Photo Credit: Pjotr van Kleef (@pjotrvk)
By Alissa Arunarsirakul // June 1, 2021
Forget about what anyone else has told you… Sexy Pigeon is the indie pop duo of the year. Even though they work from nine time zones apart, Sexy Pigeon has been fully committed to seeing this infectious project thrive, and we can confirm that there’s plenty of success coming their way. Ready to show you what can happen when two musical best friends combine their genius ideas, Sexy Pigeon has revealed their dreamy new EP, Pastel Summer.
On Pastel Summer, Sexy Pigeon shared,
“We hate waiting. When we have something, if we figured out how to perfect it, then we want to get it out there as soon as possible. With this EP, we sat on a couple of the songs and then we took a month and a half to figure out the rest of it. And we kept reworking it, and Rob has spent hundreds of hours on one of the songs, ‘Palm Spring Honey.’ We actually scrapped the song completely, threw away every aspect of it, and started over when we needed to submit the EP to Spotify in a couple days. We think that song is one of the best ones on the EP.”
To celebrate the release of their new music, we recently chatted with Sexy Pigeon about skydiving, their fanbase, and of course, Pastel Summer.
HH: For those who don’t know, how did you two meet and decide to start making music together?
SP: Robin is from Amsterdam and was hitchhiking the United States with just a guitar and one change of clothes. After spending three nights sleeping in the desert at a truck stop on the edge of Phoenix, a Morman truck driver heading west decided to pick him up. After about 600 miles of playing guitar and talking about life, the trucker asked Robin if he wanted to skydive. Jumping on the opportunity, Robin did his first skydive at The Parachute Center in Northern California and ended up meeting a skydiver named Darrel that was living in a tent next to the main hangar and jumping everyday for 18 months. Robin said goodbye to the trucker that took off for Salt Lake City and stayed in the tent city for two weeks. While at The Parachute Center, Robin made friends with a lot of skydivers and really enjoyed the lifestyle but eventually moved on with his thumb up on the highway. Over the next year, Robin and Darrel kept in contact and eventually set up a cross country road trip with no plan in mind except for heading east into the desert. Once in New Orleans, Robin realized that Darrel has a passion for writing poetry and decided to challenge him to write songs. They immediately turned north after New Orleans and headed straight to Muscle Shoals, Alabama and instead of taking a tour of the legendary studio, Darrel booked a session for the next morning. They then found a place on the river to camp under the stars and write a couple more songs and the next day they recorded a three song mixtape that sealed their fate as a dynamic duo that will constantly be writing and traveling together for years to come.
HH: Hazy melodies and experimental instrumentals are essential to your music. What inspires your carefree sound?
SP: Our happy sound is our medicine for anxiety. Robin always has new melodies in his head and constantly creating and finding the sound for our next song is therapeutic.
HH: Pastel Summer literally gives us nothing but summer vibes! What were you trying to capture with this amazing EP?
SP: We are trying to capture happiness and relief of having a summer after 15 months of dreariness from the pandemic.
HH: Fun loving tracks like “Hold My Hand, Sunshine” and “Run Away Together” are nothing short of bliss. Can you walk us through your creative process?
SP: Our creative process is basically creating dozens of demos until something sounds like an actual Sexy Pigeon song that we can run with. We have a unique way of writing lyrics because Robin mumbles a vocal melody and Darrel translates it into lyrics based on the number of syllables that were sung. We work on the phone together every day while nine time zones apart and have fine tuned a creative process over the past 12-15 months into something that works really well for us and what we are going for musically. Once we have an idea, everything falls into place.
HH: What’s the #SexyPigeonChallenge? Have you received any crazy entries?
SP: The Sexy Pigeon Challenge is a way for our fans to submit aesthetic photos of themselves so that Darrel can digitally draw them for YouTube song covers. We realized about half a year into the project that we were going to need ideas for YouTube art (up to three times a week) and this is a great way for us to give back to people that love our music and it also creates a community with our fans. We have a global fanbase and a lot of people have become friends with each other in our Discord where we are both actively talking to everybody on a daily basis.
HH: What’s something that’s unique about your friendship with each other?
SP: We’re on call with each other every day and when we aren’t working on music or art together, we are going on long neighborhood walks and having business talks, or playing Xbox together and killing it on FIFA. We have different backgrounds from two separate cultures but plan on being roommates once we can get work visas and building Batshit and Robin Records into a legitimate business that covers different music genres.
HH: If you could perform anywhere in the world, where would you pick?
SP: We have a lot of fans in Latin America and would love to tour Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Brazil, and possibly Argentina. We aren’t quite there yet, but in the next couple years, it will come true.
HH: What are your hidden hits?
SP: Blanks – “Turn Around”
Fiji Blue – “Waves”
Okey Dokey – “Wavy Gravy”
The Hidden Hits 