Last week, we heard from the up and coming artist Taye$ty who passed the aux cord to the indie pop band Lovely Colours. The band consists of two childhood friends, one of whom Taye$ty knows well.
"His [Devin Damitio] lyrics are a lot more relevant to our generation... he just knows how to convey a bigger message to my generation especially and I’d say that’s really important," Taye$ty said.
Devin Damitio is the lead singer and guitarist of the Seattle band Lovely Colours. His childhood friend James Raymond Rosales plays bass. And although they’ve been playing music since they were kids, it wasn’t until recently that they started writing songs together.
"For the past few songs we sat together, at least lyrically, and wrote out a bunch of the lyrics," Rosales said. "The first song that comes to mind, I think, is "Things You Do," which was the first song that we really sat down in the studio together and were like line-by-line, let's go over this and make sure that we like all the words and it makes sense."
Previously, Damitio mainly wrote the songs and brought them to the band, which also includes Steven Bingham and Patrick May. But their new music has been more collaborative, especially between Damitio and Rosales.
"It's good because James is like a great filter for me," Damitio said. "If I'm not feeling confident about lyrics I can be like 'hey man how’s this?' and he’ll be really nice and help out and try and pump it up and make it better and stuff. So it’s a great dynamic we have."
Damitio and Rosales' friendship started back in middle school in Juneau, Alaska thanks to a mutual love for Blink-182.
"We were both getting into, like punk rock music and alternative music kind of at the same time. And then we happened to meet each other through wearing Blink-182 shirts," Rosales said.
When they met, they were playing in separate bands.
"Both our bands were covering all that type of music and I would go see Devin's band shows and they would play, you know, Blink songs," Rosales said. "So I would have to be like, okay, they played these Blink songs, so our band has to play these other Blink songs, like just to make sure we weren't playing the same Blink songs."
They didn’t really start playing music together until the two bands merged together. At that point though, they were still doing a lot of covers. Damitio and Rosales used to live right across the street from each other.
They’d spend nights listening to their favorite pop punk bands and sharing the music they were working on. That was until Damitio moved to Olympia with his family in 2009, but the two stayed in touch.
"Whatever we had going on at any point, even if it was just like some demos or something, we'd always take some time to listen to it and talk to each other about it," Damitio said.
A decade later, Damitio and Rosales were living in the same city again – this time it was in Seattle. Damitio had started a new band and knew one person he had to have in the new group.
"When I was starting to write some more music, I was like, I got to get him in my band," Damitio said.
The same idea was also on Rosales mind.
"I was over here like, I hope Devin calls me...," Rosales laughed.
Rosales reflected on their nearly two decade-long friendship and what keeps it going:
"With music we have so much overlap like... we come from such a small town that when you find someone who has similar interests in you, like you're automatically...even more connected to that person."
During the early part of the pandemic. Rosales learned how to mix and record so that the band could do it themselves. Which is one of the ways they’ve been able to hone their sound.
"We used to rely on people to mix our music to what they thought our band sounded like and now we can kind of just do it the way we want it to sound like," Damitio said.
When it comes to describing the sound of Lovely Colours, you might think of indie pop bands like Young the Giant or the Postal Service. Their sound is fun and has a catchy melody.
This year has been big for the band. They played Capitol Hill Block Party in July and have a debut EP coming out this fall.
It’s not lost on Damitio and Rosales how far they’ve come both as individual musicians, but also as friends who dreamt of what they’re doing now. Especially any time they revisit home videos of their middle school band from Juneau.
"We'll have, like, a late night every once in a while and we'll just be like let's watch them together. So we'll watch and just kind of laugh, but also be like look at us now. Still doing it, baby," Damitio said.
Since this is our last installment of Aux Cord Privileges (for now) instead of passing the aux to another artist, we asked Rosales and Damitio a different aux cord question: If the other person was given the aux cord on a road trip, what would they put on the stereo?
Damitio: "I know I could rattle off a few bands for sure. But I want to say that like if you, James, are driving and you're like, we're in a desert somewhere on a road trip and you plug in the aux, you're probably going to play...you're probably going to play Death Cab..."
Rosales: "Devin is really good at putting me on like newer kind of artists all the time, so I would want to say an artist like Khruangbin."
Damitio: "There it is. Nailed it."
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