LAUREN GILGER: And now it’s time for our next Tiny Desert Concert. This time, we’d like to introduce you to a young band that’s been called “an electroclash/indie sleaze revival duo known for intense, self-produced live performances.”
At least, that’s how Visit Phoenix described them when they brought them to South By Southwest this year as part of a Phoenix artist showcase.
The band is fronted by Dace Santa Cruz and Keanu Klepfer. I spoke with them recently both about the band, their music, performing live and how it all began — in their high school Spanish class.
You’ll hear Keanu first.
KEANU KLEPFER: It was first day, it was first day of Spanish. You know, obviously Mr. Mel asked what we did over the summer. I said I made beats, and he got to sit and "I was like I made beats all over the summer," and like I think I lied about like making like some kind of fake project of like making rap beats and then Dace —
LAUREN GILGER: It wasn't real?
KEANU KLEPFER: It was not real. It was so not real. I was just trying to be so cool. Like sometimes you got to fake it to make it. Like I feel like that's that's how we do it a lot. I mean like —
DACE SANTA CRUZ: He was he was saying that like, yeah, I made this rap project with this rapper that's my friend. It's super super cool. And I was like, afterwards I was like, "Yo, that's awesome. Can I hear the beats?" And you were like, "Nah I'll just, I'll just give you my phone number and I'll send you some beats there."
LAUREN GILGER: That's awesome. So you I mean you're like high school kids, you're making parody songs, mashups, remakes. When did this become more than, you know, two high school kids messing around with GarageBand, right?
KEANU KLEPFER: Summer, summer of 2022. Dace came over, I was like house sitting our music teacher's house and he comes in and he shows me this song called "Fish Skin Waffle," which was our very first song that we ever released.
[CLIP FROM "FISH SKIN WAFFLE" PLAYS]
And it was basically finished. I was like, "Dude, like let me just play drums for you. Like we'll, we'll take over everything. Like let's go on to." I was just like delusional. I was like, "Let's go, let's do this."
And then after that we were like, "Oh, we should make like a whole project together." So we made a whole project together, started writing together, and like it it was like a little bit more legitimate than anything we've ever done before. And yeah, it we finished it by like New Year's.
DACE SANTA CRUZ: We made a whole EP together. The first song I made, and then I made like another one by myself and then the rest we made together. And Keanu definitely brought it to the next level. He's a very, very, very talented producer that does things I can't do.
LAUREN GILGER: So I mean, you were so young doing this first project. This must have felt pretty cool. Like did you feel like very accomplished and like you'd discovered something new about yourselves here?
DACE SANTA CRUZ: Yes, a little bit too much. I was like, well, I was still nervous to release it but because I never told anybody about stuff I released. And once we released it and people like that we knew like our immediate friends were like, "Oh, this is good music." I was like, "OK, this is awesome. We're gonna blow up tomorrow."
KEANU KLEPFER: Blow up tomorrow. And then probably a week after we released it on Spotify we were like sitting down like just like laying on the couch being like, "Why the hell are we not blowing up right now?" We just didn't understand.
DACE SANTA CRUZ: "Why is this not why does this have 200 listens? This is crazy. We should be having a million." We were definitely —
KEANU KLEPFER: We're still delusional.
DACE SANTA CRUZ: We're still delusional with it, but yeah, we we thought it would go a lot more.
KEANU KLEPFER: A lot of people that we respect and that we've met have talked about like the journey of it being like 10 years or something like that. Like they had to like hustle and grind for such a long time. And so I think that really keeps us going, and I think we'll be like, "All right, we're gonna go 100% until I think we're like 35, and then we'll talk about plumbing."
LAUREN GILGER: You've got a 35-year cutoff?
KEANU KLEPFER: Yeah. ...
DACE SANTA CRUZ: It's also just fun. Playing music is fun. So yeah.
LAUREN GILGER: It is fun. All right, so you're gonna play a song for us now. Tell us about it.
KEANU KLEPFER: This song is called "Drop Me Off." It's a new one. It's about not having your license when you probably should.
[BELGIUM TREE PLAYS "DROP ME OFF]
LAUREN GILGER: I want to ask about how you take what you do from the production into the live show. Because I mean it was fun to watch, but like you're mixing tracks live, like you've got a little mixer on stage there, you're singing, you had a guitar once or twice but not always. I mean, there's a lot going on and and it's sort of a mixture of a live show and a you know like a DJ set almost, right?
KEANU KLEPFER: Yeah, I mean look, I think we're trying to be cutting edge at the end of the day and like I think, you know, we love electronic music and we also love like the very 2000s kind of like Interpol kind of era of like New York and stuff, and I think we're just trying to blend that and still have like this live set.
'Cause I think beforehand we just had like one sampler and me and Dace would like go up there screaming like clipping the mic and like having like the tracks like blow out every speaker that we would do stuff with. And so we had to kind of like learn to be like, "Alright, like maybe like let's not do like a karaoke set, like maybe we should actually do like a live set."
So we slowly have been like putting in like synths and like samplers and like guitars and drums to like really make it like a live thing for us, and I think we're just trying to have this blend that no one else has where it's a band that's also like doing a DJ set, like you said.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, it's an interesting mix. Do you feel the difference in the audience when you do it like this as opposed to trying to do it the way you did before?
DACE SANTA CRUZ: Definitely. Our early, the amount of shows we've had, I mean we kind of we love a good awkward show. We love making the audience feel —
LAUREN GILGER: It definitely happens.
DACE SANTA CRUZ: Yeah, for sure.
KEANU KLEPFER: It happens more to us than a lot of bands.
DACE SANTA CRUZ: Yeah. If I had a dollar for every time a show we played went terrible and like we just fell flat on our faces, I would be able to retire right now. Whenever things are going especially terrible, we're like, "You know what, we'll just take off our shirt. Let's lean into it."
LAUREN GILGER: We're just gonna go nuts.
DACE SANTA CRUZ: Yeah, we'll go crazy.
KEANU KLEPFER: Take of our shirt. Start hugging people in the crowd, like it gets weird. Doing pushups. Getting weird.
But I think people sometimes don't know how to react to our stuff. Like we want everyone like dancing and doing stuff, but I think sometimes people are just not about that, which is totally fine. Like I whenever I go to a show I'm like all the way in the back and like not doing anything. So I don't know why I expect other people to be any different.
LAUREN GILGER: You're your worst audience member.
KEANU KLEPFER: We are both being extremely hypocritical here.
LAUREN GILGER: But talk about some of the moments when your live show has hit and you've really felt like the whole crowd in it. I mean, what's that feel like?
DACE SANTA CRUZ: It's the best. Putting a lot of hard work into a song, it can only give you so much like reward seeing numbers at on a screen of like who listened to it. Even if it's a lot, it's at the end of the day it's just a screen saying numbers. So it's like hard to like know that translation.
So whenever like somebody is like yelling every word or like dancing and like knowing everything and like doing what we do on stage, that, even if it's just one person, it hits so hard. It's really nothing nothing like it in the world.
KEANU KLEPFER: Yeah, we did a show at Walter Studios opening up for FOMA, and it was a packed Walter Studios and everyone was vibing and we had like visuals in the back and we were only silhouettes and like that kind of hard work is like amazing and like it was just like strobes all the time.
Like I don't know, we like overstimulation. I think we're like in that era of like overstimulating. And so —
DACE SANTA CRUZ: We're like the YouTube Shorts of bands.
KEANU KLEPFER: Yeah, 100%. Like it's like ADHD on 10. Like, you know what I mean?
LAUREN GILGER: Let me ask you, Dace, about writing the songs. Where does it start for you? Is it a beat? Is it a line,a chorus, a story?
DACE SANTA CRUZ: The way it works for me is I usually just have a mood that I'm in, whatever I'm feeling, and I'll write down just like, lyrics that kind of encapsulate how I'm feeling. And then whenever I'm still kind of sitting in that mood, like that time period of me when I wrote that, I just go to the computer and usually just start with guitar and just try to make something. And then it's a matter of just like, okay, how can I rewrite these lyrics to fit to this melody that I just made to this instrumental.
LAUREN GILGER: Let me ask you then, Keanu, about the production stuff, right? Like, do you take a stripped-back sounding, almost folky song from this guy and then turn it into something that sounds like what you did out there?
KEANU KLEPFER: Yeah, actually yeah, kind of. Yeah.
LAUREN GILGER: That's crazy. How do you do that?
KEANU KLEPFER: I mean, look, I wish I can answer it. I think, like, you know, at some point you're an antenna of just, like, ideas and like, I think it kind of goes by super fast, where you don't know. But I don't know. We're trying to make these crazy sounds happen with great pop songs and these great kind of songs. And I think that's just — I wish I could answer that better.
DACE SANTA CRUZ: I'll answer it. He is goated, that's why. He literally just does it. It's so crazy.
LAUREN GILGER: So where do you want to take this? Where do you guys see this going? Is this a long term project for you? You said age 35 you're done.
KEANU KLEPFER: Yeah.
DACE SANTA CRUZ: Yeah, we have time. We have time. Nineteen, 21? Yeah, we have time. I don't know yet. I mean, we're just gonna keep grinding, keep on trying to make the best music we can and make smash records.
KEANU KLEPFER: Yeah, I think we're just trying to influence, like, more kids, too, to really try to blend something and to make something that's newer, you know what I mean? I think that's the most important thing, you know?
LAUREN GILGER: Well Dace, Keanu, thank you both so much. Thanks for performing for us. I appreciate it.
DACE SANTA CRUZ: Thank you so much for having us.
KEANU KLEPFER: Thank you.
LAUREN GILGER: All right, so let's have you take us out on a song. What are you going to play for us?
DACE SANTA CRUZ: This one is called "it's only what's good."
[BELGIUM TREE PLAYS "it's only what's good"]
