Kate Hinds: This is All Of It. I'm Kate Hinds, filling in for Alison Stewart. No, that's not the usual show jingle. It's a song from A La Sala, the latest album from the band Khruangbin, who were recently nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist. It's kind of an ironic nomination that's been a long time coming. The Texas trio has been performing together for more than a decade. They've released four studio albums along with collaborations from artists like Leon Bridges and Childish Gambino. They've also sold out Radio City twice.

Now, they're finally getting their due from the Recording Academy, and we've got all three members of Khruangbin here with us. Laura Lee, Mark Speer, and DJ Johnson. Here's my conversation with Khruangbin. Laura, A La Sala is your fourth studio album and you guys have been releasing music for a decade. How are you handling the idea of being called newcomers to the music industry?

Laura Lee: I've had to think about this because it's come up a few times, but I sort of think when does an artist become an artist anyway? Sort of like, what is the starting point? In that sense, it's just new to whoever decides it's new. If you discovered it yesterday, it's new to you. I love plenty of old albums that are new to me, so I'm glad that we still feel new, I guess.

Kate Hinds: Mark, have you felt like you've had to reintroduce yourself in some way after this nomination?

Mark Speer: No, I consider this to be kind of an interesting nomination. I'll take it. In no way do I feel like a new artist in this game.

Kate Hinds: After a decade together.

Mark Speer: Yes, I know.

Kate Hinds: Right. A La Sala is a Spanish title. There are other songs with Spanish titles, and then there's English, there's French, there's Portuguese. How do you think of language in this way? What makes you want to use foreign languages in your naming?

Laura Lee: I think it feels like language is a part of our creative process now. It started with Spanish because it's a language that I speak a little bit of, and we all listen to music in other languages and not only appreciate the ability to listen to songs where you don't necessarily know what they're talking about, but we also appreciate a non-native speaker pronunciation of different languages. There's something really beautiful and naive about that. I think we weren't afraid to dig in to that. Mark, you could have other feelings about this, I'm sure.

Mark Speer: I think the first record was mainly instrumental, aside from some songs that were in English. Because of that, I feel like it had access to more people because there was no language barrier. People could appreciate what it was, no matter what language you spoke. As we started to add more words, I didn't want the words to become a language barrier, to become a barrier to the music spreading to the people who want to hear it.

I feel like the more you can add, the more different words you can add that are familiar with to another listener, the better instead of just being an instrumental band and letting the music talk for itself, just tossing in some familiar phrases and some familiar words that we picked up along the way from different friends across the world.

Kate Hinds: The album begins with some nature sounds, and they're especially obvious in the transition between the first track and the second. I want to play a clip from that part of the album. We're going to listen now to Fifteen Fifty-Three and the transition into May Ninth.

[MUSIC - Khruangbin: Fifteen Fifty-Three and May Ninth]

Waiting for May to come

Hoping for the rain

Kate Hinds: I heard birds. How and where did you capture those sounds, Mark?

Mark Speer: All the sounds are recorded by us.

Kate Hinds: Really?

Mark Speer: Yes, yes, yes. We go-- I mean, probably what you're hearing, like I said, because there's the Zoom thing, I don't really know exactly what you heard, but I'm pretty sure that all those sounds were recorded actually at the farm, at the barn where we record most of our stuff. We actually didn't get to record this record at the barn.

Kate Hinds: Yes, this was the first one you hadn't recorded at the barn, right?

Mark Speer: That's true, yes. We had to do things to kind of bring the barn to us. Mordecai, our last studio record, did not have any of the field recordings on it, but every other record that we put out do, and I wanted to kind of get back to that because I really, really like that.

Kate Hinds: What does it do for you?

Mark Speer: Well, we don't really like recording in studio environments because of how quiet it is. It's unnaturally quiet, and so you feel the need to fill up every space with a note or something. When you record out in the barn, there is no actual quiet. I mean, it's quiet, but there's always the wind or the rustling of the grass or some birds or some bugs or something. There's always something happening.

I really liked having that. When we were recording this record, we actually had a feed into our headphones that was just field recordings that we had made to kind of put us at home, so to speak, right? A lot of that stuff ended up being on the record as transitional moments. I think it really puts the music in a place and helps the listener find a place for themselves inside of that.

Kate Hinds: Why did you decide to not record this album at the barn?

Laura Lee: That was semi on me. I was eight months pregnant, and I just felt more comfortable being close to all of the things that a city provides. The barn is sort of in the middle of nowhere, and logistically, it just made more sense.

Kate Hinds: Mark, you produced this album. What is something that sounds different on this album because it wasn't produced and recorded at the barn?

Mark Speer: To me, it sounds very similar to the first record, sonically, or the second record even. It's more up to me about how we compose the songs. I think there's just more things going on and more through composition and more chances taken and more sounds explored. Even if it's just us three, this is the first record, actually, that it is just us three. There's no guests, there's no extra folks. It's just us. There is a level of intimacy that is inherent in the project.

Kate Hinds: I want to talk about that, but I want to get to play another song right now. Let's listen to Pon Pón, and I'd love one of you, maybe DJ, to tell me something about this track that you want someone to listen for.

DJ Johnson: Yes. The counting at the end of the song came about because I was trying to do, I guess, my interpretation of what a drum solo would be, even though I don't consider myself a drum soloist or even a drummer at this point. I had Laura Lee kind of counting throughout the process so that I could keep time. When we listened to the playback, once we muted her counting, we kind of missed it. We decided to keep it in, but twisted by making the counting in different languages.

Kate Hinds: Okay, let's listen to Pon Pón.

[MUSIC - Khruangbin: Pon Pón]

Kate Hinds: That was the song Pon Pón. It is off of Khruangbin's latest album called A La Sala. DJ, I want to get back to something you just said about not considering yourself a drummer. We went back to your Tiny Desk concert video from 2018 and noticed a theme in the comments, and I'll just read a few of them. "This drummer has never been in the wrong place at the wrong time. This drummer tells the sun exactly when to rise every morning. Time is a construct, and this drummer constructed it. I come back to this video from time to time to set up my watch."

That's just a sampling of it. What made you say you don't consider yourself a drummer? It seems pretty clear you have a strong sense of rhythm.

DJ Johnson: I'm very flattered that common thread has made it into Internet meme culture. As far as timing, say, I think if people actually lined up what I'm actually doing to an actual metronome, it fluctuates just like any other human being. My goal is to if I start a song a certain way or at a certain tempo, I just want to finish in the same area or ballpark. I do spend time working very hard at that, but it's by no means perfect at all. Like I said, I am flattered by what it's become.

Kate Hinds: I'm speaking with Laura Lee, Mark Speer, and DJ Johnson. They're the trio behind the band Khruangbin. Their latest album is called A La Sala. Thanks so much for joining us. I want to keep talking about something that you mentioned, Mark, a little earlier that this is the first album where it's only the three of you and you're not working with collaborators and you've collaborated in the past with singer Vieux Farka Touré, Leon Bridges, you've done songs with Childish Gambino. Why was it only the three of you this time?

Mark Speer: I do enjoy collaborating with different artists. The downside of that is that now you have to deal with other people's schedules and not just the actual artist schedule, but their handlers, companies, management, agents, and all this kind of stuff down the line. We just didn't want to deal with any of that. We just wanted it just be us. This record was not the easiest record to make either. In those cases, sometimes it's best if we just buckle down and get to it.

Kate Hinds: You kind of pared away the extraneous noise and were able to--

Mark Speer: Exactly, yes.

Kate Hinds: How did that change the dynamic between the three of you? Did that seem to affect lasting change? How did you come out of that?

Mark Speer: I think it felt very natural and comfortable to me.

Laura Lee: I think we're closer than ever right now. I think that happens with every passing moment that you spend together, but certainly, the album making process is always challenging. You come out the other side with rose tinted glasses because you've made this thing that now becomes this sort of living, breathing, being all onto its own that other people listen to and have attachments to. The album is this beautiful thing that lives forever, but the actual experience making is hard.

There are magical moments in between, but it's challenging. Every time I'm inside of it, I'm like, "Oh, yes, I forgot about this," because the next time it's time to write, I'm so excited. I can't wait to go back to the studio. I can't wait to write with you guys. Then it's like, "Oh, no." It's family. That's the dynamics of being in a band. It's a beautiful thing.

Kate Hinds: Well, let's listen to another song. We've been talking about the three of you as a trio, so let's play the song Three From Two.

[MUSIC - Khruangbin: Three From Two]

Kate Hinds: What's behind the name of this song?

Mark Speer: There's a special moment when a man and a woman love each other. When the math becomes where you get three things out of two things.

Kate Hinds: Sometimes when men-- And I love this. Laura, talking earlier about the pain of making a record, there were obvious allusions to childbirth. That sounds a little bit like what you're talking about now.

Mark Speer: That's precisely what I'm talking about.

Kate Hinds: Look, I got the illusion.

Mark Speer: Laura was eight months pregnant.

Laura Lee: Yes. I was hesitant to put my own experience, my personal experience onto the record because the record is all three of our experiences. They both reminded me that that's part of who we are, incorporating each of us. Motherhood is giant. It's profound. I couldn't escape how much it impacted this session for me. It was a really-- That song, to me, is instrumental storytelling like that I love between us. That's what it felt like to me.

Kate Hinds: On this album, the songs feel a little bit more laid back than on previous albums. How did that change what you needed to focus on? Or how did it open up what you could focus on? I realize that sounds a little nebulous, but Laura, you talking about going into this pregnant. What was the feel you were going for when you were recording?

Laura Lee: There's really not an intention of feeling. We really kind of go in and throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. There were certainly more up-tempo songs that were thrown around during the session, but this is what that album or that session became. The first song that we knew was going to make the record was the last song on the record called Le Petit Gris. Because we knew that song was going to be on the record, the rest of the songs had to be able to fit that one. It wasn't our party record.

Kate Hinds: What do you think of it as?

Mark Speer: It's the room record. It's the record you play in the room.

Kate Hinds: Your living room.

Mark Speer: Yes. It's that. It should be both. My intention in this is it should be both very intimate, cozy, comfortable, and familiar, but also kind of surreal in this way. That's reflected in the album art that we made, where it's essentially a view from an interior of a room. What you're seeing outside is something that you would see from about 10 to 30,000 feet up. It's a flying room, which itself is pretty surreal.

Kate Hinds: I know we have to leave it there for time, but I just wanted to quickly ask. The other day you announced a run of shows in Texas next year that you're calling Homecoming Dance. What do you like about playing in Texas?

DJ Johnson: I love Texas. Texas is home. There's no place like it. I'm very excited to come home to our home state and also our home city included in that, and plan for all our family and friends.

Kate Hinds: I've been speaking with Laura Lee, Mark Speer, and DJ Johnson from the band Khruangbin. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Laura Lee: Thank you.

DJ Johnson: Thank you.

Mark Speer: Thank you.

Kate Hinds: I really appreciate it. Let's go out on the song Le Petit Gris.

[MUSIC - Khruangbin: Le Petit Gris]

Kate Hinds: That was Khruangbin with Le Petit Gris from their latest album A La Sala. The band is nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist. That's All Of It. I'm Kate Hinds, in for Alison Stewart. Alison will be back on Monday and she'll be talking holiday etiquette, how to find an organization to volunteer for, and wants to know what you are grateful for this year. Thanks for listening. We're grateful for you. Alison will meet you back here next time. Have a great weekend and happy winter solstice.