Richmond-based band Keep have been making dreamy, hard-hitting shoegaze rock since 2013, when drummer and vocalist Nick Yetka and guitarist Wes Smithers started the band out of a garage in Virginia Beach. Since then, they’ve released two albums and numerous EPs, and they’ve expanded their roster, adding bassist Will Fennessey in 2017 and guitarist Levi Douthit in 2020.
With their recently-announced third album, Almost Static, the band looks back on the journey so far and also starts fresh, with a renewed sound palette inspired by goth, post-punk and a clear vision of the road ahead. I caught up with Yetka and Douthit about the new album, Keep’s upcoming tour with Turnover and their favorite soundtracks for life on the road.
Note: this interview has been lightly edited for clarity and style.
Annie Parnell: You have a new album, Almost Static, out in full on May 30. It’s very connected to long drives — can you talk a little bit more about that?
Nick Yetka: A lot of the record is reflecting on starting to really invest in touring more and getting out there. We’ve been a band for 11 years now, but for the first half of that we would do tours that were, like, five days, and we had to drop two of the shows because we got a flat tire or hit a deer. We didn't really start doing legitimate touring until a few years ago.
And so a lot of writing this record was reflecting on being out on the road, and feelings that are associated with being away from home for weeks at a time — “Oh, I'm all the way across the country, and I'm not going to be home for two weeks.” At least for me, that's the jumping-off point on writing this record.
Levi Douthit: Definitely. Going on a monthlong tour is different than just doing a weekender up the East Coast. It’s our first time really breaking out of normalcy. There’s extreme highs, extreme lows, and a lot of the record reflects on that.
Do you guys have a favorite road trip soundtrack when you're on the road?
NY: On recent tours, when we were out in the desert, we were pretty heavily hitting the Steve Miller Band, so that’s one that I definitely associate with being out there.
[To Levi] Do you have any others?
LD: Our bass player, Will, is a lot of the time the DJ in the car. It feels good. He's got a lot of good playlists.
NY: He’s a great DJ.
LD: He definitely hit the Steve Miller Band discography heavy.
I also definitely want to talk about the cover art. What’s the story behind that miniature?
LD: Will had followed our now-friend Mario Dante, who is an artist based out of New Jersey, and we really wanted to do something with miniatures. Mario was great for that. He made that set in, I think, just a week.
I think it goes back to breaking out of normalcy, blowing up the standard of living a little bit. And that's reflected in a suburban street in chaos.
There's all these Easter eggs in there.
Can you share some of the Easter eggs?
LD: One I always go back to is that there's this window where the frame is an illusion. I think it's in the bottom right; it just keeps going.
NY: When we were filming the video for the first song, “Fun Facts,” we got to see the actual full set of the album art and all the random little miniature things that they had gotten to scatter around it. It was pretty surreal to be able to tangibly experience the art.
You can't really do that with a lot of album art: It really takes having a physical thing that's been photographed. So that was cool.
As you mentioned, you've been making music together for more than a decade now. It sounds like that's been an interesting journey.
NY: Definitely has been. [Keep] started as just Wes, who plays guitar, and I in his garage in high school. It's crazy to still be doing it now, because there were so many points where we were like, “We should stop and start something else.”
I think we fully had the intention of doing that and just couldn't come up with another name, or couldn't bring ourselves to start something new.
But it feels like it's in its truest form now, having Will and Levi on board, and having fully been in that mode for a few years. It feels like we're where we should be, and it feels like we've had a new start without having to blow everything up and start again.
That's interesting, then, that this album marks a “blowing-up” of the way that the band has worked before and moving into a new era.
LD: Definitely. I think it started with our last record, Happy in Here, but it wasn't fully fleshed out. And I think this record definitely signifies us locking in into this lifestyle.
I was curious about Happy in Here, because the title is so ironic. There’s a sense of looking at old patterns and the way that things have been done, and asking why.
NY: That's exactly what it is. It's very tongue-in-cheek. I'm happy to not have a tongue-in-cheek album title this time around, because there's a lot of big feelings in the new record, but I feel like they're being handled much better — or maybe I'm handling them much better in life than I was when we wrote [Happy in Here].
Rather than cloaking them in irony, it’s truly experiencing them.
NY: Facing them head-on. “No, this is reality, stop avoiding it, and deal with it.”
What’s the creative process like for a Keep song?
LD: With lyrics, that's pretty much all Nick's department. The rest of us, we don't really interfere with that, because it's just such a personal thing.
But for this last record, we spent a lot of time doing pre-production and demoing the songs all together. There's certain songs where it started with an idea from Wes, and then there's certain songs that started with an idea from me or Will, and we kind of meshed them all together.
It always led to camaraderie in the collaboration. It feels like four brains working together. And I think that's one of the reasons we're all really proud of this.
NY: As far as lyrically goes, I make a lot of raw materials in my Notes app, and then once we write a song, I'll see if I can squeeze certain things I like into it. That's really the process: just trying to find the right puzzle pieces to finish off whatever we've already come up with.
There's not a lot of on-the-spot writing, at least at this point.
Has the process shifted at all in your time with the band, or has it always been dynamic and fluid?
NY: I think it's always kind of been dynamic and fluid. And, I mean, just having more brains on the material has been super nice — to have a third and a fourth ear.
LD: Yeah, because, historically, Keep was a duo; Wes and Nick. Will came in in 2017, and then I joined in 2020.
NY: I feel like Wes and I are sometimes at odds with each other about ideas, and I think that created a lot of great things that I'm really proud of.
But it can halt the process sometimes when there’s just two of you being like, “No, this is how it should be.” “No, that's how it should be.”
It's been a unit for a while now, but it’s nice to feel like we're operating at full capacity, and like we know how the process goes. We know how to do it better and come up with things that we’re more proud of, or we feel like are more complete.
You’re also experimenting with some new sounds on Almost Static.
LD: We're revisiting the record still and listening to it and processing it as songs are coming out.
We were just talking about how there's a few outliers on the record that are areas we haven't explored before, like “Bermuda,” and then the title track, “Almost Static.” They are definitely going darker.
NY: Maybe it's some territory that we've touched on before, but stopped touching on. Our first record is more goth or post-punk inspired, and we kind of stepped away from that, but songs like “Bermuda” are very much up that alley.
I'm excited to hopefully write more songs like that, because playing that song, specifically live, has been so fun. It feels fresh every time. Not that the other songs don't feel great when we play them, but it's nice to get to that point in the set where you're like, “Oh, we get to play this song that feels very different, and it's a very clear shift in energy away from some of the other stuff we've been doing.”
It’s interesting that you’re in this new era for the band, but also returning to some things that you’ve experimented with before.
NY: Thematically, I did a lot of reflecting on myself, starting this band out and being much younger then. I feel like I'm in a very transitional phase in my life, or at least I was throughout the process of writing this record.
Being able to sonically touch on things that we’ve touched on before, but also able to write about things that I've experienced, it feels like a very appropriate place to be at with a third record. To be at this point in the band and have that process with it has been super nice, and I feel like it lends really well to whatever we do next.
Have your opinions on the new songs shifted at all as you’ve started to see them come out into the world?
NY: I've been starting to have some greater appreciation for songs on the record that I was less excited about, just for lack of a better word. “Fun Facts,” I knew it was a great song and I loved it from the jump, but like seeing people's reaction to it has made me have greater appreciation for it for sure.
LD: I think it hasn't truly hit me yet. The only changes are when I listen to the record in sequence, and I see it reflecting the times we were writing it. Now, it’s further away back in time when we did write it, so it feels like an archive of memories a little bit. I think when the whole record comes out, certain songs will have new meaning, but it hasn't quite hit me yet.
You're about to support Turnover from Virginia Beach on their 10th anniversary tour for Peripheral Vision. Do you have a personal connection with that album?
NY: I remember hearing it right around the time it was coming out. At the time, Nick and Danny, who are in Turnover, were playing with us as touring members, and so we were fortunate to get to hear that ahead of time. We were like, “This is insane. This record is incredible, I can't believe we're hearing this right now.”
Wes and I were big fans and would always go out and see them when they were playing, since we're both from the vicinity of Virginia Beach. So that record is definitely a special record for us as well.
To get to go out and celebrate it in such a monumental way feels really special, and we feel very grateful for that.
LD: I think it's full circle, because Keep was kind of starting right when Peripheral Vision came out. Ten years later, we're happy to celebrate with them, because it's almost like we're celebrating starting Keep a little bit.
It’s a great album to be doing that tour with as well. Almost Static is so reflective, and I imagine that going on this tour with these guys who you know, with this album that you've loved for so long, is reflective too.
NY: Yeah. And even beyond celebrating the record, we're just excited to be back on the road with them, because we had a really good time the last time. So I'm sure we'll have a great time this time as well.
I hear you guys also have some more touring on the horizon. Is there anything you can talk about in that regard?
LD: In August, we’re doing a monthlong tour, which has a few phases. We're doing a support for an artist called Bay Faction, and then in the middle of that we'll be joining our friends Leaving Time in Texas, which we're very excited to go back to. And then we'll be ending it with The Starting Line for three dates in Nashville, Atlanta and Charlotte.
Beyond that, what’s next for Keep?
NY: Touring and more touring. Just trying to get the record out there as much as we can, and hopefully get to some new places.
LD: Having fun playing these songs, honestly.
NY: I want to say working on new music, because I'm always excited to get back to that part of it. But I think for the time being, just playing these songs is a good jumping off point for sure.
LD: Yeah. Just enjoying it.
Keep’s new album, Almost Static, is available May 30. The band will be opening for Turnover at The Dome in Virginia Beach on June 9.