Kristin Henry and Brad Boettger keep referring to “this thing.” This thing is a project that first caught the attention of audiences overseas, and then quickly made its way back to Seattle. This thing has more than 84,000 plays on the Kitsuné America 3 compilation. This thing is NAVVI.
If you listen closely, NAVVI blends the backgrounds of a former folkie and a resurging rocker. It’s easy to get lost in, the perfect balance between darkness and light. Kristin’s ambiguous, minimalist lyrics float above the pulse of the drum beats.
Whether they’re making guitar-heavy bangers (“Weekends”) or atmospheric melodies (“Used to Feel”), or something in between, this thing that Henry and Boetteger have created is worthy of your attention.
How did you two meet?
Brad: At the time I was dating Kristin’s cousin and one of my bands was wrapping up and Kristin was looking for a band. My girlfriend at the time told me I should listen to her and she played me a clip, and I was like, “ok, yeah, that’s cool” and didn’t think anything of it. And then she played me another clip three or four weeks later and was like, “no really, you need to listen to this.” I emailed Kristin after that and we almost immediately started working together.
Kristin: I have a folk background, so I was mostly doing stuff on my acoustic guitar. Brad has been doing this type of music for a while…
B: I’ve been doing stuff that was somewhat in the same vane, but my role was a lot different. And even though I have a background in guitar, I wasn’t playing it at the time. NAVVI rekindled my fire for guitar that I had kind of left behind…
Did you know it was always going to be just you two?
B: I feel like when you carry less weight you can be more productive. So early on we knew we wanted to streamline this thing. My thought was to just keep it as minimal as possible and see how far we can take this thing without anybody else.
In your bio you describe NAVVI as “ UK-Dub with mainstream accessibility.” What does that mean?
B: Primarily as we were doing our research for each other and what we were putting together, what kept coming through was that UK filter. There was also a lot of James Blake in the fold as we were building the influences and the color palette of our music.
K: We wrote that bio after we got attention from the UK-Dub scene so that kind of stamped it…
But you’re not cornering yourself into that scene?
B: No, not at all. That’s another reason why I wanted to make sure the live instrumentation and guitar was going to be a part of it so we didn’t have to always be electronic or solely a rock band. We want to try to bring as many cool things as we can to this thing and make it fun and keep it interesting.
How do you choose the visual elements of your live show?
B: Well, full disclosure, I’m taking stuff I find off the Internet and then I start editing it and messing with it. I do put a lot of thought into it and I do work really hard on them, but at the same time it’s just me having fun.
I’ve looked at this opportunity as “let’s bring in all the different things that we think are cool and if we throw them all into a big pot and swirl it up a little bit, what can we do with it?”…
I think of it also as the third member of the band that may be missing. Maybe we don’t have a drummer or somebody over there playing a synthesizer, but this is our equivalent of the guy over there sweatin’ and killin’ it on the 1s and 2s in the back…(Laughs) This is our version of that.
Who are you inspired by that someone may be surprised to hear?
K: Dallas Green from City and Colour…I absolutely love his voice.
B: Trap. I love at that trap shit. Even like with Big Freedia, I just love the beats. I really enjoy all the hip hop that’s going on right now. I don’t hear anything that I don’t like in regards to the hip-hop world right now.
You guys have been patient in releasing new tracks. Is that purposeful? What do you have planned next?
K: Right now we’re working on a couple of new songs. We have enough material for a full length, but we want to take our time and make sure what we’re putting out there is something that we’re both proud of. We want to put in all the effort we can. A little bit of it is timing, but I think we both like to take our time. We’re both really meticulous and very much perfectionists. We listen to a song until we want to kill it…
B: Until we absolutely hate it. But once it stands up to all that pressure coming from both sides of us and we feel good about it, no matter how it is taken or if it takes off…we still feel confident in it.
There’s a couple of songs on that SoundCloud page that don’t get as much run as something like “Speak” or “Weekends” and that’s fine. But I feel like the stuff that is the kid brother, the kid sister tracks, the deep cuts…that’s my shit. We still feel good about it and we still feel just as proud of it as we do of anything else.
