Dehd Featured On NPR & WBEZ's All Things Considered
Dehd’s decidedly awesome new album ‘Water’ is out now & last month they played a packed out release show at The Empty Bottle Chicago. NPR & WBEZ Chicago was there to interview the band and it culminated in an amazing piece for All Things Considered which aired last week.
Listen to the full show here. And read an excerpt below.
The Chicago indie-rock band Dehd started as an excuse to go on vacation.
"I guess we're both really efficient," said singer and bassist Emily Kempf. "We were just like, this seems like a good way to pay for a vacation and hang out."
It was 2015. Emily Kempf and Jason Balla had just started dating, and since they're musicians, they decided that the best way to travel together would be to go on tour. So they made a band. Kempf said they didn't become a "real band" till they added a drummer — Eric McGrady.
Right away, the post-punk trio made music that in part reflected Kempf and Balla's relationship — how in love they were. They also built a loyal fanbase and started to catch the ears of music critics around the country.
Then, in 2017, Kempf and Balla broke up.
"Our romance was falling apart and forming into this other thing that it is currently," said Kempf. "And it's not like, 'and now we're done!' It's ... it's still in process. So [this] album is just like a continuation of our relationship."
Love is everyday magic. That’s the impression you get listening to Water, the new album by Chicago trio Dehd. Veterans of Chicago’s increasingly fruitful DIY scene Jason Balla ( Ne-Hi and Earring) Emily Kempf (Vail and formerly with Lala Lala) and drummer Eric McGrady share a strange and inexplicable chemistry. Love rises up into the atmosphere like steam off a summer sidewalk and makes you wild. Love breaks your heart and you consider yourself lucky for it. Like water itself, it surrounds us, it supports us; it’s what we’re made of. It takes the shape of its container. The music is hazy and reverb-drenched, a scuzzy and hyped-up take on surf rock that could only come from the Third Coast. It’s all animated by the red-lining feel-good spirit of the Velvet Underground’s Loaded and the breezy melodicism of C86-era indie rock, with a dash of the Cramps’ spooky-hop bop courtesy of McGrady’s locomotive drumming.It’s a clear-eyed look at the wild nature of everyday life that’s been spun up in sugary sweet melodies and scratched-crystal sounds. More than anything, it’s the embodiment of Dehd’s m.o. from the start: As Kempf puts it, “Work with what you have and make it magical.”
