Interview by Erin Christie
For once, Spotify’s Discover Weekly algorithm got it right when they threw Dutch Interior onto one of my weekly rotations this year.
The LA County-based band — composed of Jack Nugent, Conner Reeves, Davis Stewart, Noah Kurtz, and brothers Shane and Hayden Barton — is the fruit of the unique creative synergy and unwavering trust weaved throughout the members’ 20+ years of friendship.
Following their spontaneous COVID lockdown-born 2021 debut album Kindergarten, the group shared their sophomore effort Blinded by Fame in 2023. While Dutch Interior thusly existed as a welcome addition to the indie sleaze or alt-country circuits via these previous full-length projects, the group’s innovative musical inclination more accurately spills out of any pre-established box, with forthcoming music peppering their growing discography with a wide array of influences across indie rock, droning ambient noise, buzzy dance beats, and southern roots. This, in turn, makes them one of the most exciting bands I’ve come across as of late — while their sound is familiar, it also beckons you to wonder, ‘what’s next?,’ and for this band, there really doesn’t seem to be a limitation to that question’s answer.
Making their return to DSPs earlier this year, Dutch Interior shared a new single straight of out left field, “Ecig,” a scuffed-up slowcore banger, contorted via sludgy basslines and glittering shoegaze riffs. As with this former track, the band’s Fall release “Sandcastle Molds” simulates the continuance of a new and adventurous era for the band, existing as their version of a “fucked up Fleetwood Mac song.” 2025 is set to receive more new content from Dutch Interior, and your guess is as good as mine regarding what it’ll sound like. All I know is that it’s going to be epic, and induce a good amount of positive head-scratching.
I recently caught up with Dutch Interior via e-mail to dig into more of their lore and possibly learn a bit about what is soon to come from their camp. See that conversation below.
I like to begin by giving artists an opportunity to describe themselves genre-wise, as so many journalists (myself, included) tend to get it completely wrong. That said, if you were to describe Dutch Interior to someone who hasn’t heard any of your music, how would you?
Rock, we guess. Our approach from the beginning has been to never bog Dutch Interior down with genre definition, so this question is always tough to answer. There are six songwriters in the band and we all bring a wide range of influences to the table, so when a song gets given over to the band to make into a Dutch Interior song, anything can happen. Self-prescribing genre before letting a song form on its own often kneecaps our process and feels uninspiring.
A good amount of press have also declared that there’s an air of “mystery” surrounding Dutch Interior as a project and as a collective of individuals — in choosing to hold your cards close to your chest, do you think this aids in letting your music speak for itself? Or do you have a different intention?
No one is centered in the band, so we don’t center ourselves for our audience. Our visual aesthetic and music is what makes Dutch Interior what it is, and that might be different for each person. Allowing people to instill our art with their own meaning is the only way for us.
Everyone in this group had been creating music independent of one another prior to Dutch Interior’s beginning. Did elements from those other projects/pursuits help shape the direction you’ve gone down here, or was this project more of an opportunity to start from scratch, with wholly new influences and methods?
We all have been making music together for a really long time in various projects and collaborations. Dutch was definitely an opportunity to put our ideas together (still allowing each member their own voice) and dive into something new.
How would you best describe the creative collaborative process fostered here? Do you guys tend to jam and work it out from there, or does everyone come in with their own ideas to share among the group?
Our process is: someone individually writes a song or an idea (no matter how complete) and gives it over to the band (via a rough demo, voice memo, or in a jam atmosphere) to restructure, bend, challenge, experiment with, etc.. We try to record quickly, arranging and tracking everything in a day or two, embracing mistakes and new directions along the way.
The newest Dutch Interior album, Blinded by Fame, was released in 2023. Reflecting on that record now, how would you best describe it? Does anything stick out to you most fondly when you think about the behind-the-scenes process? Were there any particularly rewarding or difficult moments?
The intentions were wholesome and light—we look back on that time fondly. We took the 8-track tape machine that we recorded Kindergarten with on the floor of our shared apartment during covid into a detached garage behind Shane and Hayden’s house and set to work as an actual “band”. Every song was arranged, recorded, and mixed in a single day in mid-late 2022. We lost a lot to tape malfunctions and lack of adequate hardware, but in hindsight, we wouldn’t have had it any other way. The mixer we used caught on fire halfway through the record because water dripped into it from a pink himalayan salt lamp (strictly for vibes) which had absorbed moisture from the air after a storm.
Since the release of that record, what would you say are the most important lessons you’ve learned that you have taken into this next era of the band, whether in terms of songwriting, production, live performance, or otherwise?
We've learned and grown as individuals, bandmates, and friends so much since then that it’s hard to quantify. We found a certain magic in all putting our heads together in a free creative environment and letting ideas develop on their own.
After recording and releasing BBF, we rented a space and set to work building a proper recording studio. With this change, we shifted into digital recording and, for the very first time, allowed ourselves the freedom to put more than eight tracks into the recording of a song (we also couldn’t afford cabling to integrate the tape machine).
We still pay a lot of mind to the self-imposed limitations and rules that drive our creativity. An example of this is recording with only tape, recording live without a click and tracking overdubs as if it was live, or trying to integrate a specific weird sound into a song that it wouldn’t traditionally exist in—there’s always something. We self-recorded our last two singles digitally in our new studio while still keeping this ethic alive.
Speaking of a new era, your summer single “Ecig” introduced a wholly new side of Dutch Interior, incorporating a welcome dose of distortion and brain-scratching droning to your repertoire. What inspired this switch, if anything, and does this sonic template point toward your future material’s “vibe”?
The tonal shift that came with “Ecig” was a product of keeping an open mind with new ideas. “Ecig” was once a completely different song (we even played it live a few times, and there are some recordings on YouTube if you dig around).
One day at practice, Conner started playing it faster, with a bunch of distortion, and the current version of “Ecig” materialized out of thin air on the first playthrough. The song was suddenly exciting again, and we committed to making that the new version.
The noisiness and nonlinear development of “Ecig” reflects our live set, which tends towards everchanging, experimental reimaginings of our songs.
While currently approaching 2025, what are you guys looking forward to most? And do you have any big plans you hope to see through re: Dutch Interior (especially with Fat Possum’s help) and/or in your own personal lives?
We’re looking forward to lots of things. More touring; playing festivals; new music videos; a new single that, at the time of writing this, is now out in this world (“Sandcastle Molds”); and, most importantly, making more and more music as Dutch becomes a bigger and bigger part of our lives. We have a bunch of new music coming out through Fat Possum in the coming months, too. Mostly, we can’t wait to get back into the studio space where we feel this most at home.
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