Water From Your Eyes have thoughts on aliens, love, and the end of the world

Over the past decade, Water From Your Eyes have established themselves as one of indie rock’s most inventive duos. From the scrappy sound of a guitar buzzing against a tinny drum machine to the strain of dark, offbeat humor they use to offset the dread that exists in the world, both together and as solo artists, Nate Amos and Rachel Brown have created a vast catalog of material that feels uniquely spun from a slacker’s imagination.

On their latest album, It’s A Beautiful Place, out August 22, the pair draws inspiration from sci-fi literature and cosmic existentialism to create what they say is their most optimistic work to date. Over a recent Zoom, in between deadpan witticisms, inside jokes, and a healthy dose of stoner wisdom, Amos speaks earnestly about his newfound sobriety and Brown about being “so so depressed.” Writing the album, they say, was meant to celebrate the fact that “life is sacred.”

But the duo really open up when talk moves away from the music and onto the obsessions that get their brains moving. For Amos that’s dinosaurs (“Your favourite indie rock album is not as cool as any dinosaur,” he’s said) and Brown, more pop cultural affairs including Sky Ferreira, the never-ending Brat summer, and her prolonged mission to finish an Ursula K. Le Guin novel.

The FADER: Rachel, I know that “Playing Classics” came from you specifically asking that Nate write a disco song. What made you want to try that specific dance sound?

Rachel Brown: I love disco and I love to dance. There’s never a time in which I would say no to disco. When I first heard the instrumental I was in my car. I was driving and I had the biggest smile on my face. I was like, ‘Finally, this is what I’ve been waiting for.’

Charli xcx was an influence on the song, too?

Brown: I don’t think any of us escaped from Brat Summer. I wrote this song last summer with “Club Classics” on repeat. That concept was really in my head. So the title is consciously Charli-inspired. I’m a new fan, though. I literally started liking her right before Brat came out. I saw her at Primavera [2024] and thought it was the most awesome thing I had ever seen and then she exploded. She deserves it all in my opinion, my fellow half-Asian queen.

The “Playing Classics” video pays homage to Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “By the Way” video. Why was that the Chilis video you went with?

Brown: That’s the video I always think about. It’s so iconic. It just so happened that we had asked my school friend to direct the video, and while I was looking at the Red Hot Chili Peppers music videos I saw that his parents directed “By The Way.” It [was so] crazy that we needed to rip this off because what are they gonna do, sue their own kid? I wonder if they even saw it.

Musically, It’s a Beautiful Place is mainly drawn from the same collection of music used for your previous album, Everyone’s Crushed. What was going on in your life at that time that you were kind of collating this huge kind of pile of music?

Amos: I lived in a really horrible apartment, was super broke, and constantly drunk. All I did was make music. I was really heavily into serialism and microtonalism and had an assembly line of compositional systems that were working really well and wasn’t having to tour or anything so I was just in a bit of a flow state. Then the pandemic happened and lockdown began and I sunk into it heavy. It was a productive period of time that yielded a lot of interesting ideas.

Is that well of music dry now, or do you think there’s more you can pull from it?

Amos: I think the question is whether or not we want to continue pulling from it. 80% of what was made in that time, I haven’t even opened up since that period of time.

I know you’re sober now. What are the differences you have found in making music now versus then?

Amos: I’d say that making music is a lot harder now. It’s a much more tedious and conscious process. But I think that lends itself to kind of more conscious ideas. Before I would just constantly make music without really thinking about it. [Substances] removed some sort of layer and made it very easy to achieve uninhibited creation. Unfortunately it correlated with unsustainable physical destruction. No regrets, it is what it is.

Rachel, what was inspiring you to write this time around?

Brown: Everyone’s Crushed was super nihilistic and it is important to me to put art into the world that makes the world look like how I would like it to look. The only thing that can guarantee change is if people just want it and hope for it and believe that it’s possible. I don’t want to use the term manifesting, because that’s kind of a horrible word, but with this album I’m praying for optimism rather than I am being specifically optimistic.

I understand dinosaurs were a big influence on you both. What is it about the prehistoric era that captures your imaginations?

Amos: I’ve always really fucked with dinosaurs and space. I think it’s the precarious balance between significance and insignificance. If you look at the human race from a cold objective standpoint, everything we could possibly ever achieve is utterly insignificant in the context of the universe at large. It’s not even close to being of any importance to the cosmos. While at the same time, human emotion and human to human connection and the way we treat each other, feels hugely significant. It’s a pretty trippy thing to think about. In terms of geological time [we] doesn’t mean anything.

Brown: [Interjecting] What if a giant meteor hits the Earth?

Amos: That’s the thing. Earth could literally disappear. And on a cosmic scale, that means nothing. Which is terrifying. That’s what I was thinking about with this album. But I’m not really smart enough to talk about it. So I just make fucking indie rock instead.

Brown: Literally every single thing in the universe is like an atom moving around. It’s all important. You have two options: It’s either nothing is important or everything is important. And I like to think that everything’s important.

Like the Sky Ferreira song…

Brown: “Everything Is Embarrassing.” I literally was just thinking about that song yesterday.

Amos: I don’t know if I’ve ever heard that song.

Brown: You definitely have because I 100% played it to you and I said, ‘Nate I want my music to sound like this.’

Amos: OK, I believe you.

You finished mixing the album in a studio near Stonehenge in the U.K. Where do you stand on the theory that it was built by aliens?

Amos: My thing with aliens and the idea of them making Stonehenge or making the great pyramids is that it’s based on the assumption that we as a species are at the smartest we’ve ever been, which I just don’t think is true at all. I think we’ve actually never been dumber. I don’t know how to do anything without my phone and that is not natural. I should have sonar by now. I think that people made all of these things, but I think that their understanding of the literal physics of the world, of the natural world, made it possible for them to do things that we cannot do at all because we do not understand how to anymore.

Brown: As much as I would love to be able to build Stonehenge, I would miss playing guitar. I would miss gossip, iced coffee, and cigarettes. Like, that’s what I live for. I actually don’t need to know what’s at the bottom of the ocean because I know what’s happening in people’s lives that I don’t even know.

Have you heard any good gossip recently?

Brown: I haven’t. I’m gonna be honest, I’ve been painting my apartment for what feels like years. And I think that the paint fumes have killed quite a few things going on in my head.