From Goosetown Tavern to the Rug Room, DU band Friends On The Hill brings unmatched energy everywhere they go. The Indie folk band is made up of Ava Weiss on vox, Tim Crean on bass, Dylan Battersea on vox and guitar, Carson Jones on percussion and Julian Horne on guitar.

“Me and Carson met freshman year,” Battersea said. “He’s a pretty cool guy, and I met Ava in When the Sun Explodes, and we are now ‘rolling in the deep,’ as they say.”

While Crean has been a part of the group since the days of When the Sun Explodes, there has been a recent addition. Horne completed the ensemble this past month after recording with the group. As Battersea noted, he’s “nuts at guitar,” making the decision to add him an easy one.

When The Sun Explodes was a shoegaze band that Crean, Weiss and Battersea were a part of prior to Friends On The Hill. Although When The Sun Explodes disbanded, the group still brings in aspects of shoegaze to Friends On The Hill.

“We were a band for about a year and now we’re a new band,” said Weiss. “Really it was just different ideas about where we wanted to go. No animosity, I think some of us wanted to take the band in a softer direction, and [others] wanted to keep this heavy shoegaze-y attitude.”

Friends On The Hill takes a softer approach to shoegaze music. But don’t be fooled, the band still has some “crust” as described by Battersea. Through heavy highs and mellow times, Friends On The Hill combines the musical background of each member to create a unique sound.

“I think it’s definitely a reflection of all of our music tastes and how it comes together,” said Jones. “Dylan is the main songwriter, but we all contribute parts that reflect the types of music that we like and what we want to actually listen to by ourselves.”

This group of friends mesh well together sonically, regardless of their differing taste in music. Taking inspiration from Nirvana, Car Seat Headrest, and Pinegrove, Friends On The Hill blends different elements of their music to create an incredibly unique sound.

“I love countermelody. I think all the time about countermelody,” Battersea continued on, talking about using dynamic structures in music to pique an audience’s interest. “It’s [the] dynamics and then like knowing where to blend that. It just takes time with songwriting and stuff.”

“Even just that change in tempo catches people’s attention, and it locks them in instead of just smashing them the entire time,” Jones agreed.

Not only is Friends On The Hill interesting musically, the story behind their name is equally as riveting as their musical expertise.

“There’s this podcast called the Telepathy Tapes, and it’s about children with autism who are nonverbal savants,” explained Battersea. “So the kind of savants they are basically gifts them this supernatural telepathic ability.”

Battersea continued to explain how these children use telepathic abilities to describe the world as though they were looking through somebody else’s eyes. And just when this “Stranger Things” -esque story couldn’t get any more fascinating, Battersea happily made things stranger.

“So, the hill is basically this place… they explain it like there’s this metaphysical plane of existence called the hill where all of these other savants basically meet and share information with each other,” Battersea continued. ‘Friends On The Hill’ is basically just a play on this metaphysical plane of existence where communication is achieved without actually sharing anything verbally.” 

Friends On The Hill is recording an EP and various singles, which will be available on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music sometime in the near future. The band is recording through the Lamont School of Music’s Recording Studio. 

In the meantime, Friends On The Hill will keep on playing shows, so students should keep their eyes and ears peeled for more from this group.