KYTES debut album Heads and Tales which will be released on September 16 and can be preordered now from iTunes, Amazon, or Google Play.

In this interview, we spend a few minutes with KYTES to discuss music, influences, the new project, and more.

Full Q&A, links, and the video for As We Row below.

Let’s dive a little deeper into You, the artist and your music. What attracted you to this genre(s) or style(s)?

Hi! We always wanted to make music we enjoy ourselves. So there was never a decision made like: ‘Hey let’s play some indie rock / pop music with electronic influences – this genre is cool right now ‘

We listen to a lot of music and styles and try to blend all these different influences into KYTES.

What led you into this journey with music? And further, what drives you to push it out to the public?

We all discovered music at a very young age. Michael joined a choir when he was six years old, our drummer Timothy learned to play the drums at an early age too, cause his Dad is a drummer himself.

Kerim listened to his first Beatles record really early, Thommy started to play drums when he was 7 (later he changed to drums). At one point  we all discovered that music is the one thing we love the most and we still do.

There are not many feelings that compare to the one, when people start singing and dancing along to your songs. It’s overwhelming. It’s the best feeling we know.

Who or what influences your creativity? Have your tastes in music changed over time?

Other bands and artists influence us obviously but also friends, stories, things we’ve been through or dreams

Art in general can be really influential.

Also we believe there are places with a certain energy. On this record we wrote a few songs in a house, which is right on the top of the mountain in the Bavarian Forrest. Far from everything else.

Were you trying to accomplish anything specific on this new project? Creatively or otherwise?

We really tried to focus on the songwriting on this record. HEADS AND TALES combines  Melodies (Heads) with Stories / Lyrics (TALES). It sounds pretty simple but to us it’s the biggest compliment when somebody who usually doesn’t listen to Indie likes what we’re doing.

There are people coming to our shows,  who say they usually listen to HipHop / Metal or Techno and they like our songs. This is great!

On our journey creating and listening to music we discovered that we like Hip Hop , Techno or even Metal so  we don’t want to be considered a band which is only interesting for Indie Insiders.

What was the last song you listened to?

Dan Croll – Swim

Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?

Vinyl when we really love something, otherwise we like to stream music.

How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?

Personally we use Spotify and Apple Music. We feel that Apple Music has some great exclusive deals, as for instance the new Frank Ocean Visual-Album.

Anyways it’s important that there’s a variety of services. Deezer, Bandcamp, Tidal, Napster whatever…it’s good to have them. We don’t like pure monopolies.

Other than the digital era overwhelming us with access to an abundance of music, what is the biggest challenge you face when trying to connect with or find new fans?

There are certain things that bother us when trying to connect with our fans via social media. Why does an artist have to pay money to reach all his fans?

I guess the biggest challenge when finding new fans is the great offer of  good bands and artists. There are so many really talented artists out there, which haven’t gotten the recognition they deserve. So that’s a hard one!

Where is the best place to connect with you online? Discover more music?

We like Instagram, it’s really fast and connects with fans right a way. Sometimes we upload teasers of new material there.

Anything else you’d like to add before signing off?

Thanks so much for having us, these questions have been great and really fun to answer.