From the moment the Earth first quaked upon the arrival of “Tell ‘Em,” Sleigh Bells have been brazen. When the New York duo’s first album Treats arrived in 2010, its jangly aggression and cheerleader-esque verve distinguished musical partners Alexis Krauss and Derek Miller as indie rock’s newest rulebreakers. Fifteen years later, that rambunctious nature has yet to mellow — largely because Sleigh Bells know how to protect it.
Today (April 4), Sleigh Bells unveil their sixth album Bunky Becky Birthday Boy, an 11-track exercise in total unselfconsciousness. The name of the tongue-twisting LP is a nod to their personal lives — Krauss’ late dog was nicknamed “bunky Becky,” and her young son Wilder is the “birthday boy” — although the album is spiked fictional snippets. As the band reaches back to their own origin stories through songs like “Wanna Start A Band?”, Bunky Becky Birthday Boy blurs the lines between Krauss and Miller and their dog-inspired alter egos, Becky and Roxette: two portraits of being blissfully unaware of whatever anyone thinks of you.
Upon the arrival of the new record (and a few months away from their June performance at the Paradise Rock Club), the duo reflected on their first years together, leaning into an unabashed new era, and the magic of opening for Pixies in 2018.
Victoria Wasylak: Talking about your new record, I wanted to clarify what the starting point was. I know that “bunky Becky” was a nickname for your late dog, Riz– which, I’m sorry for your loss, Alexis – and it inspired you both to write an anthem for her. Is that the first song you started working on for this record? Or was it already in progress, and this just became an anchor for it?
Derek Miller: We’d been writing since we locked the master on Texis, which was April of 2021, but it really started to come into focus the summer of 2022. We had some early tracks that were started, but that became a big part of it, because we basically created characters based on her. The idea is, what would Riz have been like in human form?
The joke we’ve been making is — dogs or puppies come into a room, they could tear the place apart, pee on the floor, and you still love ’em to death. I know people like that, and I’m occasionally like that [laughs]. A big part of [the album] was a lack of self-consciousness. “Bunky Pop” – the first song on the record – as corny as it is to say, it’s a “dance like no one is watching” type of vibe. Just be completely unselfconscious. Make the thing that you’re dying to hear. Don’t worry about it being “too much” or over the top, don’t restrict yourself – all things that I think tend to really aid the creative process. So, yeah, she inspired it in that way, ’cause it’s a dog! They’re not self-conscious. They don’t know.
Alexis Krauss: It was an interesting part of the grieving process with her, too, because we worked on “Bunky Pop” when she was still alive, so it was kind of this anticipatory – anticipatory is the wrong word –
Miller: Knowing that grief is inevitable.
Krauss: Yes. Exactly. There’s this awareness that she probably wouldn’t be with us when we release the album. Now, looking back on that, it’s such a beautiful, fun way to remember her, and to have her kind of infused into this whole creative process. The conversations around the record have been really sweet. But like Derek mentioned, we’d been working on the album for a few years, and it was prolonged a bit by me getting pregnant and then having [my son] Wilder. And that, I think, actually gave us a lot more space and time to make the album better and add a couple tracks that wouldn’t have been on it had that not happened. It didn’t feel rushed, but it felt like we were ready to get it out.
You strike me as a group that is not particularly self-conscious or concerned about what anyone is going to say about their music or label it – especially looking back at the early 2010s, when what you were doing was a lot more unheard of, so to speak. Is self-consciousness something that you’ve struggled with?
Miller: It’s a strange balancing act, because admittedly, some of my favorite artists are very much “I do not give a fuck what anybody thinks. Fuck my audience. Fuck my fan base. I’m gonna do exactly what I want.” I see that, I respect it. I’m kind of split in that. Of course I want it to connect. I’m not indifferent, I guess is what I’m trying to say. However, I am completely willing to burn the career side of it down if it means doing the thing that gives you that elusive feeling that you’re always chasing when you’re trying to make a good, or even great, record.
There’s some double-think occurring. Because I do want it to land with people, but given the option to make something that I really, really love with every fiber of my being and believe in, and having and knowing that it might not connect – I’d rather just go down with the ship than fuck with the creative process. ‘Cause that’s sacred to me, you know? That’s sort of where I go to survive the news cycle, because I don’t want to live in a bubble, and it’s a treacherous moment that we’re in. The creative process – trying to protect it from any greed or ambition, I think, is really important. Not that ambition is a dirty word. Again, I’d play the Garden tonight without flinching.
Krauss: I completely agree with everything Derek said. I also think that we’re pretty fortunate in that we have a pretty small team around us in terms of people offering opinions and soliciting opinions. I think Derek and I really are protected in a way, and we’ve been intentional about that. It’s something that we’ve really worked hard to maintain throughout our time as a band.
We’re not signed to a major label. We’re not constantly checking in on the temperature of different things, and we don’t have people pushing us in certain directions. And I feel like as a result, it’s me and him recording at his house, and it’s a pretty intimate process up until the very end – up until all the [music] videos and everything. And so, I feel like we’re pretty insular, and I don’t know how artists navigate it when they have a bazillion people telling them what they should do, and labels demanding certain things. I can just imagine that getting so overwhelming and confusing, and just really ripping you away from the heart and soul of what you’re trying to do.
The fact that we have each other to constantly go back and forth – like, “what do you think?” — but we’re just not answering to that many people, I think it helps us maintain some real intentionality about what we want to be creating, as opposed to what other people think we should be creating.
I wanted to talk about the lead single, “Wanna Start A Band?” because I thought it was such a timeless theme. One of the oldest questions in rock and roll is “Do you want to start a band?” I know the song is a little bit true to real life, and it’s a lot fictional. What would you say the ratio is, and why did you decide to take it in that split direction?
Miller: It’s hard to give you a specific number. Maybe 50/50-ish. I think you really hit the nail on the head. “Wanna Start a Band?” – and whether it’s a band or you’re a vocalist looking for a producer – it really works if you zoom out. It is the origin story of every project that isn’t a single person making everything themselves. So it felt like a good place to start.
Speaking of self-consciousness, I was actually self-conscious about the fact that if you don’t think about it on a macro level, then it does seem very self-referential. Once you’ve been around for a while, and if you start referencing yourself often, sometimes that can be indicative of a lack of ideas, and I don’t feel like that’s the stage we’re at as a band or artists.
On balance, it’s kind of 50/50-ish — it’s [our alter egos] Becky and Roxette, right? These are the two main characters on the record. And we also really want the record and the songs to work on their own without context, that’s really important. I’m way more Becky. She’s impulsive, she’s emotional. Roxette is a little more balanced, more measured. It’s kind of a classic yin and yang situation, and that is a lot like Alexis and I.
Do you have an image of what they look like, their style and how they carry themselves? Or is it more of a nebulous idea that shifts a little bit with every new context that you place them in?
Miller: For me, it’s a little bit blurry, and I like that. If anything, maybe the [album] artwork itself is sort of indicative of them having really loud and colorful personalities, and the songs themselves being pretty aggressive and dynamic. I think that that reflects who they are.
Krauss: Same as Derek. It’s a little blurry, but definitely kind of a cartoonish, playful energy to them. We put out something today that, to me, really embodies the energy of the two of them. It’s this Sleigh Bells cereal commercial. Everything about that aesthetic, to me, says Bunky and Roxette.
Miller: It’s “Bells cereal” and it’s gummy bears and spark plugs. Something about that makes perfect sense for our music. As opposed to trying to tell a very specific story, all the visuals for the record are supposed to just look and feel like how the music sounds and feels. It’s a slightly abstract connection, but I do feel like the dots all connect for me. It’s not just a bunch of crap that we threw at the wall and we’re like, “Figure it out.” It feels –I guess intentional would be the word.
Krauss: And then in the “Bunky Pop” video, we worked with Dylan Gelula, and she was really an embodiment of Becky in that same way that Derek mentioned – dogs just being hyper-present and impulsive, and kind of little assholes that we love.
***
Circling back to that really archetypal story of people meeting and asking, “Do you wanna make music together?” — do you think that your own story together would look much different if it started today in 2025?
Miller: It would be vastly different, I think. I would have been DM’ing every fucking person on Instagram – literally hundreds of DMs. I mean, I was maniacally driven to try to find somebody to make records with, and I sort of romanticized it in my head. I was very inspired by the Brill Building teams from the ’60s — you know, [Gerry] Goffin and [Carole] King, [Barry] Mann/ [Cynthia] Weil, Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, [Doc] Pomus- [Mort]Schuman, but especially those first six. They were teenage kids, and I was in my mid-20s, but I was like, “I wanna go find my other half, my creative soulmate.” So it was mostly IRL, which is kind of an old school concept now.
I’d go out to bars and instead of trying to hook up with somebody, I was trying to form a band. Usually people go out to hang out with their friends or meet somebody, but my whole thing was if I bought somebody a drink, I’d ask them if they wanted to make a record. Usually they were a little cynical about it, which is understandable. But Alexis was the first one who took it seriously.
Krauss: Well, I think of all the variables of the changing world, the constant that still remains in this equation is my mother. My mother has continued to be the person in my life that will introduce me to people because she’s so outspoken and curious. I could still see myself going out to dinner with my mom and her being like, “Oh, but my daughter…” and having that conversation with Derek.
It definitely is a different environment in terms of social media. I think that’s the beauty of it, too, is just that it was so simple and serendipitous. Even at that time, there were a lot of reasons why it shouldn’t have worked out. I think had I met Derek two months prior, it probably wouldn’t have worked out for personal reasons. There was just something truly about that moment in time that allowed the receptivity on my end, personally, to take him up on what he was asking.
If I remember, in a past interview you said you were a little bit hesitant, because 2008 perhaps was not the easiest time to be an artist.
Krauss: That was like a definite concern. I was teaching, I was about to get tenure, so it was a big gamble. But at the same time, Derek and I got along so well pretty much immediately and we started making music very quickly together. We were developing a friendship. We would go, we would get together, and we would record – there wasn’t much fuckin’ around. It just became pretty evident pretty quickly that we were both serious about it and that it at least deserved a chance. It deserved an opportunity to develop, and that meant playing shows.
So yeah, there was a reluctance, but it was honestly my parents who were the ones who were most supportive. They’re like, “You can always go back to school, back to this job. Go join this band.”
Reflecting on your first couple of years as a group, I think about hearing your music in an ad for Skins, which is the most perfect marriage – it’s a party shown in reverse, and they’re playing “Kids.” Or I think about your music being used in Girls or The Bling Ring. Looking at the music you’re making now, what do you see it as the perfect soundtrack for?
Miller: Oh, gosh. I was just reading that I think they’re making a sequel to Jennifer’s Body. Did you see that, with Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried? A Diablo Cody movie? It’s incredible. It got kinda panned when it came out, but it since has [acquired] a cult status, and I love it to death. So, if they make a sequel, I think we’d be perfect for that. I’m putting us up for that right now. That would be great.
Krauss: I don’t have a specific thing in mind at the moment. I’ve made this joke with Derek, but I just, feel like Sesame Street would be the vibe right now, with Wilder. Maybe Stranger Things? I’m a Stranger Things fan, and I’ve always kind of heard in my “dream mind” a little Sleigh Bells there.
Miller: For me, the thing that I feel like I have, and haven’t lost, is youthful enthusiasm. The things that I’m excited about, I am very, very excited about. And I don’t have a problem expressing that. I was self-conscious about that growing up. Getting in mild hypomanic states talking about a record – it’s not “cool.” Detachment is “cool,” cynicism is “cool,” and I never related to any of that. And I’d always wished that I could just sit there and be quiet, and that makes you more magnetic, right? That’s so much more attractive.
But now at 43, I realize that’s a big part of the creative process for me – instead of getting a little more resolved, and all of the spiky emotions in me getting sanded down, I can feel them working for me now. I still love the process as much as I ever have, and I feel more in love with music now than I’ve ever been in my life.
I think that that’s unique to younger people as well, just being hyper before life gets a chance to beat you down. Whatever chemistry is going on inside of me to cause that, I’m grateful for. It’s given me a lot of trouble in the past, as well – you know, I’m drug-free these days, coming up on two years. But that will trigger stuff for me, because I’ll work in the studio all day, and if it goes well, I’m flying on a natural high. When I stop working, it’s 8:00 p.m., my brain’s like, “Let’s keep it going,” naturally. With that stuff under control now, it kinda strictly feels like – I don’t wanna call it a strength or anything, but it feels like it’s working for me.
I think our definition of “noise” changes as we age. Because your music has so frequently been described as “noise-pop,” do you approach that sound, or view that sound differently now, versus when you were starting out?
Miller: I don’t, no. And I don’t think that either of us were ever particularly offended by any label that we were given. If people called it noise pop, I was like, “that’s cool.” People have called us pop-metal, and we’ve even played around with that on this record. I was always cool with all of those, but no, I can’t think of a way that it would’ve impacted the creative process, if I’m understanding the question correctly.
Krauss: I would agree. When we think about our music, we think about it in terms of more abstract words – bright, sparkly, or think of a color, think of an emotion. I personally never felt particularly married to any genre, or felt like any genre was really something that was coming from us in terms of our own labeling, our own commitment to. I don’t think my idea of it has really changed.
Miller: I have a question. Are you a Pixies fan?
I am, yes.
Miller: We spent a month on the road with them. They were a huge influence in 2018, opening for them and Weezer, and that was life-changing. It was incredible.
How was it life-changing?
Miller: We played a 30-minute set. When you’re opening a tour that big, you have to understand the assignment. You’re gonna go out there, the sun’s gonna be out. You’re gonna play to people walking in looking for seats, and you might have 100 diehard Sleigh Bells fans that got there early and are right up front. But really, you’re gonna spend the summer watching two incredible bands. So every night, right as the sun was going down – their setlist changed, but “Where Is My Mind” was always right around the middle.
I would walk up – these were sheds at the big outdoor amphitheaters – so I’d walk up to the very top of the lawn, and there’s a little bit of space out there even if it was sold out. And the amount of times there would be a storm rolling in in the distance, the light’s incredible, the sun’s going down, and I’m watching Pixies play “Where Is My Mind.” I mean, that was – I wish there was a better word than magical. But to have that experience for five weeks straight was just mind-blowing. It definitely still fills me with like, light and warmth thinking about it.
Krauss: They had a bunch of kids out with them – different band members were bringing different kids on the road, and that was the first time I had seen that. It was such a family operation, and now, getting ready to tour with a toddler, I often think about them.
It can be done.
Miller: They’re a very, very big reference for us because, I mean, the Pixies could be brutal. Frank Black will scream his head off, but it’s still somehow really playful, and it’s certainly never metal or hardcore – which, I spent years in that world, so I love it very much, but I think I relate to the Pixies brand of, for lack of a better word, aggression. Huge, extraordinary band – crazy experience.