Page 36 - Zone Magazine Issue 012

feature interview
USA
Hailing from Chicago, the electropunk sister duo Krewella are active vocal inspirations through their
music and editorials. Jahan and Yasmine Yousaf have grown into symbols of female empowerment - personified work ethic that transcended social and gender stigmas to ultimately achieve their dream.
With heavy rock and dance influences, the girls first burst onto the scene with their Play Hard EP in 2011. Quickly amassing almost half a billion plays, they were pioneers in a male-dominated music industry, and were one of the few female dance groups to secure major club residencies and festival appearances. Their rebellious fashion and attitude inspired their millions of fans to embrace themselves, and they formed an obsessed collective affectionately self-dubbed as the #KREW.
With the platinum hit ‘Alive’ under their belt, their evolution into a live rock / dance hybrid act continues into 2016 as they prepare to release their second album. With the rare ability to play both acoustic live sets and raucous Las Vegas club residencies, Krewella continues to grow into one of the
most unique music performances in the world.
How did you guys break into the industry?
Break in or make it in? [Laughs] Sorry, now I’m in like jail world.
Whichever one you want to start of with... [laughs]
We started making music in 2007. With our
former member Chris and were talking to ourselves and working on a songwriting production for four years until we debuted. Then we debuted blocks, underground blocks picked us up, and then we started playing small shows here and there for like 100$, 50$, 350$ here and there little raves in Illinois and from then we were in the industry.
What do you think your make or break moment was, that moment you guys realized, wow, like we haven’t made it yet but we really accomplished enough and momentum was built up to where you guys realized this could be a...?
I think there were a couple moments, that lead up to bigger moments that lead to bigger moments, you know it was kinda like a snowball thing. I think the first thing was releasing... Tell me if my timeline was correct, so I think we released a remix of Skirllex’s song “Breathe” in Dec of 2011 and the next month we released “Killin’ It”, and those two things in tandem within a month of each other, were really big for us, and then we released the music video for Killin’ It in February the next month. So those three months were just like a one two punch for us and that’s when we started seeing more offers coming in, and I think we got our first festival offer right around then. We started getting our former A&R at Columbia records found us from our killing it video. So it was those little things, and then of course “Alive” came out four months later. It just was a snowball effect from there.
We always love to hear those kinds of stories. How do you maintain the classic elements of your sound, that Krewella sound with the ever changing demand of dance music?
The one thing that’s really cohesive through everything is the songwriting and our voices and other than that our vision is evolving just like any artist you want to evolve as a human being, you don’t want to be stuck in one sound especially as things become dated. Um, so I would say it’s our voice, our voice in the studio, the way we command the studio session, the direction we take it in, um, our references for tracks, for sounds, the type of sound design that we’re looking for. So it’s really, I think it’s us that’s really keeping it in Krewella world. What is your vision?
Right now as far as sonically, we are trying to fuse our eastern roots, cus we’re half Pakistani, a bit more tribal ???? tribal sounds, eastern melodies with electronic dance sound, makes me feel like that’s more authentic to us, it’s what we were raised on, we were raised on Bollywood music along with like pop and metal and indie dance. And that with our songwriting.
What’s your favorite part about touring?
Seeing fans. The current tour round right now, sweatbox tour has live bands, we have a drummer and guitarist and that live element is much more exciting for us.
Do you still predominantly do the live act stuff now, or are you more focusing on the DJ portion?
I think it’s pretty much split evenly, because on this tour every night is a double header. Live show after, we still DJ the live show, every show is DJing but the live elements from the guitarist, drummer, singing is what sets that apart from an after party set that is just a DJ set. Like tonight in Vegas will just be a DJ set. So it’s pretty much 50/50.
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