Indie-Folk Duo "we shrunk" Distills Music to its Essentials
Tender guitar melodies, petite lo-fi production, and playful lyrics characterize the indie folk music from LA-based duo we shrunk. Brookelen and Pearce, the musicians, collaborators, and friends behind we shrunk, sat down with Sparky to chat about the origins behind the project’s name, the inspiration they gain from each other as well as their local community, and the importance of never taking yourself too seriously.
Sparky: So, your self-proclaimed genre is “shrunk rock.” Where did that originate from?
Brookelen: As we’ve been crafting our visual story for the debut EP, it’s been really fun just thinking about us being small or miniature, whether that’s with a green screen or being small. I stumbled across this giant pencil in a thrift store in Atwater Village in LA; it was like ten dollars and I was like, “I have to get this.” We’re gonna use it as a prop more, but we’re just waiting.
Pearce: We’re planning on collecting a lot of those larger-than-life items.
Brookelen: Very ridiculous. Maybe giant shoes?
Pearce: All types of things.
Sparky: I’m visualizing it onstage. I think the production that you’ve got going on and the way the instrumentation connects really gives it that atmospheric “shrunken” feeling.
Brookelen: I guess the name resonates with the music for us too, in that way – kind of being more stripped, or smaller than the stuff we work on separately or the other music we make.
Pearce: I also think our personal projects tend to be pretty heavy in terms of being self-oriented, you know what I mean?
Brookelen: They’re very introspective. Not as extrospective.
Pearce: This is kind of like a way to minimize that, like our personal life is not necessarily as important in the writing for this project. It’s more about a vertical way of writing about a feeling rather than linear storytelling about something terrible happening to us or something. That’s also why the name kind of works. It keeps it lighthearted and we don’t get to take ourselves too seriously with it, which is good ‘cause we take ourselves way too seriously in our other projects.
Brookelen: Yeah. Just, you know, trying to get something up and running and then sometimes being silly and ridiculous and just having fun is actually really helpful to the process and to just… becoming. Blossoming, you know?
Sparky: Absolutely. It helps you remember the core of why you love it, I’m sure.
Pearce: Exactly, yeah.
Brookelen: Which is crucial.
Sparky: How did the two of you get started working on this project together?
Pearce: We started just hanging out and making music for fun and, I don't know, I think we just, I don’t even remember, we wrote something and recorded it and didn’t really have any intention to like, put it out or anything.
Brookelen: Yeah, I knew I was really interested in making music with him and I feel like when we started hanging out or getting into the studio, we were writing things that weren’t really for our particular projects, and we kind of just felt like, oh. This is something. We should just make this something.
Pearce: I think that’s ultimately what led to the name of the band also. Because when we weren’t really intending on putting it out, the effort was really really low in the studio, just like, let’s record really shitty lo-fi demos, not care about them being super pristine and everything, and that led to literally tiny-sounding music. The guitars were really quiet and small, and I was recording with these really strange microphones that came with a reel-to-reel machine. They make everything sound a certain way, like very bandpass, not much high or low information. So the demos themselves sounded tiny and kind of twee, in a way. And that was a part of what led to the title, I think.
Sparky: The band kind of named itself, it seems.
Brookelen: It just happened, which was nice because it can be a struggle otherwise.
Pearce: It has to be, like, divine intervention. It just needs to happen. You’re never gonna think of it – you’re going to receive it.
Sparky: Apart from your individual projects, where do you draw musical influences for we shrunk?
Pearce: For guitar stuff and guitar compositions, I feel like most of my current acoustic guitar playing comes from the classical world more so than a folk background. Let me think. I don’t really know too many classical guitarists that I love. There’s a few that I like – Leo Brouwer, who’s a modern guy from the 20th century, Spanish guitar stuff. I began learning a lot of his études in 2020; that was when I actually started playing acoustic guitar versus electric guitar. Back in college, I got sent a book of medieval guitar music from my teacher. It’s very simple, perfectly contrapuntal guitar music and that was super inspiring to me, so that’s where I feel like I draw the most inspiration from guitar-wise. But also we’re just huge fans of Big Thief and modern folk bands and everything like that.
Brookelen: Yeah, I’ve been really inspired by a lot of contemporary artists as of recently. I think we connect over certain songwriters or just the way music sounds in the alt-folk sphere, which has been kind of embedded in me since I was in high school. Someone like Sufjan Stevens, where it’s really gentle and very vulnerable but also he’s able to step away from it.
Pearce: It’s kind of playful, too.
Brookelen: Yeah, in that way. Just great songwriters.
Pearce: I think we have relatively different music tastes but there’s a lot of crossover. So I think our answers would be different because we’re both getting inspiration from different places, but there’s definitely some threads connecting us.
Brookelen: So we saw the Big Thief show at the Hollywood Cemetery, and Bill Callahan opened, right? I’ve recently been getting more into his discography.
Pearce: Bill Callahan is so great. He’s one of my favorites right now.
Brookelen: He’s put me on to a lot of more lesser known, in my world, songwriters, like Diane Cluck recently.
Pearce: Diane Cluck is so crazy good.
Brookelen: Just so good. I’m inspired everyday by our community of friends and musicians in LA as well.
Pearce: Yeah, honestly, that’s a huge part of it. I’m really hyped on what’s going on in this kind of genre right now and the folk-rock kind of world and just – I don’t know, there’s so many blurred lines between what is actually the genre, and I really like that. Our friend Hudson Freeman, we don’t really know him in person –
Brookelen: We’re internet friends! There’s nothing wrong with that.
Pearce: Very good internet friends, and I’m working on some music with him right now. He’s really cool, and he has this whole slogan. He says, “lo-fi folk is not the next big thing.” And I think he’s saying it as like, a joke, I don’t even really know what it means.
Brookelen: I think it speaks for itself.
Pearce: That’s just a tangent, but he’s really cool, all of our friends are making really cool music, and that’s been I’d say fifty percent of the inspiration that I get personally to make music and everything.
Brookelen: I feel like we’re really amped up about this question! And lastly, in conclusion, I’m also very inspired by him.
Pearce: Likewise.
Brookelen: I would hope.
Pearce: Not by myself, by her.
Brookelen: With my songwriting too, or feeling like I could even bring maybe a poem idea into a session and he just – he’s already written a guitar part for that exact song, you know? It’s really great.
For those in LA, we shrunk will be playing a show at Heavy Manners Library on February 29, and at Scribble on March 21. we shrunk’s self-titled debut EP is out now on all platforms; check out their music videos on YouTube!
Written By Sky Hume
