‘Stepping into the ethereal’ with Sunhills

Sunhills is a five-piece dream pop band made up of Drew Nicholson, vocals and rhythm guitar; Cameron Zitting, lead guitar and sound engineer; Sam Olson, drums; Leo Canaan, bass; and Nico Canaan, keys.

Q: How did you all come together as a band? 

Drew: Aside from Nico, we all met at a speed dating event at Sugar House Coffee way, way back — pre-COVID. We didn’t do super great or just didn’t really match up, and we were all just kind of standing in the parking lot and all became friends and realized that we all played music and started hanging out more — one of those movie things where you become friends with people the first time you meet. And then we got together and started making music and recording and playing shows. Leo and Nico are cousins, and Nico is also a musician and has their project, so they have been around the scene a lot. We were all big fans of their music, and they loved coming to see us play, so they joined us playing keys, and that’s been us ever since.

Q: What’s the story behind your band name?

Drew: I was trying to come up with band names for a long time and trying to figure out what felt right. I feel like music and a lot of art — but for some reason, music especially — takes you somewhere. It’s such a visual medium, even though it’s just sound. It clings on to memories that you have, and it clings on to people that you know. Songs will recall a certain smell or certain season, and the songs that we were making at the time felt really euphoric and warm. I just have this image of being in the car and it’s summertime, and you’re finally getting up this mountain and going down, and I feel like Sunhills feels like a place that you go in your mind. It just felt like a good fit, and it felt like it represented where the music could take you.

Q: What is the process for writing your music?

Drew: The way the process works usually for us is a song will start out just from me, so I’ll write the basis of the song, which is usually like the chord progression, the melody and the lyrics, and then I’ll either make kind of like a quick demo of it to send to everybody, and then we’ll work on it together, or we’ll just kind of go through it as we go in band practice. There’s a couple times that songs have come out just through jams, but I usually bring the foundation — kind of like the nugget — and then we extract it and build on it and change it a bunch.

Q: How would you describe your sound to someone who hasn’t heard your music before?   

Drew: Dream pop came so natural to us, and it felt like the next evolution of what Sunhills was going to be — really stepping into the ethereal. For our debut album, the one that just came out in September, we like to play a lot with contrast, and we like to play a lot with juxtaposition because I think it can make art even more powerful with contrast. In the album’s case, intimate lyrics that are talking really only to one person or very direct one-on-one type conversations or “daydream-esque” almost and really intimate vocals just surrounded by this kind of otherworldly space rock ethereal soundscape.

Q: You recently released an album in September. What was the creation process like for the album?

Drew: The album is called “Planetarium,” and the way it was created was we were experimenting a lot with a lot of different sounds and a lot of different techniques for recording and ways to make songs. I had just gone through a really bad breakup, and it was really all I could think about. I was just feeling so trapped and not like myself, and most of the songs in the album, I cried while writing. It felt kind of scary to work on them, right? Very vulnerable and kind of sappy, but to have a song that feels like that — surrounded by this atmosphere and soundscape that we were trying to make — felt really good. It was also our first attempt at making an album. We’d put out songs before, and this was just a whole other beast, and we really were not ready for it. We kind of severely underestimated what was going to be required and were also really trying to overcome our perfectionism. It took about three years to make that album, and it really did not need to take that long. It was just constantly re-recording, redoing everything.  We would have just kept working on it, but eventually, we were just like, “Okay, it’s time to be done.” The mixing process was brutal. We did that ourselves. Cam led the mixing process. It was a brutal process to make that album. I still have no idea how it got done.

Q: Are there any songs you’re especially excited to play live? 

Drew: We’re going to have a bunch of fun songs we like to play live. We try and keep a good rotation as much as we can. Our favorite ones to play are always the newest. We have a really bad habit of always playing unreleased stuff because we’re so excited about this new song that we just wrote, and we just have to throw it on the set list, right? But some of the old classics that we love to play, of course, are “Less & Less.” We really love to play “Sugar Coated” — that was a really fun one to do live. We love to play “You Love ‘Cause You’re Bored.” My favorite one recently has been this new song that we just started playing, and I think we’ll play it for the USU show.

Q: What excites you about playing at USU?

Drew:  I feel like nobody loves music or understands music the way college kids do. That’s just the time in your life where it’s such a formative experience, and you’re meeting so many people, and you’re having to find so much courage. You’re figuring out who you are, and music touches you in a way that it never has and I don’t think ever will.

Q: What’s next for the band?

Drew: We want to start branching out and booking some DIY tours. I think we’re going to do a couple of shows in California in the summer and then go out to Denver and Spokane. Then we’re going to release a bunch more music that we’re really, really excited about. I want us to really challenge ourselves and really experiment and get comfortable hitting the creative wall and just banging your head against it — just working through it. I would love to have music be my job. I would love to get to be paid to look at the world and pay attention to it and talk about it and share my experience and connect with people that way. I just love the process, so as long as I enjoy doing it, then whatever happens is great with me.

Q: What advice would you give to aspiring musicians?

Drew: Be reminded by this quote from David Bowie, and I’m going to butcher it, but it goes something like this: he says, “Remember that the reason that you started working was that you thought that if you could make something and keep making things, you could learn something about yourself and learn about your place in the world and how you fit and understand more about yourself. That’s the reason that we started working, and if you’re comfortable in the area that you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always step out into the water a little bit farther than your toes are capable of touching because then you can do something really, really special.” Art and business are really hard to merge together. Any artist you talk to will tell you about how hard it’s been to do both of those at the same time because they really are different processes. So, when you’re starting out, remember that your love for music has to exist or else the business won’t. While you’re learning how streaming works and how distribution works and how a release strategy works and how you’re going to roll out an album or do any of the business side, remember that if you’re not feeding your soul and you aren’t working on things and you aren’t inspired by the things that you’re working on, it doesn’t matter how savvy your business strategy is — if you’re not connecting with the things that you’re making and you’re pushing yourself past what you think you’re capable of doing, then nobody’s going to care — it doesn’t matter. Don’t lose that because I feel like I lost that for a while, getting caught up in how to do all the logistical business things. Don’t lose that because it’s really essential, and everybody has that when they start. So, don’t forget that if you can, and if you do, it’s fine, you can always find your way back, but try not to [forget].”