Veins is the latest single from Edmonton indie-rock band, Whale and the Wolf.
The band’s bass player, Lucas Holt, says this song came about during their 10-day session at an Edmonton recording studio, The Audio Department. New-ish to the band, drummer Joel Jeschnke, made his debut in the recording studio and found himself having an experience like no other.
“I’ve only done the one recording session with Whale and the Wolf, which was for the new songs that are starting to come out. It was super fun in that we got to do something bands don’t get to do a lot nowadays, which is we went into the studio for 10 days in a row,” said Jeschke.
“We had it locked out and could leave everything set up, we could stay as late as we wanted, and basically almost live there. It was super fun.”
The new songs were put together collaboratively by Ryan Maier, Brandon Yaggey, Lucas Holt, Joel Jeschke, and Keenan Kirk – the singer, guitar player, bass player, drummer, and keyboard player, respectively.
“When we could get together in our jam space, someone would have an idea, usually something not very long, and we’d just spitball with it and see where we could take it. Lyrically though it’s all Ryan. He has to sing it, so it makes sense he has to write it,” said Jeschke.
“[Collaboration is] a fun thing for bands to do because usually, in my experience, there’s a sole writer, and people might have some input. But [for Whale and The Wolf], this has been really even, and everyone has the same amount of ideas making the final cut.”
The band collaborates with more than just each other. During The Audio Department sessions, they took insight from the engineers to give their new songs ‘Veins’ and ‘Midnight Riot’ those pop-rock vibes.
“For all the recordings we’ve done, either in this band or the past, those ones were the ones that were kind of like ‘this feels like something next level.’ Jimmy and Paul, our producers, were really pushing us outside our comfort zones to do things that you normally might not do or change,” said Holt.
“This last set of recordings was the best and it shows in everything we [recorded].”
With not being able to tour over the past year, they took the opportunity to work on projects within the city, and recorded and released music videos for their two latest songs. Keyboard player, Keenan, doubled as the band’s video producer.
“We’ve kind of been offered some positives [from the pandemic]. For [Midnight Riot], initially, that song was supposed to come out last April and we were going to be on the road for a couple of months, and there was no time to shoot a music video,” said Jeschke.
“It obviously would have been great to play some shows, but now we have a music video for that song, and we’ve had a ton of time to work on a music video for [Veins].”
Find Whale and The Wolf’s new music videos on YouTube, and their songs on Spotify.
