Your music feels like a tangible recording of outsize emotion.  Your songs capture the often fleeting, effervescent feeling of growing up and coming into your own power.  How do you harness that energy / urgency into the songs?  

I definitely think writing music is about hard work and time put in for sure. However, I do think that core idea or energy of a song comes at a moment where you least expect it, when you’re doing anything else other than music. And when that real life feeling and urgency makes it’s way into a song I think that’s where the magic is. All I’m ever trying to do is capture that raw emotion, and it’s pretty rare and I still don’t understand it, and I hope I never really do.

You’ve been making songs since before high school.  Would you say music has taken over your life?

Oh 100%. It’s all I think about, where I put most of my energy, and all I want to do with my life. I think I realized that towards the end of high school when I found that the only time I felt truly fulfilled was when I was playing/writing music. It’s an extremely intoxicating thing and I can’t wait to actually be doing that more often rather than working in a warehouse haha.

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How has the DIY scene of Chicago (both in terms of venues, bands & the scene at large) influenced the creation and development of Friko and shaped the band’s own unique sound?  

The Chicago scene is so friendly and welcoming it definitely made it way easier to book shows in the beginning and make friends with other bands. The local smaller venues are also pretty good at getting shows to smaller local bands which is incredible. I feel like if it’s still possible for a musical explosion to happen in one geographical place, it would be Chicago. There’s a lot of great bands right now and it’s the only generally affordable big city for young people. 

Is pop more about a “feeling” or a “sound”?  Friko songs feel anthemic in the way you can picture an entire crowd/audience coming together to recite a universal sentiment.  Can one song create that sense of unity through music?  

I think it’s reeeally hard to make something anthemic that actually still has the heart of a song. There’s so much music that tries to be huge for the sake of being huge, without knowing where it’s heart is. Like there’s a difference between Radioactive by Imagine Dragons and life On Mars by David Bowie ya know? Making these songs it just felt so natural for us three to all be singing together, or have group vocals with friends singing along. It made the sentiments feel more universal to us and I hope that gets through! 

And I think this way of writing songs has a huge impact on the live show, cause when you have a really meaningful singalong part and everybody’s singing with the band, that feels truly special.

Tell us more about the recording process/inspiration behind this new track!  

It was super fun and natural, we recorded the instrumental life for the most part, got the drum, bass, and guitar track. The group vocals were definitely the most fun part, that was all of us just singing right next to each other in a room. 

Sober To Death by Car Seat Headrest was definitely a big inspiration for this one, we wanted to have an outro that could repeat itself over and over and still maintain it’s meaning. Also early Modest Mouse with its simple straightforward three piece instrumentation.

Any under the radar musical peers we need to know?  

The Trenchies, The Courts, Sick Day, Morinda (Baileys band), are all great local bands!

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