INTERVIEW: Hey, ily!

Caleb Haynes, the force behind Hey, ily!, talks about the project’s new EP and about breaking genre boundaries.

For Caleb Haynes, the last two weeks have been a whirlwind.

Ever since the Billings emo/punk musician nonchalantly dropped his first EP under Hey, ily!, he’s been reeling from the response. A writer for Stereogum picked up on the record almost immediately and dubbed it “Nintendocore,” causing others to link it to the rapidly-growing fifth-wave emo movement. Since then, Haynes has seen a fleet of fans – including one of his all-time favorites – express their adulation at the effort.

None of it is misplaced. Internet Breath is a nascent display of Haynes’ adeptness at mixing emo with the sugar rush of chiptune and the melodic bounce of power-pop. Like any great EP, it’s all killer without an ounce of filler, from “DigitalLung.EXE”s” revelry in the communal utopia of the Internet to the breakneck switch-up of “Projection Joins the Battle!”

I recently got the chance to talk to Caleb about his new EP and his plans for the future. During our talk, his energy was contagious; Zooming with his phone in hand, he seemed to ricochet off the walls despite having just woken up. Apologies in advance for the gregariousness; read the conversation below.

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Rob: Tell me how the project came about. Is this is sort of a new field for you, doing this type of music?

Caleb: I’ve been in music for like five or six years, and I’ve always been creating stuff on my own time separate from these bands I’m in, and I really wanted to make something that people will listen to and say, ‘I’ve never heard something like this before, I’ve never heard these kinds of sounds being mixed together. Because I really loved bands like Mr. Bungle and 100 Gecs who are doing something completely different from everyone else, combining genres and making a sound that no one else has heard before. And emo is kind of in an unexplored, like – I’m sorry I say the word “like” so often – you have bands that do the “emo” thing, but no one else is trying to take it further. You have bands like your arms are my cocoon, Home Is Where, Superdestroyer too, trying to take the sound as far as possible. You don’t see bands like that that often. So I was like, ‘I’m gonna do this thing where I take emo and mix it with a bunch of different genres and see where I can get it. I just really wanted it be like, ‘How many things can I put into this without it sounding too bad?’

Rob: Judging from the music, I’m assuming that video game OSTs have influenced you in some way. What do you play? What’s influenced you?

Caleb: So I am a huge Super Smash Bros. guy. I play a lot of Smash Bros. Earthbound, Mother 3, and Smash Bros. were really my main influences when putting together this record. And Undertale, too, I love Undertale.

Rob: Toby Fox is a genius.

Caleb: Love Toby Fox, love everything he does. Those video games really inspired me a lot. I have a lot of references to Mother 3 and Earthbound on the record too, in the lyrics.

Rob: Is there any place I can find the lyrics?

Caleb: Uh, no. [Laughs.] I’m super lazy, but I’m hoping to get the lyrics updated on Bandcamp at some point. The problem is that with a lot of these songs, the lyrics were kind of an afterthought. It’s not like emo’s really known for really good lyrics, but I don’t want people to look at these lyrics and think, ‘Wow, this kid’s stupid.”

Rob: Was this particular project born out of the limitations of the pandemic or was it something that you had in mind beforehand?

Caleb: This was totally made from the pandemic. This definitely would not have happened if I were able to go outside, you know? I think it’s nice because, since people can’t go to studios and they can’t do a lot of stuff, they’re forced to try and figure things out within limitations, and it makes everything super interesting. I think it’s super tight.

Rob: Like mentioned, this record’s got a ton of different styles. Peple have been using the term “post-genre” for over ten years now, which I think is really funny because it itself is sort of a genre. What does “genre” specifically mean to you? Is it important to delineate between styles, or are we reaching a point where it doesn’t even matter anymore?

Caleb: I think that genre has become this thing, at least for me, where I just want to retaliate against it. I definitely think a lot of bands are like, “We are this genre, so we’re gonna work in this genre,” but I want to spit in the face of genre and try my best not to defy everything about it. Nowadays it goes two ways: either people start bands or create projects that are like, “We’re gonna stick to this one genre and try our best to replicate it,” and then the other people are like, “I dunno, we’re just gonna try whatever and hope it works.”

I’m super psyched about it. I hope it continues to be this way. Seeing all these people continue to combine genres and do all these groundbreaking things is so sick and so tight, I hope we continue to see more of it.

Rob: There are some people that are real fuddy-duddies about it, that like to stick to genre as a musical descriptor and start to be like, “This is that person, and this is that person.”

Caleb: It’s super weird, it’s a lot of elitists out here. Which is funny because it kind of contrasts all these people trying to do different genre things. The more people that try to do different kinds of stuff, the less these elitists can figure it out. I’ve had people come to me and say, ‘This is not fifth-wave emo. It’s this and this.’ And it’s so hard because…I dunno! It’s hard for them to pin down what we’re trying to do. It’s really funny to watch their brains scramble.

Rob: Which is the point, right?

Caleb: Yeah, exactly!

Rob: Speaking of genre, I was gonna ask you about fifth wave emo, but I feel like every single day Brandon from Home Is Where posts something that brilliantly summarizes what it’s all about, and I feel like that’s the guide. But tell me your thoughts about it: tell me your thoughts about this movement that’s happening. Do you think it’s a paradigm shift? Is it just in the confines of the Internet? Where do you see it now and where do you see it going?

Caleb: It’s interesting, because I see a lot of people saying, “Fifth-wave emo doesn’t exist. It’s not even emo, it’s emo-adjacent.” We’ve run into this problem wherever a genre of music enters a new wave people are like, “This isn’t this! This is this!” and they can’t wrap their head around the idea that music adapts and changes and grows. It’s really ridiculous.

When I started this project, fifth wave emo wasn’t even a term; I’d never heard that when I started this project. After the EP came out, people started calling me fifth-wave and I was like, ‘What is this?’ and with Brandon, she…I started looking into Brandon’s posts and stuff and I was like, ‘This totally makes sense!’ I think the perfect way to describe fifth-wave is just “emo bands who are trying to do something different with emo.” They’re trying to combine it with something else, they’re trying to experiment, they’re trying to do things that people wouldn’t do in emo. You wouldn’t be like, “I want to listen to “avant-garde emo,” that sounds bogus. I think fifth-wave is the perfect description of it. And I think people are just gonna try to get wilder with the sound. I think people are gonna try to push it further, they’re gonna try and take emo as far as they can, and I think it’s gonna be really sick.

Rob: That’s sort of how I’ve taken fifth-wave emo to be. It has a name that makes it feel like it’s associated as a musical descriptor or a genre, but I think all it entails is a whole bunch of people that are trying to break boundaries, whether or not that’s musical boundaries or the boundaries in the way we talk about music and associate with it and commune with it.

Caleb: I agree!

Rob: It seems like it means so much more different between the people that are making it and the people that are discussing it, the fans. I feel like there’s a whole different discussion happening.

Caleb: That totally makes sense.

Rob: That’s just what I’ve surmised over the last few months of listening to stuff, I could be wrong. Home Is Where’s EP blew me away, by the way. That record is fantastic.

Caleb: I love that record.

Rob: There’s so much good music coming out this year.

Caleb: That was definitely one of the huge influences that I was working on. Not like sound-wise, but the way they’re able to do all these different things. There’s, like, a black-metal song on that record. I was like, “I want to do something like this, I want to make an EP where people listen to it and they don’t know what’s happening and they’re sitting on the edge of their seat.

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Rob: So what’s your favorite song on Internet Breath? What’s the one where you listen to it and you’re like, “This is the one, this is my favorite song”?

Caleb: Just influenced by people who have come to me and said, “I love this record, this is my favorite track,” I think “Don’t Talk About It (Your Weird Complex)” is probably my favorite.

Rob: It feels like the big single. It’s got that hook, it’s got that refrain, it’s a sing-along.

Caleb: That’s the one that’s the most sing-along-y, that’s the one where thematically I relate to the most, I felt the biggest about that one when I was writing it. It perfectly encompasses what I wanted Hey, ILY to be because it has that first half that’s this bit-crushed synth-pop song, and the second half where it goes into this hardcore punk song out of nowhere, but it all ties together in the end. That’s totally what I want this project to be.

Rob: How did you put the record together? Did you use a lot of analog equipment? Was it a lot of DAWs and digital sounds and VSTs?

Caleb: I recorded this whole thing on my phone, on GarageBand, and I recorded guitar and vocals and everything else was all digital programmed stuff.

Rob: It’s funny, as far as the pandemic and the fact that so many people are writing music that comes from “bedroom” places, there used to be this elitism about using analog equipment like guitars and pedals to get your sounds, and there used to be this stigma about using VST drums for example. That’s changing completely. There’s this South Korean artist that got popular recently, Parannoul: have you heard of them?

Caleb: Yes, I love Parannoul! I listened to them yesterday!

Rob: He recently did an interview with a Japanese blogger and another one with Sonemic, where he was asked, ‘How did you put this record together,’ and he opens the statement by saying, ‘Well, it sucks to admit this,’ and then he says that every instrument on the record was a VST. The guitars, drums, everything. And he recorded his vocals onto a Samsung Galaxy.

Caleb: That’s so awesome. I don’t think the recording quality really matters anymore. People are able to put together amazing records by doing nothing anymore, by just using fake instruments. And it’s so cool to me.

Rob: It matters less and less nowadays. I mean, AI is making art nowadays; anything is anything. Once we get past that, it’s just gonna open it up to so much more music where people aren’t going to care about “This was made with a drum VST.”

Caleb: As long as the music is comprehensible. I mean, some genres and sub-genres get by with being not comprehensible, but in my opinion, as long as I can tell what you’re trying to play, I don’t care. Make it as noisy, as raw or as hi-fi as you want.”

Rob: You’re located in Montana, and you’ve played with a bunch of Billings bands. This particular project feels based in the placelessness of Internet culture. Do you consider Hey, ILY a project that’s based in Billings or is this more of a strictly Internet thing?

Caleb: I don’t know if you’ve listened to Billings bands, but they kind of sound very similar. Naturally, with any scene.

Rob: How would you describe it?

Caleb: It’s kind of focused on heavier music. Heavier, more melodic stuff. You have a lot of arena-metal bands, like Christian metal bands doing their thing. I’ve never thought that Hey, ILY was in that scene. Hey ILY was kind of born because I wanted to impress people on Twitter, and I wanted people on Twitter to think I’m cool. So it’s definitely an Internet-based band. When people are like, ‘`Wow, a Billings, MT-based band,’ I’m like, ‘I dunno…’ It’s weird to hear.

Rob: In that vein, are there any plans to play this stuff live?

Caleb: Oh totally! Yesterday I got together with my friend Conner [Haman], who plays in a couple of other projects I’m in, he plays in Gray Joy. His fiance was like, “Let me either play bass or synth,” and Conner was like ‘I’m be on drums.’ And so I brought my guitar over and we practiced for like eight hours. So I’m super stoked for that.

There’s this huge festival that happens every year that didn’t get to happen this year called [Julia-Louis] DreyFest. All these big artsy-fartsy weirdo Montana bands come and play. It was interesting, I wasn’t gonna sign Hey, ILY up for it because I didn’t have a band together and I didn’t want to play these songs by myself, and then Phil who runs the whole thing was like, ‘Hey, ILY signed up for this, right?’ and I thought, ‘Well that probably means I should sign up for it.’ So I signed up for it and I asked Conner, ‘Do you want to play,’ and he said yes. DreyFest is hopefully going to happen next year, when everyone gets their vaccines and everyone is chill, and that’s gonna be our debut show. After that we’re gonna be everywhere.

Rob: Fuck yeah. If you guys ever come out to Seattle, I’d love to see ya.

Caleb: Yes, I totally want to hit Seattle!

Rob: One more question: do you have any plans for future music?

Caleb: So I don’t know if I’m at liberty to – actually yeah, screw it, I’m gonna say what my label has to say – but I’m currently…the process is a little bit of a mystery because on one hand I have members now who are going to help collaborate, but on the other hand I’ve kind of come to be in love with being able to record the stuff myself, but I’ve started to record at least the early version of an LP. Hopefully we’re just gonna expand the sound, make it even bigger and better, hopefully live drums this time around, live bass, live everything. It’s gonna be sick! We’re just gonna try to make it as big as possible, and like I said, every song is gonna be something new. I’m also hoping to collaborate with a lot of bands.

Rob: Any in particular?

Caleb: Glass Beach, Crying, Home Is Where definitely – Brandon and I are like, “We have to work together.” And Sashathem, they’re a rapper/R&B artist and they’ve already recorded vocals for one of the songs so, Hey ILY, this new albums is gonna have a rap song on it! I’m really excited!

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Internet Breath is available for purchase on Bandcamp.