Despite being a full-fledged indie rock icon , Deal moved back to her Midwest hometown of Dayton, Ohio, in 2003 to help care for her mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s. Her twin sister and bandmate, Kelley Deal, lives just down the road from her. But it’s Kim’s basement that doubles as Breeders HQ, and it seems like right now she wouldn’t want it any other way. Because after so many years of uncertainty, the Breeders that everyone remembers are back, with their first new album in a decade.

The “magical” Deal family basement has served the band well over the years. “Back in the 90s, Jim [MacPherson, drummer] and I put insulation in the ceiling,” she says over the phone outside of a Starbucks. “The bass guitar is a bit of a problem, though. The long waves they generate can move through soil, so we have to watch our bass volume. People around here know we’re in a band. They don’t know much about it, but they’re pretty cool with us. But I would hate to wake up a kid so I can sing my song. Years ago, we did get a complaint, so we’ve tried to keep it down.”

That the Breeders rehearse in a basement isn’t just out of convenience. It’s also the only option they have living in Dayton.

“We were thinking of looking for a rehearsal space that we could rent because I don’t have a front-of-house PA,” she explains. “But there’s nothing like that here in Dayton. There’s not even a band rehearsal space here. There’s none of that. It’s either someone’s garage or basement.”

Dayton lacks many things, but it is where three-quarters of the band, not to mention their lo-fi juggernaut pals Guided By Voices, call home. Jim McPherson, whose spouse helps care for Mrs. Deal, spends his days working as a carpenter.

“Jim has been working all day in Clayton, Ohio, which is a 40-minute drive away,” Deal says. “After he works, he then comes over and rehearses. The key thing here is that the drummer lives in town, man! A drummer who lives in town is key. So Kelley, Jim, and I live in town, and Josephine [Wiggs, bassist] is in New York. She drives in every six weeks or so and stays for a week.”

Having all four members of the Breeders within a drive’s distance has been vital in keeping what is referred to as the “classic” lineup together – because there have been many Breeders over the years. At the peak of her time playing bass for Pixies, Deal co-founded the band in 1989 with Tanya Donelly of Throwing Muses just for some fun. Wiggs soon signed on to play bass, and they released a debut album, 1990’s Pod and the subsequent Safari EP. Not long after, Donelly left to form Belly. With the band membership in flux, it wasn’t until Kelley Deal and Jim McPherson joined that the Breeders really, ahem, made a splash.