On an oddly gloomy day in Los Angeles, art-rock shoegaze trio Julie wants me to guess their star signs. Taurus for Dillon, I guess. Or Leo for Alex? I’m wrong on all but 21-year-old singer/guitarist Keyan Pourzand’s sun in Capricorn, fitting for the meticulous and sensitive musician. Drummer Dillon Lee, 22, is another earth sign in Virgo, and singer/bassist Alex Brady, 22, evens out the group with her placement in Scorpio. A curious assembly of signs that are both suspicious and moody yet determined and pragmatic, but all ferociously creative.
Given their astrological combination, it should be no surprise then that the band might appear quite intense. On Instagram they seem mysterious and brooding. But as we sit on the floor of a massive gray warehouse in downtown LA where they write and practice their sweetly chaotic, buzzy songs, the vibe is welcoming and warm.
They’ve just returned from their first European tour and have spent the day checking their equipment for damage after the long journey. Amidst amps, myriad guitars, and boxes of merch, they glance out the windows that overlook the 6th street bridge and drop back into conversation. Their dynamic feels less like a group of musicians, and even more than friends; Julie is a family unit. “We are literally a family for the good parts and the bad,” Pourzand tells Teen Vogue. “We argue all the time. But we also get over it very quickly.” Brady jokingly interjects about their recent European jaunt, “We didn't even hate each other after.” Lee chimes in, “I'm so truly myself when I'm around them.”
Julie’s kinship sparked when Lee and Pourzand met at El Toro High School in Lake Forest, a suburb in Orange County, California. Pourzand had grown up around mostly Middle Eastern music; Lee spent his childhood overlooking the '90s tunes his mom enjoyed, only later realizing she had great taste. The two bonded as they discovered ‘90s alternative rock bands like My Bloody Valentine and Henry’s Dress for the first time, via Reddit forums and Youtube channels. Soon, they began writing music as a duo, later enlisting Brady (who they would see out at house shows) on bass and officially forming Julie in 2020. “I didn't know Keyan yet, but I knew Dillon because he dressed really cool,” Brady reminisces on her first impressions of meeting the two in the local music scene.
They’d congregate at local shows at Long Beach pizza parlor DiPiazza's and catch touring acts at venues like The Observatory in Santa Ana. Though they were born out of a scene that included bands like art-rock sibling duo The Garden, Julie tells me they never fully integrated or fit in, since they really took off as musical collaborators when COVID hit. Not much later, both Pourzand and Brady enrolled at the Southern California Institute for Architecture and moved to Los Angeles, with Lee following soon after, further removing them from those nascent OC indie rock environs.
It’s fitting that Julie cultivated their sound and aesthetic during a time of isolation, unease, and massive cultural upheaval. They are not afraid to lean into the bleakness of life. Julie’s first single, “Flutter,” came out in April 2020 and is a sludgy esoteric dirge about yearning for an estranged lover. Through the blast of heavy distorted bass and guitar feedback, Pourzand sings, “I'm draped in lead, I'm heavy as a slug/Drag the body under the rug.” It’s veiled, abstract and impressionistic, which is something the band masters with eerie aplomb. “I like to think of the words themselves as a paint brush, and we’re using terms not literally, but the surrounding feeling around them,” Pourzand explains. Brady adds about their hair-raising imagery, “It allows us to occupy these ideas and spaces within ourselves that we would never get to occupy in our daily lives. We like the feeling it evokes within us.”
It appears their fans connect to those shadowy feelings, as the nightmarish track is their most listened to on Spotify with over 25 million streams. But Julie seems more preoccupied with making sure they enjoy their music. “Doing what we do with more intensity makes it feel more satisfying, and we're always trying to [be satisfied],” Pourzand says. Later Brady reinforces this idea about some of their noisy and intense sonic moments: “It's self-indulgent,” she laughs.
What Julie does best is evoke a feeling of foreboding nostalgia, and their 2021 Pushing Daisies EP, a collection of noise pop songs about teenage self destruction, damaged relationships, and love’s innocence, is their mission statement. On “Skipping Tiles,” Pourzand sings, “Honey bee, why are you so sweet? What do you see inside, why don't you eat me alive?,” turning a seemingly twee sentiment into horror movie fodder. “Lochness,” meanwhile, juxtaposes childlike nostalgia with a sinister undertone. Brady sings of bloody feet and playfully doing cartwheels on the sidewalk amidst atonal guitar lines. She divulges the band's proclivity for this unique blend of themes and tones: “[We] try to mesh these things that are sweet and soft with an unsettling feeling.”
Julie’s candy-coated yet dreary sonic atmosphere has spilled over into their visual world, as the band designs all of their flyers, merch, and cover art. “A lot of it is collaged pieces of paper snippets that I had rummaged from my grandma's old weathered notes and travel diaries,” says Lee about the Pushing Daisies cover art. The throughline across their releases is a recurring drawing of a raven-haired girl that feels very Emily the Strange meets manga. And although both Brady and Pourzand have since dropped out of architecture school to pursue the band full time, their art-school knowledge has served them well. “We have a set of rules that we do to make everything feel the same way for the aesthetic to be pushed so that it feels like a world that we're building,” Pourzand explains. Lee elaborates further, “We have a lot of discussions about the ideas and philosophy of what we want to make. We take the visual aspect just as seriously as making the music. It's always a three-way group decision.”
Art school seriousness aside, Julie has a sense of humor about themselves, citing Bruno Mars and silly Y2K pop as guilty pleasure jams. But there is an enigmatic and melancholy tone that the band has cultivated since its inception, especially via social media. Their austere IG grid is highly curated and ominous. On quick glance you see mostly grays and muted tones, amongst DIY flyers, internet ephemera, and abstract band photos. “We didn't post any [photos of] ourselves for the first year or two of the project. I don't know why,” Brady remembers. “We didn't have any photos that we felt we could post,” Lee reminds her. In a world where artists at all levels of notoriety are asked to be as transparent, accessible, and relatable as possible, Julie remains abstruse. Lee explains the band’s stance on being online, “It just feels like you're being berated by everything, so we actively try to do the opposite.”
The band’s slow roll out of singles and one EP over the course of the last three years is a testament to Julie’s close attention to detail and their democratic creative practice. “We would rather have no representation rather than be misrepresented,” Lee boldly affirms. They are in no rush to drop their album, though their new single “Catalogue” is the first glimpse into their full length they have been working on over the last year. The pummeling track is about “the never ending cycle of just wanting to get somewhere and never actually enjoying the process,” according to Brady. Pourzand adds on the transgressive track, “[it’s about] the cycle of longing, chasing or yearning for something. That state of in-between is a recurring theme in a lot of things we do.”
It’s fitting that a song about liminal spaces and dissatisfaction is our first peek into their much anticipated debut album. “It's taken a really long time to build [the album,] but we wouldn't have it any other way because we're getting to a point where we're feeling really good about each and every song,” says Lee. And although there is not a release date for their full length, the band is hitting the road this winter where you can catch Julie’s visceral live set. The North American tour includes the Tyler the Creator-curated Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival at Dodger Stadium. “In those moments when we're playing together, when we're playing our hardest, it feels like nothing else matters in the world,” Brady says. “Maybe it's not spirituality, but it's just living the music,” Pourzand interjects. “It feels like you're inside of it.”
Julie see their work and art as a band existing across different mediums. Maybe they'll put on a future group art show featuring pieces from all members of the band, or make more interesting hand-stitched merchandise. “We made a conscious decision to not only just be a band, but also an art collective,” Lee explains.
“We want to keep doing what we're doing,” Pourzand adds quietly, “but grander.”
