Song-writing maturity creates a rare blend of personal vulnerability and audience relatability, coupled with the ability to produce catchy pop songs with cutting guitar tones and powerful beats, make Indigo Haze a band capable of capturing the hearts and imagination of anyone that comes across their music. Indigo Haze is obviously not a band that you won’t come across on the regular. They have a unique and unorthodox way of creating their music inspired by the outside world that they live in.
A fascination with the way people live in the modern world results in intricate songs detailing personal observations of contemporary culture. Their songwriting stems from the examinations of multiple areas of our living. This is what makes them highly attractive and non-comparable. The indie-pop quartet’s latest release, Lana, explores the naivety of modern love, questioning whether people can fall in love too easily or in fact trick themselves into believing they’re in love to fill an internal emptiness. Indigo Haze has this special effect that will impact the general public of indie lovers in a positive way they have never been impacted before. We found ourselves in awe with Indigo Haze’s authenticity that will translate through their canorous music.
Listen to Indigo Haze here.
Welcome to BuzzMusic Indigo Haze! You guys have a pretty interesting stage name. Tell us about the story behind this name and what it represents for you?
When we first got together and started making music we didn’t really think of any band names, it was only once we started gigging we suddenly thought “oh, we actually need a name”. The name Indigo Haze was just the result of us chucking a few ideas around, there’s no particular meaning behind the name itself but it has come to mean something to us all personally as it’s what represents us as a group of mates making music together.
How would you describe your songwriting approach to certain releases like “Lana”?
Most songs we’ve written have had different writing processes really, we haven’t found one way of working that’s better than any other way, it’s really just a matter of finding the best way for each song to be brought to life. Lana was written by Tom (vocals/guitar) and Sam (vocals/drums) shutting themselves in Sam’s bedroom for a few evenings and just playing around with a few new sounds and rhythms that we hadn’t used before to create the basis for the track, then Matt (guitar) and Will (bass) added a few finishing touches. Most of our songs are written in rehearsals with the whole band though, someone will bring a riff or a bassline or a beat they’ve come up with and we’ll play around with that – 95% of the time we all write our own parts which are nice as it means we have a sound that’s truly reflective of everyone’s playing styles and allows all of us to pull our weight creatively, but every now and then someone will have such a clear idea of how they want a certain song to sound that you have to follow their lead!
What’s the most challenging aspect of creating “Lana” for you and in what ways do you guys manage to overcome the obstacles?
We rarely face any challenges creatively as we’re all creative people and good musicians, so it’s easy for us to get ideas flowing. The only challenge we regularly face is down to each band member having such contrasting influences and so there’s been a few heated discussions as to which direction we want to take a song in and how we want each part to sound. We genuinely all just want every song to sound as good as possible though, so although we all want the same outcome, the only real challenge is finding a balance between all the different ideas on how to get there.
Let’s talk more about your music in-depth. Your release of the single titled “Lana” has been receiving great success. How would you detail the arrangements in this record and in what ways were you able to emotionally connect with this song?
Lana is definitely more synth-heavy than anything we’d done before, purely because it generated the right atmosphere and we wanted to write something a bit different and really push ourselves as songwriters. It’s a fairly steady song, rhythmically it’s very nonchalant with bits of guitar and backing vocals left floating in the spaces. We realized the vocals needed to be the focal point of the track as that particular vocal performance had a certain uniqueness to it that we really wanted exploit.
In terms of an emotional connection to the song, the point is that it really can be interpreted differently by anyone who listens to it. The song is about the naivety of young love, and how people are willing to use others and lead people on to get what they want – it’s something that everyone will either have experienced themselves or at least have a friend that’s experienced it, and that experience could come from either side of the story. On an emotional level, the song really tries to explore both sides of that story so that anyone can put themselves into the narrative from their own perspective.
“In what ways does “Lana” differentiate from your other releases “ Glass House” and “Lost Love”?
The use of synths/pads is a lot more prominent in Lana, and the use of the dual-vocals is something we’d never done before. The main difference with Lana is that it’s just a lot more polished and produced compared to our other tracks which are perhaps a bit rawer. We’re definitely more of a live band and love the energy we’re able to bring to our gigs, so for us now it’s important to try and find a way of translating that energy into our recorded music.
What’s next for you Indigo Haze?
We’re still figuring that out, to be honest! We definitely want to release more music and play more shows, and defining our genre and sound is high on the to-do list as all of our releases do have nuances that we want to try and bring together to create a more unique vibe for our audience.