Sleigh Bells are mutating and it sounds great.





Their new EP, Kid Kruschev, is something of an anomaly in their catalog. Clocking in at a tidy 21 minutes, it is both the shortest and most left-turn record the duo have ever made. Though certainly not lacking in the trademark ear-bludgeoning hooks that Sleigh Bells are well known for, it nevertheless represents a significant departure from everything else they've done before this. Third track "Rainmaker" forgoes the bands hallmark bombastic percussion in favor of an instantly recognizable drum break found on countless classic 90s hip-hop tracks.





Elsewhere, Kid Kruschev finds Sleigh Bells deftly introducing new layers of electronics into their compositions. "Florida Thunderstorm," the penultimate song on the record, is an improbable blend of campfire country ballad, haunting synths, and the audible sound of insects - a nearly uncharacterizable high water mark that mines exciting new sonic territory for the group.





With a show coming up at Mohawk on February 3rd, we spoke to frontwoman Alexis Krauss about her least favorite song from Ziggy Stardust, her love for sweet potatoes, the time she hallucinated and thought she was going to die from smoking weed at a party, and more.







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Do512: What memory pops into your mind when you think of Austin, Texas?





Sleigh Bells: There's been so many because not only have we played our own shows there, but we've been to a lot of South by Southwests. I guess we did our first South by in 2011, so I have memories as diverse as the first time we played South By, we made the mistake of playing like seven shows in a day, which was complete chaos. We were running all of our tracks off of an iPod because we didn't know what the fuck we were doing, and then we had issues with the iPod; the iPod started freezing. So, then we switched to a laptop, but it was the wrong laptop program to be using, and so we were in the middle of an NPR showcase, and it was like one of the biggest shows we'd played and the laptop just froze. Derek was trying to troubleshoot and I had to spend like ten minutes just literally making shit up and trying to talk, and just keep the audience from walking out on us. That was kind of traumatic, but a really good learning experience.





Every time I'm there I walk up the trail. I bring my dog a lot with me on tour and we'll walk up the trail that goes to Barton Springs, where the runoff is. We'll spend hours hanging out there. The last time I was there I took her standup paddleboarding. I have amazing memories of just cruising around on the water on a paddleboard with my dog in Austin and then eating amazing vegan food at Arlo's. I have so many memories, I could go on and on.





What do you always order if you see it on a restaurant menu?





Sleigh Bells: Anything with sweet potatoes. Sweet potato burritos, sweet potato hash, roasted sweet potato, baked sweet potato... I'm a big fan of sweet potatoes.



That was like, a Forrest Gump-level amount of ways to prepare sweet potatoes. What was your last 'Holy shit, that was amazing,' meal?





Sleigh Bells: I was just out in Utah for a week; I'm working on a project to protect public land and Bears Ears there. So I had this unreal experience at this little restaurant in the middle of nowhere in a town called Bluff, Utah. I sat down with this whole table of Native American tribal leaders and we had this whole meal. I'm a vegetarian and I've been trying to eat more vegan now than ever, so really the only thing I could eat was this thing called a Navajo Taco, which is this amazing thick fry-bread. It's kind of like a naan, but it's fried so it has this chewiness and crispiness. It's open-faced and layered with beans, and vegetables and avocado. It was the perfect food and I got to eat it with all these Native American leaders and sing a song that I had written for them. That was a pretty epic meal, I don't think anything is going to beat that for a while.





What's the worst party you've ever been to?





Sleigh Bell: I'm actually thinking about getting a shirt that says "I hate parties." I love people and I performing and being out and seeing live music, but I don't know, parties are just not my thing. One time, when I was in college, I had just spent a month living in Oaxaca studying Spanish and visiting family and my boyfriend at the time picked me up from the airport and was like, "Let's go to this party!" It was a friend from high school, so we went, and I hadn't smoked weed in a long time... I don't know if it had something to do with me living in Oaxaca and living at a higher elevation or being on the plane or that I'm just a lightweight with everything, but I got really stoned. I got stoned to the point where I thought I was dying at this party. I locked myself in the bedroom with this kid I went to high school with and hadn't seen in years and was literally hallucinating - convinced I was dying. That was a pretty shitty party.









Photo Credit: Alexis Krauss Instagram





Describe your favorite shirt.





Sleigh Bells: I'm wearing it right now. I wear it every day and it's kind of a problem. It's a Violent Femmes shirt that's been worn to the point where the screenprint paint is cracked. It's the black and white shot of them with the checkerboard pattern and it's really soft and full of holes. I just love it. I mean, I love the Violent Femmes. It just fits so well, you know? Like an old, classic rock t-shirt.





What's the best compliment you've received?





Sleigh Bells: That's a tough one. I'd probably have to go with something that Sleigh Bells fans say to me, 'cause it's always really important to me to spend time after the show talking and hanging out with fans. A lot of times after I perform I won't speak, you know, I'll go on vocal rest. But I'll still go out and write stuff on my hand like, "Hey! I can't talk, but I'll take a photo with you!" So, Sleigh Bells fans will say stuff like, "Oh my God, you're such a maniac on stage. I thought you were going to bite my head off, but you're actually a really nice person!" That's a nice compliment: that you can be one thing on stage, but when it comes down to having a conversation you're pretty down to earth and a good person.





Have you ever experienced a 'glitch in the Matrix' moment? In other words, something that seemed unexplainable to you?





Sleigh Bells: This sounds kind of silly, but I always think about Derek and I meeting as a really serendipitous thing. I think about it constantly, that it would have been so easy for us to have not met. It's one thing if you meet someone in the context of being a friend of the family, or the friend of a friend, or that we went to college together or you know, even if we hadn't met that day we would've met down the line. But with Derek and I, there was none of that. He was my waiter in a restaurant and he had just moved from another state. If I had not been in the restaurant that night with the particular person I was with that night, my mother - who has a way of engaging people in conversation like no one else. There were all these variables, and it was the one and only time we ever went to that restaurant... So, I think about that constantly. My life could have been so different. I'm not really like a believer in fate, the supernatural, or the divine, but that moment comes pretty close to be a total mind fuck that I can't explain.





There have also been times when I've felt someone come up behind me and blow in my ear, but then I turn around and no ones there. So that's happened, too.





That's why you never ditch mom! Did you have a New Year's resolution?





Sleigh Bells: Not specifically. Without getting super personal, there's a lot of stuff going on in my private life that's changing. I think this year is really just about going with it. Letting the tidal wave take you and not trying to fight it. That can be personally, musically, creatively. Just really opening myself, trying things, and letting things go that I thought defined me in the past. It's really big but being in it for the journey and not the destination, which sounds cliché as fuck, but it's true.





Photo Credit: Sloan Laurits





If you had to, what song would you remove from your favorite album?





Sleigh Bells: I'm going to pull up the Ziggy Stardust tracklisting, which is definitely my favorite album of all time. The question is, whether there's a song I would actually remove..? Probably "Starman," I mean, I love it, but I think I'm more inclined to skip it over any of the other ones.





Has it been replayed too many times?





Sleigh Bells: Maybe, yeah. Look, you said favorite album so that's definitely my favorite. I'd much rather listen to "Starman" than a lot of other songs in the world, but it's never moved me like some of the others on there. Sorry, Bowie. You guys made me do it.





As time has gone by, what is something you've lost interest in?





Sleigh Bells: Honestly, this is a really obvious one but, watching TV. I was never a big consumer of TV, but I do have favorite shows. I do love Game of Thrones, but I spend a lot less time watching Netflix or HBO than I do doing shit outside. I'm almost to the point where I could actually live without a TV, and I've thought about that. I still like going to the movies, you know, actually going out to a theater and seeing a film. With TV, though, I'm less and less interested. Even though there's so much great TV out there. So maybe I'll just have a TV once every couple months, so I can binge-watch some shit like Stranger Things.





Who do you think deserves to sit on the Iron Throne?





Sleigh Bells: Oh man, Jon Snow can do no wrong in my eyes and in my heart. If I have to pick one, I gotta go with him.





If someone were writing the Sleigh Bells biography right now, what would this chapter be called?





Sleigh Bells: The "Torn Clean" chapter, which is the name of our label that we started to release Jessica Rabbit, and now Kid Kruschev. Everything that's happened since "Torn Clean" has sort of had its own identity and come from a different place. A place of more autonomy and rethinking what the band can be and what it has to or should be.











