Q&A: STRAY FOSSA
Reeling you into their dreamy universe from the comfort of their own attic studio are the members of Stray Fossa, a three-piece band based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Consisting of brothers Nick and Will Evans and childhood friend Zach Blount, Stray Fossa has cultivated their sound through lushly layered vocals and guitar riffs with a splash of chillwave nostalgia. The group garnered recognition from notable playlists like Spotify’s undercurrents and Fresh Finds and have played a number of shows alongside other indie groups like Bad Bad Hats and Dreamgirl. In July, Stray Fossa released their latest single “For What Was,” a fusion of lo-fi soundscapes and subtly psychedelic pop that leaves just a tinge of what’s more to come.
Introduce yourself!
Will: I do a bit of songwriting and drums, and spend most time mixing/recording.
Nick: I’m on guitar, some keys, and also focus on songwriting.
Zach: I play bass, focus on vocal harmonies, and occasionally synths. And I make pancakes every Saturday morning to keep the house happy and productive.
After growing up in a small town in Tennessee, you’ve all made the move to Charlottesville. I also read that Nick attended grad school in Berlin and Will was in the UK for about a year. How have each of these places affected your individual artistries?
N: Yeah, we all went our separate ways after high school but always had music on the backburner. Berlin is an incredible city full of art and creatives and has one of the best open mic scenes in Europe. I had my own project there for a while—very different sound and style, but it holds a special place in my heart.
W: Being in graduate school was a great motivator to stay creative on the side. I worked on a lot of my own projects that provided a nice escape from coursework.
Z: I spent a year and a half doing psychology research in Tennessee. In my free time, I picked up the mandolin and learned exactly one and a half songs on it.
Knowing each other since childhood and living under the same roof, how has this dynamic affected your writing and recording process?
Z: We’ve definitely grown together as musicians, writers, and friends over the years. We aren’t afraid to get onto each other for musical efforts we aren’t fully into, or for not keeping the house clean. As musicians, each of us has a slightly different vision for how things should go, but at the end of the day we still have to share the kitchen. Navigating the challenges of living together, watching Netflix over dinner, being in touch with each other’s families, these keep morale up if we ever get frustrated with how things are going in the studio.
What are you currently listening to?
W: The new Perfume Genius album is really great.
N: I’d second Will on the Perfume Genius record. Recently, I’ve also had both Phoebe Bridgers and Hamilton Leithauser on repeat.
Z: I listen to a lot of Billie Holiday, and I’ve been shuffling between artists like Yumi Zouma, boygenius, and Steven Leftovers.
What other kinds of media are you consuming at the moment that have influenced your sound and visual design?
N: Will and I actually rewatched The Neverending Story a few weeks back and the book is a trip. We’ve been told our aesthetic is somewhat retro, and we do intentionally use film shots. I think one reason the 80s are back in vogue is because of something like secondhand nostalgia by millennials, who don’t remember the 80s but grew up consuming media from the 80s or hearing about it from their parents and then formed an idealized version of it. This is probably the case for every generation to some extent.
W: True, I think being in our mid-twenties, we were also the last generation to experience VHS and tape cassettes as normal forms of media. So it’s been fun to revisit those technologies as an aesthetic choice. A lot of our visual design comes from photos taken with my dad’s old Pentax film camera.
Z: Balancing nostalgia and relevance is key for us. I grew up in a house full of antique English furniture and a huge collection of VHS and cassettes. I want to pursue an aesthetic in this project that feels both familiar and fresh. As a group, we try to bring the old and the new together to create a vibe that’s hard to pinpoint—one that feels warm and intimate but leaves room for exploration.
W: We have a batch of songs that we’re currently finishing up that draw on a wide range of influences/eras of music, but I think we’d all like the challenge of sticking with a certain sound or aesthetic for a future EP or album. There are some really nice, warm analog synth sounds from the 80s that we’d like to experiment with, maybe mixing those in with the more acoustic elements we tend to incorporate.
Let’s dive into your newest single, “For What Was.” What was the early process of creating this song like?
Z: Nick brought an unfinished demo to a workshop session and that particular day I was feeling restless—probably too much coffee that morning. I asked Will to play with the beat and boost the tempo, and Nick switched up the groove of the chords to match a refreshed bassline. Will ran with the energy of the instrumental and workshopped melodies until the band as a whole was satisfied. We rarely use scratch lyrics, but there were some ideas yelled out during that first workshop which matched the initial energy and dynamic of those takes. If something works, we run with it.
Your first EP Sleeper Strip was released in 2018, followed by Laridae in 2019. How do you feel your sound has changed since the release of these two projects? How do you envision your newer material to be?
W: Mmm, that’s hard to say. I think our sound has evolved mostly as a result of changes in our creative process. Now there’s more focus on capturing energy in live performance, and crafting songs that tell more of a story musically. I imagine you’ll hear more of that in our next releases.
What do you hope to accomplish in the next couple of years as a group?
N: We have a lot of unreleased songs that we’re excited about. Right now, we’re figuring out how best to get those out into the world without rushing any of the final steps in arrangement and production.