Hey Wotts, thanks for taking the time to talk to us today. Could you tell us a little known fact about yourself?

Thanks for having us! I’d say a little known fact is that the band started out as a hip hop collective. So playing instruments, singing and producing our own music is still relatively new to us.

‘Better Days’ is the second single to be released from your upcoming EP, FLANK!. How does it fit into the overall arc or story of the EP?

FLANK! is an EP about loss. Not any one kind of loss, it touches on death, the ending of relationships and even a time you can’t get back. “Better Days” is about the former, I lost a couple good souls in my life last year and I just wanted to make a song for them. But it’s also about learning to live with loss and accepting that it’s ok to sit with what hurts for a bit.

There’s a late-night, dreamy vibe to this single, so how does this tie in to the experiences that inspired the track?

This probably doesn’t apply to everyone but I find the heaviest thoughts come at night. Maybe it’s because I can distract myself during the day, but as soon as the sun comes down, it’s a lot harder for me to ignore the stuff that weighs. Life’s a bit more unfair, you miss the person you lost a little more and it’s maybe the one time of day where even an atheist is ready to make a deal with god. All the thoughts and emotions that make up the song were born from late nights.

How do you balance vulnerability in your lyrics with the upbeat or psychedelic tone of the music?

I’ve always appreciated music that has layers. There’s the surface with all the expected bits, but then you look under the hood and all of a sudden there’s a lot more. Of course we could have made a sad piano ballad and that would have been fine, but there’s just so much emotion tied up with death. One minute you’re broken, the next you’re ok, then you can be mad, frustrated, joking around, desperate, happy and then right back to being sad. And throughout that entire journey, you’re learning to (hopefully) live with it. Everyone grieves differently, this was our glimpse into that experience.

How do you maintain a consistent identity as a band while experimenting with different sounds and textures?

That’s a great question. We’ve had industry people tell us that we need to focus on a specific genre, and maybe they’re right. But when we started the band, the idea was simple, make music we like. I know the smart move would be to find a commercially appealing lane and run with it, but there’s so many bands and artists we love who zig when people expect them to zag. If us experimenting or changing it up limits our ability to build a huge fanbase, so be it. I’d rather operate with no boundaries because that’s what makes this fun for us, and I think that’s the Wotts identity at the end of the day.

How do you hope listeners will feel after hearing ‘Better Days’?

Something, anything! What I love about music is that people can hear a song and take away something different. If the song makes you feel anything, mission accomplished.

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