Nick and Will Evans, along with Zach Blount, grew up playing music together. However, the start of 2021 found Stray Fossa split across continents, with two members relocating to Germany to be with their families. More out of necessity than for symbolic reasons, the recording process for Blossomer, the band’s recently released LP, was a homecoming. The record was pieced together over four weeks in the summer of 2024 in a makeshift studio built into Will and Nick’s childhood home in Sewanee, Tennessee – in the exact room the three used to tinker around with Apple’s early versions of GarageBand as middle schoolers. Leaning into a shared history, videos were filmed on location at the local elementary and high school that all three attended, and in one case, shot entirely on Super 8.
Blossomer is available now on Broken Palace Records and features artwork by Mexican visual designer Melissa Santamaría.
“I Was There” is an early favorite from Blossomer. The stand-out tune is a cinematic breeze through harsh realities, almost as if the sleek arrangement is a band-aid for the truths explored in the lyrics. Stray Fossa explores how passive time spent together has become, with the current obsession with online recognition, the band feels as if a simple human connection is lost on a whole generation. Rather than present their emotions from an ivory tower, as if they are above this movement of absent-mindedness, the band writes from right in the middle of it, allowing “I Was There” to feel like a sentimental plea more than a lecture. With the help of loose guitar riffs, swinging drums, and pulsating tempos, Stray Fossa encourages the listener to surrender to the moment and fully engage their mental capacity with what is before them. With a hint of surf rock and a powerful message, Stray Fossa crafts an infectious indie rock anthem for modern times with “I Was There.”
“The line ‘photographs leave nothing to talk about’ gets at something I have noticed about digital media. The ease at which one can now take pictures and document everything makes it harder to actually experience those moments and make a deeper emotional connection to them,” explains Will Evans. “Memory is a very active process that requires one’s full presence. These days, it is so easy to get distracted, to get pulled away from the present. So one snaps it up instead, saving it for a later date. And even if there’s visual proof that you were there at that place in time, one can only wonder: Were you really?”
