The Indigo Elephant Newsletter

Happy 10th of the Indigo Elephant Newsletter! It’s been fun writing to you all, I have a lot to say when I have a pen in my hand, and we’ve even had conversations with some of you about the newsletter! Just wanted to say I’m very grateful that you chose to subscribe.

Quick announcement, we have a show at in San Francisco next Thursday evening! It’ll be at El Rio, and we’re playing with North by North who’s touring all the way from Chicago! Also on the bill is Araña and Calico, if you live in the Bay think about saying hi and checking out the set.

I wanted to celebrate Don’t Wanna See It hitting 100k streams on Spotify! Even though it hit over 200k listens on YouTube a few months ago, this is the first time one of our songs really got traction on Spotify, and found it’s way into the ears of so many listeners around the world. The song has been doing really well on all streaming platforms, and not just because I keep using it as audio for our band’s TikTok’s and Reels - I just think it’s a really good song!

Even though it was the lead single for the album, Don’t Wanna See It was in the works for a long time. Brenden came up with the main idea of the song in 2019; we don’t remember, but apparently he showed us the main riff and melody of the song, to which we said “cool” and promptly forgot about it. Years later, when we started thinking about doing a new album, he pored over his library of song ideas and unearthed this gem of a synth line.

We had been friends with Jess of the band Mare for a few years now, and Brenden really wanted to collaborate with another artist on this record. He showed the idea to Jess, and she fleshed out a verse and pre-chorus, plus the vocal hook. At this point, the song really came into focus. Brenden finished the arrangement of the song, Brenden and Jess both wrote lyrics for their parts, and I edited the wordings a bit for clarity, and that was broad strokes for how the demo was made! It’s always fun to think that within our mountains of song snippets and loose pages of lyrics, a song could always be found if it’s the right place and time.

Some fun facts about the song:

• When I showed the demo to my girlfriend, she said “This is you guys?” and that’s when I know we made something good.

• Brenden was really inspired by the Persona soundtrack when writing this song, especially Persona 4.

• We all knew that this song was going to be a single right after the demo was completed, and it didn’t take much convincing for us to make it the lead single for The Art of Erosion.

• The acoustic guitar part was the last thing we recorded in the studio when we made The Art of Erosion, we had planned on doing it at home to save time but we somehow had an extra 5 minutes in studio and we squeezed it in.

• The song didn’t have a name until after it was recorded, it’s working title for all of 2024 was Output 12!

• When we play this song live, we added a 3-part harmony in the 2nd verse. It’s only a moment but it’s a really nice moment.

Thanks again for listening to the song! When we wrote People Watching (Miss U All), I really felt that Indigo Elephant’s sound was beginning to evolve. We continued to chase that sound on The Art of Erosion, and Don’t Wanna See It is another step in that sonic direction. A big shoutout to Jess with helping us write this song, as well as Love In Your Eyes - those are both collaborations we’re really proud of. We’re in the middle of writing new material, and I wonder if we will continue down that musical road, or evolve again in a whole new way. Hopefully we can show what we’ve been working on sooner than later!

Until next time,