All musicians naturally go through different eras in their work, impacted by global and personal experiences and events, and Echosmith is no different. Echosmith reached success relatively early in the lives of the band members, who were all young teenagers when their song “Cool Kids” was released and launched into popularity in 2013. The band has grown up alongside its members, and their new era of music is very reflective of this.
Echosmith’s newest releases, “Gelato” and “Hang Around,” represent the newest era of their music, which Noah Sierota, the band’s bass guitarist, described as a sort of spring for the band, as a “time where seeds are planted and things are grown to be beautiful and ready to withstand the pains and the strangeness of summer.”
The new music released by Echosmith has a very nostalgic feel to listen to but still feels very refreshing at the same time.
Bassist Sierota noted that this sound was by design, saying that “Nostalgia is something I always care about in music, I really love music history and the music of the past. I think it’s important to always … learn about how you can re-translate that for a new era and age” and that “We want to draw inspiration from everything we care about.”
The inspiration to enter a new era of their music came during a time that was very difficult for everyone, the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a very transformative time for the band, who suddenly found themselves with more free time on their hands than ever before, and they used this time to reflect on their purpose as a band and create new music.
“For us, along with every other person on the planet, we experienced the COVID era (in some ways still are) and we were stuck at home … wondering what on earth we were doing with our lives … Is the music ever going to come back? Will we get to keep even working in this industry? Should we even keep doing it and why are we even doing it?” Sierota said, reflecting on this time in the band’s history. “We were questioning everything, and suddenly we have a whole lot more joy and a whole lot more excitement and passion for what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”
Echosmith’s emerged from the pandemic lockdowns of the last two years with a mission.
“Out of that came a new fire, especially just us band members having conversations with each other, like ‘if we’re doing this for real, let’s recenter ourselves on the ‘why,’’ and the ‘why’ for us really is that we love music. I love how music connects with people. I love how music is a way to walk through my own personal experiences,” Sierota said.
He continued, saying that “music is my way of journaling.”
The silver lining of the situation for Echosmith was that they were able to dedicate nearly all their time to creating new music, and “because of that our music is more ‘Echosmith’ than ever before” Sierota said.
He continued saying that “the product of that has been really personal, and because of that, I feel like it’s really special.”
Much of this introspection was sparked by an unassuming source of inspiration, TikTok, where one of their original hits “Cool Kids” was experiencing a resurgence.
“We just started talking about it a lot more and all of a sudden we’re in the studio, we’re talking about it … like people are making it their own … especially through TikTok … and we were like ‘What if we had more to say?’” Sierota said.
The newly released “Cool Kids (our version)” reflects the personal growth that the band has experienced from when they started as young teens, to now being young adults navigating the world. While the original version of “Cool Kids” brings listeners back to being in high school and experiencing the struggle between fitting in and standing out, the new version feels as though the listener is reflecting on their past experiences with this struggle.
“The bridge we added in the middle of the song captures the essence of that feeling, walking through that we wrote that song a long time ago, [when] we were kids. Like what does that mean to us now? How do we still feel that? Because we still do in ways, but I hope we’ve grown and it’s a little bit different than when we were fifteen,” Sierota said.
In many ways, “Cool Kids (our version)” represents a lot of the changes that Echosmith has made going into their new era, including a recentering on the values that they hold as a band.
“It all came out of that conversation we had as a family. We’re all family, and every song starts as a family dialogue … it’s a very funny experience to talk about that stuff with each other and to reflect that it’s been a long time since we talked about that. It’s been a long time since we wrote that. For us, it really just came out of that. That’s the roof of Echosmith, it’s family,” Sierota said, reflecting on the changes made to their original hit.
He continued that “the bridge really does kind of capture that ‘Cool Kids’ the original version is great and still means a lot to us … but our version is our way of saying ‘This is us now. This is how we’re feeling now. This is where we’re at now,’ which is a cool thing.”
Large life changes for the band members played a similarly significant role in the shaping of the new era for Echosmith during the COVID-19 pandemic. As they grew into adulthood so did their music and their audience.
“Now we’re in our twenties and figuring out adult decisions and all that … and we’re getting to write about that and most people listening to our music are also walking through that part of life (or at least can remember it or are looking ahead to it),” Sierota said. “That I feel like is pretty special. We definitely feel like we’re kind of peers to … our fans which is such a gift.”
At the center of the music they make, Echosmith has a mission to create a place where their listeners feel like they can belong.
The band “want[s] to write music that means something to people and is a way of making the listener feel like ‘Hey, I’m not alone, this other person feels this way’ and maybe our fanbase can be a community of people that are all honest with themselves and each other and able to reflect on those really human experiences together,” Sierota said.
Echosmith is looking forward to getting back on the road with their current tour.
“I love getting to meet people and getting to commune with music and just life,” Sierota said. “We’re beyond thankful to be putting music out.”