Jenny Sorto

Indie-pop duo joan has made their name crafting tracks with catchy melodies and lovestruck lyrics. The Arkansas band made up of Steven Rutherford and Alan Thomas are currently on tour supporting MisterWives all across North America.

We caught up with the duo for a Q+A before their Santa Ana show at The Observatory—learn more about their latest single, their journey creating music throughout the years, and more!

Bad Wreck: How does “heartbodymindsoul” fit into the upcoming era for joan? What are some things you can tell us about upcoming music/projects?

joan: It's completely different than anything we’ve released, and that was incredibly exciting to us. We've been together for a while now, and I think a lot of people kind of have a song that bookmarks their experience with us, which is great. but this batch of music feels completely fresh and new to us, it’s making us feel like we did when we were first starting this thing, so we wanted to release this song first to communicate that this era is filled with parts of joan we haven’t shown people before.

BW: After your 2023 debut album, superglue, how did you prepare to get back into creating music? Was there a concept/subject you were looking to explore?

joan: We deliberately had no expectations going into writing. Late last year we bought, renovated, and moved into our own studio, which had been a dream of ours for a long time. We started just writing every day starting in January of this year just to see what we end up with each day. We wrote soooo many songs this year, and a body of work just kind of showed itself to us that it needs to live together on a project. We've definitely gone back to our roots as a band in a lot of ways, but still trying to find a new and fresh take on everything. we’re writing and releasing the music that makes us most excited, that feels like the most important thing for us to do right now.

BW: You guys have created a dedicated community around your music, how does that influence your approach to making music and performing?

joan: We've deliberately built this band slow and steady. we didn’t want to have a song just be a moment in time, we’ve never cared about that. We've always had the mindset to create the absolute best art we could — musically and visually. Because of that, I think we’ve built a really special fan base that knows we’re gonna go different directions and try new things out, and they’re cool with that. we’re incredibly lucky to have people willing to go on the journey with us wherever we take them.

BW: What excites you the most about going on the road with MisterWives?

joan: It's been a while since we’ve been support for another band. It's such a fun part of being a band and playing shows. There's not nearly as much pressure, and it’s almost more raw feeling because you’re bearing your soul to a lot of people that have never heard your music. Our goal every night is ONLY to go up on stage and give our absolute all, in hopes that we’ve convinced a few people in the crowd that we’re worth going and finding our music and listening to more of it. It's exciting and stretching and fun.

BW: How do you continue to be musically inspired after all these years?

joan: We write and produce everything ourselves, so it can feel incredibly crippling to write something new because there is so much music being released every day. but it’s not fun to let yourself be crippled by mindset, it’s way more fun to realize that people all over the world with unique perspectives are making absolutely beautiful art that is new and its own thing BECAUSE those people are creating it. We just feel lucky that we get to wake up every day and write music from our perspective, inspired by our tastes and instincts, and that people care to listen.

Photos by Jenny Sorto

Listen to “heartbodymindsoul” here!