Photo by: Chris Echols
Dead Lakes is easily one of the most refreshing and genuine newer bands in the scene. They’re a four-piece group from Seattle with a whole lot of heart. No matter what song a listener finds first, there is an absolute guarantee that they will be hooked. From metalcore adjacent instrumentals to calmer, melodic pieces of storytelling, Dead Lakes has created their own unique sound. Moreso, each song is filled with heartfelt lyrics that just about anyone can relate to. Heartbreak, mental health, and navigating through life, Dead Lakes has a song that can pinpoint exact emotions and moments like no other.
Two weeks before Dead Lakes were set to release their debut album, daydreamer, we had the opportunity to speak with the band’s vocalist, Sumy, about the recently released singles and everything the album has in store for us.
Congratulations on daydreamer! What was the writing and recording process of the album like?
We wrote it over the course of the pandemic. We wrote like a whole bunch of demos. We had put out our last EP at the beginning of it and it was kind of like our introduction to the scene a little bit, and we didn’t get a tour off of it at all because of the pandemic, obviously. So, it was a tough time for our band. We didn’t know if we wanted to keep being a band or not. We had already been grinding for so long and it just seemed like nothing was ever gonna start really working out. So when we were writing music, we just really wrote whatever we wanted to at that point. There’s no crowd to write for right now, really. So we wrote like 20 songs and showed the demos to the label. And they were like “these are a pretty far departure from the EP. You should definitely keep writing some stuff and try to maybe write some stuff that’s a little more rock-oriented.” We wrote a whole bunch of stuff that kind of met in the middle of like those songs and our EP and that’s kind of how we came up with daydreamer. Tongue Planet, the song that just came out was the first song that we had sent to SharpTone that they were like, “okay, yeah, let’s send you into the studio.” So then, we went to Toronto to go work with Sam who has worked with The Devil Wears Prada, Between You and Me, Trash Boat, Intervals and a bunch of crazy artists that we all look up to. It was pretty crazy. Our manager, Adam, got us hooked up with Sam because our manager’s from Toronto as well. So it was something we never really considered- going out to Toronto. But it was like the best experience that we could have ever had. It was wild. We got a little apartment in this crazy little building for like three weeks and it was so much fun, such a good break from our Washington lifestyle.
What would you say was your favorite memory from that process?
I would say just getting to really bond with one another and get to hang around. There was so much stuff within walking distance. The best part was probably just getting to take a break from our normal day jobs and stuff like that, and feel young and with no responsibilities again. Just having a good time and really getting to put that sort of energy into the record because the energy of the pre-pro and the demoing was all like during our day-to-day lifestyle and stuff so it gave us a fresh perspective.
What song would you say was the easiest to write and record?
This is kind of a cop-out answer, but I would say the interlude which is called Believer because it’s a little more fun and natural, which is up my alley. It’s like a dance track, essentially. For me, that was definitely the easiest to record and just vibe out with for sure.
On the flip side, which one was the hardest?
I would probably say, oh my gosh, I think it’s called “drown it out” now. It was called “hard to love” for the longest time. I still have all the demo names in my mind and I have no idea what most of the songs are actually called. But that one was really hard just to really get the transitions and the vibes down to make sure everything correlated correctly because that song is all over the place instrumentally in a really good way. It took a while to make sure that everything transitioned the way that we wanted it to for sure.
Was there a specific decision or reason behind stylizing the song titles with no capital letters?
So for our last ep, we really wanted to do all capital letters and I guess for some reason with the distribution process that our label goes through specifically, they don’t allow for all capital letters for some reason. Apparently, Emmure wanted to do the same thing and they were on our label at the time and they couldn’t do it either. This is about as much of a stand as we take in the industry. So our big stand was that we were going to do all small letters since they wouldn’t let us do all big letters. That was really the thinking behind it though. And honestly, a lot of the themes of the songs and my personal experience with writing the lyrics, it’s all about making a big statement while feeling small. So I feel like that has a really cool little vibe with the unintentional meaning behind making all the letters small.
It was previously mentioned that the record was designed to be consumed in one go, specifically on a drive. Can you talk a little bit about why you made that decision?
I think when we decided on what songs we wanted on the record, we could feel that there was something that tied them all together. For me, it was that a lot of the lyrics are about going through traumatic events and sometimes, the healthiest thing that I do to deal with it is to go on a drive and just listen to music that feels therapeutic to me or sometimes makes me sad. During the writing of this record, I was listening to a lot of 6lack and his music is just the saddest stuff but it’s so therapeutic at the same time. I just remember listening to his EP that he dropped during the pandemic, like over and over on drives. And I just really felt like these songs had that same sort of energy, just because of all the stuff that I was going through and honestly that a lot of us went through. I think three out of the four of us went through long-term relationship breakups during the pandemic and so it just felt like the fitting way to consume the record. It takes you on the journey of all the crazy parts and then the calmness that you feel by the end of the drive is the same thing that you feel by the end of the record in a way.
“tongue planet” released on March 6th. How did it come together?
It was the first song we submitted to SharpTone. So it was the first rock centralized song and it’s a really good mix up of our last EP and the sound we’re trying to go towards in the future. It just came at a time where we were really frustrated with a lot of things going on between us and our relationships outside of the band. We just put all that energy into this song and that’s really how it came about. The name “tongue planet” came about from this manga a friend of ours gave to our guitarist at the time. The whole thing is about an all-consuming planet that has like a bunch of mouths and tongues all over it. It was a working title for the song and we wanted to keep it.
How did you decide the order you wanted these songs to be released in as singles?
It was kinda my idea. I think we just really wanna make sure that we honor our art by doing everything as intentionally as possible. We’ve always focused on the music and never really tried to care as much about the marketing side or whatever. So I just sat down one day and really thought out like “how do we sell people on this journey of our band?” We’ve never really created a community around our band before and we really wanna do that. We wanted to release something that caught people’s ears that was kind of fresh, but still fit into our scene with “wrong way”. Next was “stamina” and I feel like off of our record, that one is probably the most fitting for our general music scene. Then we did “strange juice” which I feel like that’s one of the most exciting songs on the record. We thought that would be one to really sell everybody on. And it has that interesting second verse that’s like pop-punky. And then with “tongue planet” it has a poppy little pre chorus, but still has the catchy alt rock chorus and stuff. We have a fifth one coming out, which is my favorite one on the whole record and that one feels like Lany and the lighter side of Dayseeker. We wanna show people where we’re going with that song because that’s where we wanna go in the future. There is a lot of intentionality placed behind how we wanted the singles to come out and why.
“strange juice”, another one with an interesting name, came out in February. It was previously said that it’s all about loving the process of life. Can you expand on that concept and how you felt you achieved that?
We found that there are a lot of car metaphors, for lack of a better phrase, doesn’t sound as sexy when you say it like that. The first lyrics of the song are “driving slow, car in smoke / What happens when the light sinks slow? When there’s no tread on these tires?” Its just talking about feeling like sometimes the company you keep, or even like your mental health, or whatever’s holding you back from achieving what you wanna achieve and finding yourself. That’s really what the song is about. I think through the journey of writing the record, used a lot of the lyric writing to overcome a lot of the stuff I was dealing with. I think through the journey of this record, my way of thinking and my head space changed almost completely in like a real healthy way. Where every day had began to feel a little debilitating or scary just to go day to day. Like tomorrow’s not really gonna hold anything great or promising is what it felt like, you know? Being able to switch that mindset to “man, I wanna accomplish things, be driven, and do things for myself.” Not enjoying the end goal, but enjoying the process, you know? I feel like that’s what I really achieved through writing.
A lot of the lyrical content so far seems very personal. What do you think the benefit is of speaking from that sort of place?
I always go into it thinking “I do care about the listener on the end of this. This isn’t just like a therapy session for myself.” So I want it to be broad enough that it can relate to people without it being too specific to where they’re like, “okay, you almost had me.” I think that’s why you find lines like “when there’s no tread on these tires” instead of me saying, “wow, why is my best friend not hitting me back and wanna help finish this project?” I found it really important to have a sense of sincerity with being vulnerable on the record. When you hear the whole record, you’ll really understand that like every song, there’s a deeper overall meaning to everything going on. Sometimes you’d realize when writing, you don’t have to dress up so much and just let it be exactly what it needs to be. I do think it’s very important that if you want your songs to resonate, you have to be honest and be able to be vulnerable and put yourself out there. I went through a breakup during the writing of this record with somebody I was with for eight years. It’s just real genuine heartbreak on the record with just a little pinch at the end of everything that feels hopeful.
Do you ever worry that you’ll get to a point where it becomes too personal and you no longer have any sort of privacy?
I think my boundary, which I am always being pushed to break a little bit, comes with social media. Lyrically, I’m willing to be a super open book, but I want my boundary to be more with how much feedback I take in from the response. Some people do take whatever you say and distort it to whatever they’ve gone through or whatever the case may be. I’ve always been somebody that, whether I’m on the right or wrong side of things, I wanna be honest and open about putting it out there because other people have been on either end of the situation. It’s an important dialogue to have. As the consumer taking it in, I think that’s kind of where my boundary is. I try my best not to read too many comments. When the art is done, I do protect my mental health by unfortunately maybe keeping distance from everybody. There’s good and bad parts to it. I am a little bit older at this point and I have gone through a lot of stuff and it’s just hard for me to let consumers in or let their feedback in because when I do, I definitely will allow it to affect me. I have to be really careful with what I let in. Everybody has had a journey in life. I’ve just known so many people at this point to know that every person I’ve ever met has a story and has the ups and downs, unique situations, trials and tribulations to where we can all come together, but at the same time, some people don’t know how to heal from some of those things and sometimes project. It’s tough to keep your boundaries with people while also trying to help them.
“stamina” was the second single to come out and it also tells a narrative story. Can you speak a little bit about the story you created?
It’s about a relationship that felt easy at first, it’s almost like a honeymoon phase, where everything feels so right. In the case of this, it felt like the relationship wasn’t so easy anymore. It felt like it was work, or I didn’t feel safe being myself around this person at that time. They’re very on and off, hot and cold. When they were mentally in a good place to accept the relationship, they were there, but when they weren’t, they pushed away heavily. I try not to talk too specifically about the songs because I do want people to be able to relate to it in whatever situation they’re going through, but I think that’s still a very relatable situation. I’ve been that person too where I haven’t mentally been in a healthy state. It was almost nice to go through that relationship to understand why I don’t wanna be like that and why I wanna be emotionally dependable and stuff. The chorus essentially says when you wake up I won’t be there and you won’t be here. We just aren’t the people that was a reality for where we did wake up next to one another where things were cohesive and it flowed naturally. Sometimes people just drift apart. You paint this future together and you can’t see it going any other way. And then you don’t even notice the time that the flow stops being so natural. It’s just one day you wake up and you realize things just haven’t been the same recently. You get so caught up in the slow change over time that you don’t even notice what happens.
“wrong way” was the first single to be released and definitely feels more serious. Am I right in saying its main focus is tackling mental health?
Yeah, I think you got that perfectly. The song tackled all the feelings I felt at the beginning of the pandemic. I was genuinely not in a mentally healthy place. I have ADHD and my mind just never feels like it stops. During the beginning of the pandemic with everything going on and then climate change and all the devastating things that happen day to day around it. Like I literally work in probably one of the cleaner grocery stores of all the chains, and we still have so much waste there, and it’s just really sad to see us still working in a world that isn’t sustainable, doesn’t make sense, doesn’t bring true happiness or a true purpose to individuals, but we just keep day-to-day doing it knowing that we are literally slowly walking to the end of our existence. I won’t say to the end of the planet or the end of the world because honestly, the earth always finds a way to rehabilitate itself. We have all of the things at our fingertips to change the way society runs. We feel so hopeless as lower class people and the higher class people like the way the system works because it obviously is a more profitable world for them. Long story short, “wrong way” is about all the ways I felt society was wrong and the way it hit me in the heart when I really took it all in. “Need a fast car / windows tinted / I want it all / Wanna get it like they get it.” It’s all superficial sounding stuff, but to me, what it meant was we’ve been told like this is the sort of lifestyle you wanna have. But this lifestyle doesn’t bring true happiness or sustainability. And I just felt so hopeless with trying to help change or direct change during the pandemic that it felt very overwhelming and honestly, every single day just felt like, “what’s the point?” I felt a little suicidal during that time and I’m not afraid to talk about this stuff. Honestly, I would say it’s so much more common that people feel that way and I think it’s very important that if you ever do feel that way or you’re past a point in your life where you feel a little more mentally stable now, to be able to own that. That’s what the song was about. It’s about feeling suicidal during a time where every day waking up just felt so debilitating, even though I could acknowledge I had a better life than a lot of people. Just seeing society be in such a place that it seems like we can never get out of, even though we have all the tools. It’s really tough to wake up every day and try to understand what’s the real point.
I totally understand. I’d like to think the song does still have some sort of hopefulness though.
100%. I think it’s tough trying to tackle everything as one person. I think that’s why community’s so important. That’s why the pandemic was so hard too, because a huge sense of community was taken away from us. At the same time that we are being fed all this information about all, like all this crazy stuff that’s going on around us, we also have our individual situations that feel so hopeless. Why do we strive to be something that isn’t community driven, that doesn’t honor everybody around us or help everybody around us? There is a hopefulness in the fact that we can’t change everything so we do have to find ways to be happy if we’re gonna live and survive. And that’s in creating community and reaching out to people and taking care of one another. Doing these interviews is incredible, but honestly, getting to have like the more genuine parts of this conversation have been more fulfilling for me. I’m just thankful to have a conversation with you. It reminds me of the purpose and how I felt when writing this record. That’s why I love just having genuine dialogue. I’m thankful that the pandemic happened in ways that it was able to teach us a lot about ourselves and what we really need and what we really want, and who we really wanna be to other people and to ourselves.
“wrong way” hit over a million listens on Spotify. What do you take away from that accomplishment?
I mean, everybody is a dreamer, right? And everybody wants their art to be successful. I used to be so emotionally attached to the success of Dead Lakes in such an unhealthy way that I’m thankful and grateful and I think it’s really cool when things happen. I also honor the 16 year old me who never thought that we would be where we are. At the same time, it is important to know that it could all be taken away but what can’t be taken away was the journey of writing the record. The people that the songs affected, you know? That’s really what it’s about for me. We went from 25,000 monthly listeners in like August and we’re at like 140,000 now. So we’ve gone up like a hundred thousand monthly listeners. What really matters to me is like physically moving the needle. We haven’t been on a tour since August. We have no tour offers currently. So I’m hoping that the superficial numbers and stuff like that will manifest themselves into future opportunities for us to physically see people in person and get to create that community and relate to people in person, which is like the whole reason why we do it, you know? I think it’s super cool that obviously the song has reached people and has made an impact in such a short amount of time. That’s something I wanna celebrate because I think it’s super cool. I definitely am super pumped up and humbled and grateful that this record’s done what it’s done so far. I’m hopeful that it’ll keep doing cool things.
The album has a little bit more pop elements than it does like rock elements and it strays away from the EPs’ more post hardcore sound. Where did the idea to make the transition over to a different sound come from?
The idea came from wanting to be authentic to ourselves because all of us grew up listening to like hardcore and post hardcore. I didn’t get introduced to that sort of music until I was in like eighth grade but from then until the start of Dead Lakes, that was all I listened to. Then I started getting back into R&B and hip hop quite a bit. We’re just wanting to be authentic to ourselves. I think that the record is alternative rock. We wanted to still incorporate who we felt we were today mixed with what people loved about Dead Lakes and what we loved about Dead Lakes too. And I feel like we really encapsulated that on the record. Definitely heading more that way into the future. The last single that comes out with daydreamer, you’ll really hear where we’re trying to go in the future. The Neighbourhood was a huge inspiration for this record. That’s probably my favorite band up there with The 1975. All of us are huge Chase Atlantic fans. Our tastes have just changed and we didn’t wanna write something that didn’t feel authentic cause we knew it would fall flat. There’s people who truly love post hardcore that are going to do it so much better than we could ever do it. That’s just a fact. And that’s because it’s really true to their hearts. We didn’t wanna write something because we are supposed to. We decided to just do whatever felt the most authentic to us while still maintaining a rock edge.
What do you hope listeners take away from the album as a whole?
Definitely a sense of hope. Life never stops being a rollercoaster. There’s a few things we can’t avoid in life and one of the main things is endless work. We’re never gonna avoid trials and tribulations. I hope that people get a sense of hope out of this because although there’s a lot of sad lyricism and stuff, I’m in a way mentally healthier place today than I was when we first started writing the record. That’s the point, you know? Maybe in a couple years I’ll go through some things, but I hope that the knowledge I’ve gained through writing this record will keep me from getting as low next time. I think that we all owe it to ourselves to try to always feel better, be better, and not allow ourselves to get as low. So I just really hope that people get a sense of hope out of the record because here we are today and tomorrow’s a new opportunity.
