Hailing from Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, indie rockers Raised on TV are sharing their new EP, Around the Sun. While the official release date is Friday, September 30, you can check out the new project premiering today at New Noise.
Brothers Keaton Rogers and Kacey Greenwood formed the band in 2016, now including keyboardist and bassist Chris Clark. Raised on TV embraced the wildly varying and fun nature that comes with being a member of an indie rock band—One night, you might be on a huge festival stage; the next, you might be playing an intimate house show.
Their first album, Season 1, released in 2017 charted on the NACC Top 200 as one of the few albums from unsigned bands to do so. The album was recorded in just three days, mostly with everyone playing in the same room, and the lead single, “Big Sur,” helped to establish the band’s dreamy, California rock sound.
The band’s second album, Season 2, was a more polished effort, mostly recorded at Dave Grohl’s 505 studio in Los Angeles. The first single, “Caroline,” also got picked up by a number of Spotify editorial playlists.
Raised on TV used the pandemic to focus on recording, carrying on to release a number of singles and music videos throughout 2021 and dropping their third studio album, Fernando, toward the end of the year.
The band are back to touring while putting their finishing touches on their fourth studio album, set for release in early 2023. Fortunately, Around the Sun is the perfect offering for listeners and fans in the meantime.
Rogers opens up about the EP:
“Both of these songs were written in a way that was a departure from previous Raised on TV material. Normally, when I’m writing a song, I sit down with an acoustic guitar and just crank something out. It’s what I’ve always known. It’s the ‘old-school’ way. For this album, and these songs in particular, I wanted to try something different. So, I started in the studio and experimented with guitar and keyboard sounds, making a track, and layering on top of it to see where it would take us. I wrote the lyrics while driving in my car and blasting the tracks. It was definitely cool to mix up the approach, and I think it took us somewhere that’s a little different.
“As far as the lyrics go, ‘Around the Sun’ is about all the work that goes into keeping a band afloat and how you can’t give up. The lyric “trade this lonely room for highway lights” in the song is simply about missing being on tour, which wasn’t an option during quarantine when I was writing the song. ‘Strangers in Pictures’ references the idea that everyone is a stranger in someone else’s family pictures, and it’s something that unites us all in this weird, unspoken, sort of way. It’s just another way we’re all connected, and there’s gotta be something to that, whether we see it or not.”