About this episode

Daniel Kessler discusses his journey with Interpol, their new album, and his creative process.

Daniel Kessler grew up between London, Paris, and Washington, D.C., listening to his older brother’s early UK rock records. He picked up guitar as a teenager, the same day he quit skateboarding, and after moving to New York in the late ’90s, he set out to find musicians serious enough to start a band. In 1997, that band became Interpol and when their debut Turn on the Bright Lights came out in 2002, it helped define a new wave of New York indie bands, alongside the Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and topped Pitchfork’s year-end list. More than two decades later, Kessler remains the musical architect of Interpol, writing the foundation of the band’s songs, often alone on a classical guitar before bringing them to his bandmates. The band has now made eight albums together, and their latest, This Mirror Weighs a Ton , is their first record made in New York in more than a decade. Produced by Andrew Wyatt, it expands Interpol’s familiar sound with more experimental textures—and features Kessler singing for the first time since Turn on the Bright Lights . On today’s episode, Leah Rose talks with Daniel Kessler about making the new album, the early…

Topics covered

• music
• indie rock
• band formation
• album production
• creative process
• New York music scene

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