The Couch Sessions

While brothers Mikaiah and Anaiah Lei are young (20 and 17 year olds respectively) the've been a band (The Bots) for a years and have the chops, the drive and most importantly the songwriting skills that rivals musicians twice their age. After dropping their Sincerely Sorry EP last fall, they are preparing their major label debut for release later this year. We ran into the brothers after they took time out to rock out a benefit show at SXSW's Fader Fort for a show for MyMusicRX an organization that spreads the love of music in a hospital environment to kids before their own main stage set at Fader Fort SXSW a day later.

CS: So, we hear the first album you guys made you produced yourselves?

Mikaiah: We produced our own stuff the first time but it was more like rough demo-y stuff. We've come along way as a group. Instrumentation wise the music is very...just big. The new album is just big rock tunes, but id like to say it's got something for everybody. Just fun. Fun making it

Who's producing it?

Mikaiah: Justin Warfield. Nick Zinner (Yeahs Yeah Yeahs) produced like 3 songs. We are going to hopefully have Damon Albarn executive produce everything. this is going to be our first real physical albums, on a label and everything so we are really excited.

You guys really tour heavily and are really active, when did you write the tunes?

Mikaiah: We did some where we literally sat down and wrote it the day of, and we did some where we might have had riffs in mind from years ago. It took forever to write "Desperate"I had that riff for the longest time and I finally used it a couple of years later. *laughs* It varies, ideas that we come back to and revisit, and rebuilt into something new, write it a new song in a day. Sometimes (Anaiah) will have an idea and will show it to me and we go and find it. That's what makes it fun writing music, there is nobody there to tell you how it should be done, the structure and the elements of it comes together so naturally. It's amazing to be able to make music with my brother and to perform it live is the best part.

How many songs do you have all together?

Mikaiah: We have like twelve, maybe we we will use ten? We want a proper LP. Full sized, full meal. No empty space. If we put it on vinyl I don't need like an inch of space (left over) *laughs* We in. We go hard on everything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX9wk2wUpp8

You can catch the bots next month at the almighty Coachella, and they will be playing a string of dates both in the US and Europe. Before they drop their full length, by all means check out what they can do on their Sincerely Yours EP that they dropped Fall of last year, it's dope.