On the Rise
mai.la

“We didn’t go to school together. We don’t disclose exactly how we met.” Cait Cole grins into the lens of her laptop from the LA home where she’s locked down. We’re catching up mid-global pandemic as mai.la’s plans for a live residency in their adoptive hometown dissolve. On another screen Katie Moore crouches into her phone. The duo’s history is a patchy tapestry of mystery, artistry, and career common-sense. The duo grew up in Dayton, Ohio, a “really good place for music in your teens,” Cole tells me. Having previously played in other bands, they began making music together under the name SONDAR, taken from a tumblr blog, however nothing made it online.

Cole moved to Nashville at eighteen for personal reasons, and convinced Moore to drop out of college and join her. “I was like, let’s go!” Moore laughs. Once settled in Tennessee they released first track “Singlewave” onto Soundcloud and watched as it grew. A romantic swathe of delicate vocals, crushing synthetic sounds and smartly produced dynamics, it didn’t take long for people to start reaching out.

First single proper, “Ready” was released in 2016 across all streaming platforms, “Everyone was like, you need to put it on a streaming network that’s a real thing. I was like, I don’t know how to do that,” laughs Cole. However, she figured it out and the track blew up, amassing more streams and attention for the duo. “Things moved quickly so we actually stayed for another two years in Nashville after that because we had so many people hitting us up like, what’s next, what’s next?” Cole continues. “But we didn’t think about it like that. We just made the song and put it out and we were just releasing things as we wanted. It wasn’t manufactured.”

But the industry attention was unrelenting. “Honestly, it damaged us in a way,” admits Cole, “Because we ended up making a whole album just super quick, hastily. We’re never going to put out that album.” Moore nods, “We learned a lot”.

Thankfully, one of the many emails they received was from Harrison Mills of ODESZA who runs the label Foreign Family Collective. “He was like, hey - I think that this is really special and I’m Harrison from ODESZA, and we were like, what?!” laughs Cole. “So I sent him the little folder of songs that we were starting to work on, a lot of them are on blush now. Basically he was really cool and patient, and was just like, I get it and how long it takes to get the process going, and we didn’t end up putting out something for another two years. He was just letting us get the space. He still was cool with it, there was no rush, there was no pressure. It was just, I respect what you’re doing - and that’s still how they operate too. When you have something you’re proud of, let us know.”

Released in the autumn of last year, blush is the sound of mai.la finding their footing. Confident in its production and song construction, it’s evocative and playful, experimenting with audacious tricks and steely sentiment. Tracks like “maybe ୧(ಠ益ಠ)୨” are bombastic chart gems you could hear booming from a car stereo in summer, while ep closer “easily” treads a subtle path of Purity Ring level pop experimentation. It’s the sound of mai.la evolving from their Soundcloud SONDAR roots, maturing through a name change, industry experience and a move to LA.

And while Nashville may not have been a base for pop progression, it did introduce the duo to some kindred spirits in Aaron Harmon and Jordan Reyes of Owsla-signed Basecamp. “They were the only other group really doing anything cool out there,” explains Cole. “We linked up and we just had so much musical chemistry that we worked back and forth on pretty much anything that came our way and it just turned out that being in a studio with them was so inspiring to us.”

Working together on the blush EP, they employed a ‘no no’s’ policy. “Like, nobody said no to an idea” explains Cole, “You just kept adding and adding and adding and adding, and by the end of it, the session file, I think we had like over a hundred channels.”

“They were full.” laughs Moore.

“We were finding things that we didn’t even like,” Cole continues. “We did like a drum circle on one of them and then we layered the drum circle like, six times. Why?!”

Now the more refined version of blush has been released to the online wilds for six months, how have mai.la found the reaction from fans? “I think it’s definitely a good stepping stone into more of the direction we’re going now. I think everyone really liked it that I would have wanted to like it,” smiles Cole. “Some people definitely thought it was a little weird, but that’s kinda good, you know what I mean? Just - who’s with us?! It’s interesting because we didn’t know this really at the time, but with the two songs that we had put out we’d built a palette that was much more dream-pop, and that was unintentional. So as we put this out we’re like, oh that’s what you wanted but this is what we do, and luckily most of our fans recognised that quickly.”

Having moved to LA nearly two years ago, the duo plan to keep working with their Basecamp brothers. “We work on our own a lot more now that we have access to studios and stuff too, but we’ll definitely continue working with them” affirms Cole.

And in this period of enforced lockdown how are they spending their time? “Actually probably be working on ep two” smiles Cole. “It’s in the works, outwardly in the works,” confirms Moore, as Cole continues, “It’s pretty much about the same, making music in the studio. Trying not to think about the end of the world is the only difference.”