I’m personally PSYCHED to have The Dears featured on VIMBY, one of the coolest most unique bands on the indie rock scene these days.  Check out the video here.  I caught up with the band’s Natalia Yanchak via email prior to posting the video.  Here’s how it went:

ME: Congratulations on the release of Missles.  I have been a fan for a while, ever since I saw a knockout performance at SXSW about 4-5 years ago.  This album feels like you have taken everything to another level. Was their a different approach to writing and recording this album compared to your previous releases?
NY: Every Dears album is it’s own beast, with its own needs and concerns. Making “Missiles” was a kind of therapy; written as the band was falling apart, recorded in the groups’ final days. We finished it and then everyone who played on it left. While the collapse of the band doesn’t correlate to the meaning or message of the songs, that sense of defeat, hope and uncertainty is still there.
ME: Describe the songwriting process- does Murray write the lyrics first and then the band contributes to the musical composition or how does that normally work?  How fleshed out are the songs when you enter the studio to record them?  Are they sketches or more fully formed?
NY: When a song come to Murray, it is pretty much complete. With string arrangements, synths, percussions, backing vocals, everything. It can be intimidating for someone to try and collaborate with such a whole vision of a song. But that’s something we tried with “Missiles”: Murray just put all his ideas down and then invited other musicians to add their own ideas. And that process worked with amazing results.

ME: What was your favorite album of 2008?
NY: Al Green “Lay It Down”

ME: Do you have a favorite city to perform in?
NY: Mexico City, Mexico. Our last show there was the greatest most explosive reaction we’ve ever had. We are going back to play more shows in Mexico in February and I’m really looking forward to that.

ME: What do you like to do to pass time on the road?
NY: Hang out with Murray and our 3-year-old daughter, Neptune. You would not believe the number of kid-friendly museums out there.

ME: We are about to inaugurate Barak Obama as the first African-American president of the US.  As a Canadian band, what are your thoughts on Obama and this US milestone?  Were you active and engaged in the US election at all?
NY: We were actually on tour in the US during the election. On our tour schedule, on election day it just said: NO SHOW / PLEASE VOTE. So we sat in the tour bus in upstate Oregon with the front lounge TV on CNN and the back lounge TV on Fox News. When Barack Obama won it was really unbelieveable; I think I even got a little teary-eyed. Murray’s mom called him and they had a moment, too. It’s pretty huge, just a great thing for America…even though previous administrations left Obama with a really big, crappy situation to deal with. As Canadians, we share the continent and a lot of American media and pop culture. We definitely had a bigger frenzy for the US election than we did for any Canadian election. Obama is just such a real personality; a celebrity, a rock star. I think Canadians haven’t had that since Pierre Trudeau in the 70s. We’re generally pretty boring up here. Like the USA is Springfield and Canada is Shelbyville.

ME: Growing up, was there a defining artist/album/concert where the first time you heard it the lightbulb went off and you realized you wanted to be in a band?
NY: As a kid I listened to a lot of classic rock and “oldies”: I was big into The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and some other embarrassing stuff I’d rather not mention (Indigo Girls, anyone?). I remember in grade 6 my sister got Morrissey’s “Bona Drag” and I really, really loved that and got into him and The Smiths. I learned how to play “Death of a Disco Dancer” on acoustic guitar and used to sing it at the top of my lungs in my parent’s back yard. Our neighbours surely must have thought we were strange.

ME: What holds in store for The Dears in 2009?
NY: Touring, and hopefully working on some new songs. We just filmed a video with director Christopher Mills for “Disclaimer” which will be done in the spring and I kind of can’t wait to see it when that’s done.