Treefoil: Alex Turner, Max DiBella, Keloe Sefo

How can fans access your music?

DiBella: Our music is accessible on essentially all the major streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Tidal,
Deezer, Google Music, etc. The only service I know of that we aren’t accessible from is SoundCloud.

How did each of you get your start in music?

DiBella: I started playing drums when I was 8 (years old). I took some lessons early on, but I’m mostly self-taught. I didn’t have any specific reasons for choosing drums. I just thought they seemed interesting, so I tried it out.

Turner: I (started playing the) guitar when I was 7 (years old). The Jonas Brothers really rubbed me the right way, and since I’ve enjoyed (playing) the guitar.

Sefo: I started playing guitar maybe in fifth grade and then started taking lessons. I decided that bass was what I want to do most.

What genre of music do you perform?

Turner: I guess we fit loosely into the indie rock genre, leaning more towards pop, surf, and folk sounds mixed together.

What artists influence your band?

DiBella: I think, for the most part, we like and appreciate a lot of the same music. We certainly take quite a bit of influence from The Beach Boys as well as The Beatles. (There are) others as well, but these are the most direct and obvious.

Turner: Bands that influence us would be the Beach Boys, Kenny Sasaki and the Tiki Boys: ‘60s pop, to put it simply.

As a band, how have you grown musically?

DiBella: We’ve definitely grown towards developing our own sound. We’ve begun to love the combination of beachy guitar tones, open drum sounds, slide guitars (when recording), among other instrument choices.

What is your favorite thing about performing for people?

DiBella: My favorite part about performing would have to be the satisfaction of letting my hard work pay off. In my opinion, the whole point of making music is to share it with others. I feel like performing is the most direct way of achieving that.

Sefo: I love performing because I just love having fun and sharing good music with people.

Vennola: Ben Kusel, Brooks Morales, Nick Karn, Caleb Russell

When did you all meet and when did you start the band?

Kusel: It kind of originated with a different band called Rotten Apples with me and Caleb. We met in like fourth grade. I knew how to play bass, he knew how to play the violin so we (thought) that’d be a good band.

Russell: (Ben and I) have been in an unofficial band since fourth grade. We would get together at our house and we’d just record songs off the top of our heads. It was so bad. I only knew like two chords. We were called Rotten Apples. Then around freshman year, we got Nick Karn.

What genre of music do you perform?

Kusel: Each of our songs is a little different. We have one song called ‘Nothing is Easy,’ which is probably the best song and at its very core seems slow and a little bit jazzy. (Our songs go) around rock or alternative.

Where do you find inspiration for your music?

Russell: We’re all just really big music nerds. We can go off on tangents talking about albums and classics. For us, it’s really about making the final product. When I’m done with the album, it’s just like something new in the world.

Karn: It’s very inspiring to see other musicians in the area. We’ve played shows with them before and seeing how good they are, we feel inferior as a competitor. Even in saying that, it will kinda get me down for a minute, but it motivates me in a way to be the best that I think we can be. I think it motivates me to be like, “what do we need to do to be better?”