There, the live violins/cellos, the percussion on Morning Air to name a few- We all missed being together in the same space.”
All of this culminated in their most vibrant and jangly work to date. A sun-bleached blend of surf rock and dream pop tailor-made to fuel the dog days of summer. It makes me nostalgic for the mid-2000s peaks of bands like Beach Fossils, Wild Nothing and Real Estate, which isn’t entirely surprising:
“Reuniting after so long definitely left a mark on the type of music and sounds we wanted to make. The album was recorded where we grew up so I think that spark was there from when we first started writing music together in school.”
The end product is one of the better indie albums of the year. It also shows off their versatility as soundmakers, because in the past their stuff has filled a different void for me. I call it midnight music… dreamy, downtempo, introspective, and usually some moody guitar/synth/sax noodling to nod along to. The type of shit you want to put on during a night drive and let muscle memory do the rest. Which brings us back to the beginning of the blog with “Transpiring” on repeat and a sea of headlights dancing along.
Whether you’re embarking on a night drive, boarding a red eye, or just in the middle of an insomnia-driven music binge, queue this up and get lost in the sound:
Shoutout to Stray Fossa for helping craft the mix, and for a glimpse into how much fun they had reuniting for the new album, check out the music video for Change The Film
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