Q&A: sundots Finds Their Synergistic Identity in New Single ‘Distraction’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY CHRISTINE BITONTI ☆
Photo by Eve Alpert
IT ONLY TOOK A COUPLE OF SPONTANEOUS JAM SESSIONS FOR SUNDOTS TO REDIRECT THEIR SONGWRITING APPROACH—The making of “Distraction” put the five-piece band right on the path to creating new studio album On the Quay and discovering who sundots really is now.
What began in 2019 as a solo project by frontman Drew Collins has evolved over time into a collaborative quintet. In past projects, instrumentalists Jake Fucci, Austin Traver, Nick Restivo and Teo Hernandez transformed Collins’ bedroom pop recordings into tracks featuring a full, live band. During the making of On the Quay, all five members played a role in composing each song. Collins is accustomed to keeping his creative process private, but he found allowing his bandmates into his inner world to be a very rewarding, albeit daunting, experience.
Drawing worldbuilding inspirations from the writings of Ian McEwan, On the Quay seamlessly blends five distinct artistic voices. New singles “Distraction” and “Grassy Lawn” explore themes of longing with a touch of melodrama, paired with hazy harmonies and silkily striated guitar.
Luna recently sat down with Drew Collins to discuss “Distraction,” On the Quay, and sundots’ upcoming tour. Read below for more.
LUNA: For any readers who don’t yet know your music, how would you describe your sound to them?
SUNDOTS: Tangled up guitar music with lots of harmonies.
LUNA: On The Quay is the first album written and recorded by the whole band. What was that experience like as opposed to past experiences without the full band working on the record?
SUNDOTS: It was a really cool and rewarding experience. Collaborating itself isn’t something new to the sundots project (many of us have already collaborated on sundots stuff in the past or on other musical projects), but working with the same group of people from start to finish on an entire sundots record was a new thing for me. In the past, I’ve mainly either done stuff alone or with a large cast of different people on a song-per-song basis. I think this comes through in past recordings—not in a necessarily bad way, but I think that there is a continuity found on this record which doesn’t appear in previous sundots records. The writing process for On the Quay was a really fun workflow and, many times, was quite striking to have these songs unfold in ways that I never would have normally gotten to myself.
LUNA: How did you know that Kevin S. McMahon would be the person for the job when it came to producing your album? Was there any moment you had while working together where things really just clicked?
SUNDOTS: Kevin seemed like the obvious choice for being able to best capture the sound of sundots-live-in-a-room. I think one of the defining characteristics of our sound as a band right now is our dynamics and some of the decision-making that happens in real time while playing together. It felt important to capture that, and Kevin has a lot of experience with capturing this essence in other bands.
From my own personal perspective, I think the times when things felt like they clicked the most were the moments in which I’d try and explain the feeling or sound that I was going for on a certain track, and he would seemingly effortlessly rummage through his gear and pick out everything to help me get there. He seemed to intuitively understand my oftentimes abstract ideas and already had an idea of how to end up there with his gear.
LUNA: You say that spontaneity has become central to the band’s identity. How would you say your identity as an artist/band has evolved over time?
SUNDOTS: I think that, outside of obvious things like influences and taste changing over time, working with a consistent cast as the live band has really shaped the sound and identity of sundots. For a long time, the live outfit of sundots went through many changes, whether it [was] due to someone moving or people wanting to focus on other things. However, the sundots band has been the same crew for the last couple of years, with the exception of Teo (who joined us in the summer of 2025). I think that having the same group of people working together for so long inevitably shaped a new sound as we grew together as artists and friends. It was one thing to catch the members up on a backlog of already-written songs, but when it came to presenting incomplete ideas or new songs, this gave us uncharted territory to cross together and figure out what it is that we are as sundots. It still is, and will probably always be, a learning process, as sundots has always felt like an extension of my own identity, so letting people in on that can be scary and confusing to navigate. Ultimately, I think it has been extremely rewarding and the right move for the project.
LUNA: What was it about Ian McEwan’s writing specifically that inspired “Grassy Lawn?”
SUNDOTS: “Grassy Lawn” had almost been fully written before having any lyrics for it. The demo of the track just repeated the phrase “grassy lawn” (hence the title), over and over again. I had always known that I wanted to add a narrative aspect to the track, but wasn’t quite getting there...Reading the collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites by Ian McEwan was extremely inspiring to me, and I felt like it completely filled me with creative energy. “Grassy Lawn” lyrics are inspired by the title story, (“First Love, Last Rites”). With all of the songs on the record, which were inspired by things that I have read, I tried to insert myself into the story and tell it from my own perspective. Many times, I would try to tie my own real-life experiences into what I had read and explore that headspace and let that do the worldbuilding. McEwan’s writing definitely inspired much of the worldbuilding on the record.
LUNA: Let’s talk a little bit about “Distraction.” Can you tell me about how this song came to be?
SUNDOTS: I had completed the skeleton of the song (vocal melody, lyrics and guitar) right before leaving for our first tour with Panchiko. I was so excited about the song that I had to interrupt one of our tour-prep practices to show the band the song—I was just so excited to start jamming on it all together. Almost immediately, the drum parts that Nick started playing over the riff were so much different than what I had imagined but extremely cool, and we ended up just completing that entire song in maybe one or two jam sessions. We ended up playing that track as the closer on that tour and got really good reception to it. This song was a pretty formative moment in the writing of the album and guided our approach to writing together moving forward.
LUNA: When you are recording a track, does that hazy and textured, yet controlled and deliberate, sound with the whole band come together organically, or is that something that is planned out ahead of time? Or maybe a bit of both?
SUNDOTS: In terms of the sound of the live band, it comes about organically. This was the reason I felt we needed to capture the “band-live-in-a-room” sound—it felt like recording the music any other way would not be able to accurately capture the songs and their truest essence.
Sound-wise, and on the production side of things, I am very drawn to textural music/things that sound hazy, and this was certainly the terminology that I used with Kevin when trying to articulate how things were meant to sound sonically.
LUNA: What was the inspiration behind the “Distraction” music video?
SUNDOTS: The “Distraction” music video was the first one that we had done. Because the live aspect is so crucial to understanding the album, it felt like a disservice not to capture some of the BTS of the recording process. It doesn’t go much deeper than simply wanting to have something to look back on for ourselves and to give others who may be interested a look into the creative process.
LUNA: You have a very busy couple of months coming up, including an album release, a tour and performances at Pitchfork Festival. Congratulations on all of it! It’s truly incredible. What would you say you are most excited for and why?
SUNDOTS: Thank you very much! It’s hard to pick just one thing out of the bunch…I really can’t wait to have the record come out. We all worked so hard on it, and I feel incredibly proud of what we have come up with. It will feel like such a great weight is lifted from my shoulders once the record is out into the world. I hope people connect with it, and I really look forward to potentially hearing about those connections.
Playing the Pitchfork Festival is an absolute dream come true. If you were to tell past-me that we’d someday be playing Pitchfork Festival, I’d never [have] believe[d] it. It is hard to put into words just how grateful we all are to have that opportunity and to see some other incredible artists while there.
Touring in October with Rehash should be a lot of fun—we’ve shared some bills with them in the past, and they bring out some great people to their shows and it will expose us to some cities we’ve never played before...I can’t wait for that!
The following tour in November, connected to the Pitchfork Fest dates, will be with Lots of Hands, who I have personally been a fan of for some time now. I can’t wait to meet and hang out with those folks...I think we’re gonna have a ton of fun touring together. I will even be in Dublin on my birthday, which couldn’t be more fitting for an album that has taken inspiration from [James] Joyce’s Dubliners!
