When Whitney’s chief songwriting duo first met in 2011, they were both members of critical-darling rock bands. Max Kakacek was a guitarist for the now-dissolved garage-pop crew Smith Westerns, and Julien Ehrlich was the drummer for the dark psych outfit Unknown Mortal Orchestra. The Chicago-based pair became friends, started playing together, formed Whitney in 2015, and aspired to inhabit entirely different scenes than the ones they were used to. “We wanted to play Stagecoach,” Ehrlich explains over Skype from his friend’s apartment in Los Angeles, where the band is temporarily holed up working on its debut album. “lt’s the country version of Coachella. Their posters are the same, but instead of the palm tree, it’s a cowboy boot and a horse. Our agent was like, ‘I’m sorry, but there’s just no way. They only have, like, Garth Brooks—not you indie kids.’”

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According to Kakacek, the breakup of Smith Westerns was a key factor in Whitney’s formation. “I wasn’t involved with the songwriting,” he explains. “At the end, the last record had to be made; it was an obligation. For this project, it was important that we didn’t necessarily need to be making music together—it just happened.” Their style of rock definitely feels spontaneous—like an impulsive late-afternoon weed-smoking session. On “No Matter Where We Go,” the band’s gorgeous first-ever demo, Ehrlich’s stark falsetto cuts through rippled, rollicking riffs. The result is loosey-goosey and hopelessly soulful, something like a long-lost Neil Young bootleg.