In an exclusive interview with Upstate New York-based indie-folk duo band, The Sea The Sea, The Colgate Maroon-News was able to sit down with and speak with Mira Stanley, who makes up one-half of this up-and-coming band.

Maroon-News: How did you get started with music?

Mira Stanley: My dad was a musician so I was around music a lot when I was growing up. It was something that I was really drawn to. At the same time, I was really into dance and theater so I actually went to college for musical theater and dance. I found myself in the practice room writing songs more often than working on the other stuff that I was doing. After school, I decided that being a musician was something that I wanted to pursue.

MN: How do you feel about having your career as your passion? Do you ever feel like your creativity is pressured?

MS: I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It feels good to wake up everyday and feel good about how we’re spending our time. It feels good to know that we are working on something that means something to us and is valuable in the world. But, being an independent musician, you end up spending equal time if not more on the computer rather than getting to write songs. You grow and work. Now we have a booking agent we work with – we have a manager. As you grow, you build a team around you that can take some things off your plate with the idea of music being the sole focus. It’s a lot of work but a lot of fun learning about all the different parts of the business, too. It can be overwhelming and feels like you need multiple clones of yourself to get it all done.

MN: What’s been the biggest surprise you’ve faced pursuing music?

MS: I asked Chuck [of The Sea The Sea] what he thought about that, and he said that everything we just mentioned, being in the trenches, all the grind of it… As difficult as that can be, the music always lifts you out of it… We’re getting ready to go on tour right now. We’re spending a lot of time on the computer, working on the logistics and what time we have to be here and making sure we have a place to stay. But as soon as you get on the road, or when you get to rehearsal, or just connecting with people – just being in the world and playing music and knowing just by being in the room with people that it means something. It lifts you out of any heaviness or grunt work that it can feel like sometimes. It’s a happy surprise.

MN: You recently released a lyric video for “Everybody.” Is there anything you would like to say about this song, the new album, or any other updates?

MS: Yeah, of course. Our new album is coming out June 2nd and it’s called From the Light. And with “Everybody,” we released the single last month. It’s up on Spotify and other streaming services. Everywhere you might listen. That song came out. The time we set aside to write for From the Light was actually around the [Presidential] election in fall of 2016. It was a very interesting time to be writing and processing everything that was going on. That particular song [“Everybody”] was a response. Just feeling divisions between people and trying to find those points of connection, you know that common humanity. If you watch the lyric video, you’ll see the contradictory lyrics that are said. It explores that idea that everybody’s right and everybody’s wrong. Trying to find the things that connect us all.

MN: Have you been to Hamilton before?

MS: We’ve been to Hamilton now a couple times, and we love it there. We want to keep coming back. We think [Colgate is] a really awesome university, with a lot of great things happening on campus. We love how involved students are in creating an arts and culture scene. We’re located in Troy, NY, actually, which isn’t too far away.

MN: Can you describe how the music video for “Waiting” came about?

MS: For our first album, Love We Are We Love, we were huge fans of this incredible design company we worked with that’s based out of Denver, called the Madeshop. You can find a video of how they made the cover art on our website… One of the guys who is involved with the Madeshop is Zach Johnson and so we had reached out to them when we were doing videos ideas. We really wanted to do an animated video and asked them if they knew anyone who is an interesting animator. And they said that one of their people who was an animator was involved with the Madeshop [Zach Johnson]. He was in California and we were in New York so we were trying to figure out a concept that didn’t require us to be in the same space… He had all of this footage that he had taken from a cab ride in the city that he had long wanted to do animation with and there was something that really resonated with us with that particular song. It was just one of these magical, serendipitous moments… He spent nine months and did like 4,000 oil paintings… We were super proud of it just as a collaboration. We put it out into the world and it got picked up by a lot of people who were into it. It was the first time we had that sense of virality… It definitely made us excited about future collaborations.

Contact Tristan Niskanen at [email protected].