Desperately Seeking Suki

The project has already picked up some serious radio support. Has that changed the way you think about Desperately Seeking Suki?

Only in the sense that it’s given us more confidence to just go for it and not overthink things. I think we’ve both reached a point in our lives where we wanted Desperately Seeking Suki to be a space for us to create and collaborate together, and then send it out into the world and hope that it connects with someone, whether that’s through pure entertainment, healing in some way, or simply inspiration. We spent many years working on separate creative projects because we were living on two different continents, so it’s really special to be able to come together and make something with my brother. To then have such incredible radio support has been really extraordinary, and it’s made us even more excited to see where we can take it.

'Nevermind' feels nostalgic but also slightly surreal. What does the song mean to you now that it's finished?

I started writing this song a few years ago, so it feels amazing to finally finish it and send it out into the world. I wrote it soon after a breakup, reflecting on how things could feel so good, but something just wasn't quite right. I guess it’s another version or angle on our previous release, Sour... almost like the next phase in the breakup cycle haha.

Your band name has a great story behind it, connected to both Desperately Seeking Susan and the way the project began. How did you land on it?

Our Mum introduced me to Madonna’s films growing up and I was an instant fan - I loved how free she was in both her acting and music. But the band name never actually occurred to me until we were getting ready to release the music and still hadn’t landed on one.

At the time, Danny and I were sending stems back and forth between Sydney and Bristol, so we were literally searching for and building something together from opposite sides of the world. I decided I needed a coffee (classic procrastination), so my girlfriend and I went to our local coffee shop. The owner gave me some coloured paper and a pen and basically said, “just write.” She asked me what some of my favourite films were, and Desperately Seeking Susan came up. I’d always loved the film, but it suddenly felt strangely fitting. There’s this idea of people searching for connection and communicating through newspaper messages, while Danny and I were doing our own version of that across continents, sending pieces of music back and forth to each other.

Then with the 'Suki' part, I grew up specialising in martial arts and was fascinated by Japanese culture, and I knew “suki” had a connection to love. So the name just came together from all these different things; Madonna, Japan, the way Danny and I were communicating and making music, and this idea of searching for connection or love in some way.

You and Danny have very different musical backgrounds. What happens when your styles and influences meet?

I guess Desperately Seeking Suki happens, haha. There’s definitely a bit of a stretch into things we wouldn’t normally lean into individually. Danny is super diverse with his musical taste and he’ll throw in things like a completely random key change in the middle of a song, whereas I’m probably a little more simple, partly because I’m not as technically proficient as he is, haha. I think that creates a nice balance between simplicity and complexity. Hopefully it keeps the songs accessible, but with enough unexpected moments to keep them interesting.

With your background in film and visual storytelling, do you approach creating the band's visual world differently?

I guess if we’re making music videos, I always want to establish a clear story or through-line rather than just throwing together random bits of content, I guess that’s the storyteller in me. In terms of creating the band’s visual world, honestly, it feels like we’re moving so fast at the moment that I haven’t even had much time to think about it. We’re writing, producing, and then suddenly realising we need some kind of visual element, and it’s basically whatever springs to mind with the limited resources we have right now. Just fucking do it, basically haha. Otherwise, I have a tendency to go very deep into the thinking and creating process, and as fulfilling as it is to create something with layers and a really thought-out story arc, we just don’t have the time or resources for that right now. So we're trying to embrace the instinctive side of it and just make things happen with as little self-judgement as possible.

The EP arrives later this year. What kind of journey do you want the record to take listeners on?

Ultimately, we want people to have a good time with it. To laugh, dance, maybe recognise a few things they’ve been through, and hopefully come out the other side feeling a little lighter.