An Interview With The Alt-Rockers HIS DREAM OF LIONS!

Get to know the alt-rockers, His Dream of Lions who last month released their new EP, Pseudo Star.  With their new EP, the four young rockers have captured a feeling about facing uncertainty. Pseudo Star is funny yet serious, epic yet intimate, empowering yet doubtful, touching on the emotions we face when it feels like we don’t know where we’re going. His Dream of Lions’ newest single, “Swingin,” perfectly encapsulates their new musical direction as it’s jam packed with snappy handclaps and driven by a beat that is sure to have you moving. Give “Swingin” a spin here: http://bit.ly/2EbFGEY.

Learn more about His Dream of Lions in the following All Access interview:

So what is one song that you are all loving right now? What is a song that you all disagree about loving right now?

Justin and I were hanging out the other night and somehow “Want You Back” by Haim came on and we remembered how stoked we still are about that song. That was on in the car a lot while we were on warped tour.

I’m not really sure if there’s a song we all disagree about loving. Maybe from our own material “Killer Trip” is a song that we have mixed feelings about, but all in all we still really dig the tune.

How has 2018 been treating you all so far? What is one musical goal that you have for this year?

This year has been one of the most successful periods of time in this bands life. Our big goal was to release this last record and chart, which we ended up doing. It felt really good to have all those months of work we put in legitimized by the success of the release.

Can you recall the moment when you all thought you could be in a band together? Was it hard to come up with a name that you all thought fit your sound and who you are? How did you pick this one?

There was the first practice I had with Nick where we realized this could actually work. Besides that we all sort of had this general understanding that this is what we wanted to do with our lives. It was just a matter of focusing on this band as the main vehicle for the songs we were writing. The name was hard to come up with. It was pulled from the Ernest Hemingway novel The Old Man and The Sea. It’s meant to act as a reminder to always be adventurous and to not be afraid to really put our honest selves out there.

What has the growth been like for this band since first forming?

It has generally been contingent on what was going on in the lives of the members. For example while we were in school not a lot was going on, but since we’ve decided to open ourselves up to being in His Dream Of Lions full time stuff has started to take off a little bit.

How do you think being from your hometown has influenced this group and the kind of music that you create?

I think our sound wouldn’t be as layered or pretty if we came from a “harder” area. Northern Virginia is a really comfortable place to live.

What was it like releasing your newest EP, “Pseudo Star”? What was the inspiration for these songs? While this is hard, can you pick one or two of your favorite songs on this collection and talk about how they were written?

Releasing Pseudo Star felt really good because it was sort of the perfect moment for our band to put out new material. It was the start of the year where we were going to go all in, so having a fresh batch of songs to do that with was great. The track Love Me Like I’m Sick was a song that was written sort of as a joke, but as it was fleshed out it took on all these different meanings with regards to depression and feelings of inadequacy. Earth Girls was a really tricky song for us to write because it was so simple and atypical of the kind of songs we would usually put out. Usually when we write there’s a defined chorus hook and a verse section to differentiate it. However with Earth Girls the verse is the chorus, so that was an interesting song writing challenge for us to deal with.

What was it like making your music video for “Love Me Like I’m Sick”? How creatively involved were you all with the whole process? 

We were very much involved with the whole process. We spent a ton of time figuring out the look, what we were going to wear, the color palette. By the time we actually shot the video it was just a matter of actualizing what we had been planning out months in advance.

Where can our readers see you perform next? Do you have tour dates already lined for the year? What do you think makes for an ideal show for this group? 

We will be doing a string of festival shows on the east coast in April that we will be announcing soon! I think this band works best when were in front of new people who are open minded about seeing new bands. That’s how a lot of artists grow.

How important do you think social media has been to this band? Do all you help to maintain all your sites or is one of you more into it all? Or do you rely on your PR/management team to handle it all?

Social media is critical though we struggle a lot with trying to be consistent with it. The band members run all the sites ourselves.

Who would you love to work with in the future? Who are some of your favorite artists right now? What do you think would be a dream collaboration for this group?

I think as far as producers go we don’t really have anyone in mind. We’d really like to have someone who’s excited about the new material reach out to us if they were interested in making another HDOL record. As far as artists we like right now, I think Poppy is really fun and interesting. Also Haim is a really fun band to listen to, the production on their last record is insane.

We are living in a trying time right now so I am curious how you think being in this band gives you the most joy in life today? Do you think that music being created today is going to reflect this challenging time?

Maybe, I think it really depends on what is going on in an artist’s life on an individual level. There’s a lot of horrible things happening in the world more or less constantly, but if you’re insulated from all that your music may not necessarily reflect world events in any kind of genuine way, unless you’re deliberately trying to make a political statement. For us this band is an incredible outlet to meet people and make friends. I think our primary focus is just to try and stay humble while having honest friendships with the people who listen to our music.

What do you hope is the message of your music? What do you hope people continue to take away from your songs? What do you hope they take away from one of your shows?

We’re not really trying to preach any message, we just write the songs that help us deal with what’s going on in our own lives, if people can listen to our music and hear their own stories in it then that’s more than we could ever ask for. I hope that when people see us live or meet us at a show they feel genuinely appreciated. That’s one thing that I wasn’t really anticipating about the success were having right now,  how indebted I feel to the people who even care for an instant about what this band is doing.