Wallows Says "Trust" Built Debut Album 'Nothing Happens'

L.A-based alternative band Wallows is giving fans a look into the creative processes behind their debut full-length album, Nothing Happens.

In a new edition of Fender Sessions released via Fender's YouTube channel, band members Braeden Lemasters, Cole Preston and Dylan Minnette explore three tracks from their new album, "Are You Bored Yet?," "Ice Cold Pool" and "Remember When."

The trio has been playing music together since they were teens. They cite the trust of years of pre-Wallows friendship as a foundational element of their artistic evolution.

"To allow other people to sort of put their hands into what ... started with you, it is kind of a big thing to allow to happen as an artist," Minnette says of the band's collaborative process. "It is kind of hard to gain that kind of trust and comfort with people. It's weird; [when] you're creating something and it comes equally from three different places, like us, you've really got to trust each other."

Wallows surged in popularity in the spring of 2017 as fans of Netflix's 13 Reasons Why, in which Minnette stars, discovered the band's first single. But Wallows has backed up the hype with a string of subsequent releases, exploring 20-something disaffection and the challenges of navigating modern relationships.

Creatively, not much has changed since the band began gaining traction, according to Lemasters.

"The way we've written songs for years is like one of us can come up with a whole song ... write the whole thing, lyrics, melodies, bass lines, whatever," he says. "And there's also times when we just kind of sit on one part. Like I'll come up with a guitar part or Cole will or Dylan will. And then we'll bring it to each other and build it that way, which is how I prefer it right now. If I write something, I actually like to kind of weirdly save it and keep it in this kind of primitive state because I feel like all of our songs end up having an element of us in them. Like there's no Wallows song that would exist the way it does right now without the three of us."

Perhaps due to how privately Wallows has worked in the past, Minnette explains that it's hard for to him to comprehend how widely and how positively the music is being received.

"When we're on tour, it really puts it into perspective that it's real," he says. "When we're playing to a room that has like 1,500 people in it, singing every word of the songs, it's like, 'Oh, wait, people are actually listening to this!' This is the thing that people in the world are listening to and they're excited to come to this show, just like we're excited to go to shows..."

Wallows is currently on a mostly sold out North American tour. Get all the tour dates here.


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