Boys Go To Jupiter is an NYC-based trio that has quickly become one of New York’s most exciting acts to follow. The band is composed of three members, Jess (lead singer/songwriter), Caleb (keys/songwriter), and Luke (guitar/songwriter/producer) – but the Boys Go To Jupiter universe is vast. In February of this year, the band released their debut album, Meet Me After Practice. Seven out of the ten tracks on the album debuted as singles over the past two years, which allowed fans to engage with each one individually, and built anticipation for future releases. Releasing the album gave new life to these singles, and served as a celebratory final episode of Boys Go To Jupiter’s first season.

Despite a last minute cancellation of their show at Brooklyn Made following the venue’s sudden closure and a subsequent venue change, fans delightedly flocked to Brooklyn’s iconic Music Hall of Williamsburg for an immersive night of live music.

The show opened with an electric set from another one of NYC’s favorite bands, Mary Shelley. Their genre-bending sound, magnetic chemistry, and often absurd lyricism commanded the audience’s attention as the room filled with eager listeners. The four-piece band played an enthralling set that featured tracks such as “The Nursing Home Jig” and “You Look Just Like My Mother.” The creativity, dynamism, and humor that Mary Shelley brings to their performances is transfixing. It was the perfect intro to the night’s headliner, a band that’s theatrical stage presence and eclectic sound similarly captivates listeners.

Boys Go To Jupiter opened their set with “Theme Song,” the final track off of the album. Laced with snippets of other songs from the album, “Theme Song” serves as a the perfect encapsulation of the band’s sound. The song also concludes the Meet Me After Practice short film that was released in conjunction with the album. The film is a deeply realistic and beautifully heartbreaking portrayal of how friendships are born, evolve, and end. It provides a layer of context behind many of the album’s themes and exemplifies the creative breadth of the band’s members and their collaborators.

The crowd knew every song, and danced and sang along throughout the course of the show. Jess’ stellar vocals filled the room as the band played songs such as “Overconfident,” “Tiltawhirl,” and “Last Last Time.” The chemistry shared between each member makes their performances a complete delight to witness. The secret ingredient to what makes Boys Go To Jupiter’s music so irresistible, though, is their evocative storytelling. We hear this in many of their songs, but it’s most apparent in “Virginia,” the penultimate track on Meet Me After Practice. “Virginia” is the first song the band wrote together, and it’s an obvious fan favorite. This “disco ballad of a rising star” tells the story of Virginia, a young woman who abandons everything she knows in pursuit of stardom. As Caleb explained, “It’s a story of ambition gone too far. A story of dreams that were never reeled in.”

At a Boys Go To Jupiter show, you can expect thematic substance to be matched with aesthetic grandeur from start to finish. Jess’ ability to inject emotion into her vocals along with her physicality on stage makes each moment entertaining. If you’re a fan of musical theatre, every song in Boys Go To Jupiter’s arsenal will speak to your heart. During “Wall St,” the band was joined on stage by Thesaurus Rex, another Brooklyn-based rock band. “Wall St” is an upbeat track about the excitement and anticipation that comes when a new love interest enters your life. As they shared more of their stories throughout the night, the band explored themes of friendship, romance, coming of age, and loss in songs such as “Lovers Always Lose” and “wish u were here.” “Lovers Always Lose” is a tale of heartbreak and an ode to those for whom love seems to be a losing game. Each song transported the audience into a new world. At the end of the night, they played a rock cover of Annie’s “Tomorrow,” and expressed their immense gratitude to the audience.

Boys Go To Jupiter has achieved remarkable things throughout their time performing together. They’ve performed multiple sold out shows, released an album, filmed several music videos, and developed a sound that is uniquely their own. Perhaps the most touching of their achievements, however, is the dedicated community they have built and nurtured. The projects they’ve shared (both musical and visual) are well-executed and intentional, which has engendered a cohesive universe of work that is consistently engaging. It leads you to constantly ask, “What will they do next?” Above all, it’s something that fans want to be a part of.

We caught up with Boys Go To Jupiter on the day of their album release to chat about their recent projects, touring, authenticity as artists, and more. Read along to learn how they answered these questions for the groovement.

First of all, congrats on your album release! I’m curious about the origins of Boys Go To Jupiter, can you tell me about how the band was formed?
Caleb: I’m never the one who tells this story, and the reason is because I was an outsider to witness what happened. Which was, Luke comes home (we live together) and says, “I matched with this girl on Hinge. She’s really cool, she’s a musician, we just went on a date, but I can’t be with her. What do I do? We have to make this work”. I’m like, “we?”. So what happens is the craziest thing. She comes over, and he is like, “here’s the girl I was talking about!”. We’re all in my room, there’s a piano in there, and we start playing. There was definitely some magic in the air. It was awesome. So then, in that moment it became a we. What followed was a month of strategic talks with both of them. I got lunch with Jess, and I would go to Luke’s room and help him craft texts. I was trying to keep things from the other person just enough to create a narrative. This is an exclusive scoop because I’ve never said this part. Usually I’m completely negated from the story, when in reality I did a lot.

Luke: We usually trade off between Jess and I on who gets to tell the story.

Caleb: I usually get tacked onto the end like, “and he lived with Caleb”, but now I’m getting my due.

Jess: Caleb was always very much a part of it. Luke and I went on three dates, so it wasn’t chill at that point. I wasn’t like, “Ya, let’s be friends”. The reason Caleb is so crucial is I don’t know if we would have remained friends had I not come over and met Caleb with Luke and been like “maybe we should try to be together”.

Wow, that is a crazy origin story! I think I’m using dating apps completely wrong. When did you play your first show together after that?
Jess: We met in March and dated from March to April. Starting in April we became friends. It was about two months before we decided to be a band, and then we played our first show in August. This August it will be 3 years. And then we didn’t put out our first song until 6 months later. We say it’s been 2 years of releasing stuff because that feels more relevant to when we met and all of the energy that went into creating the idea of the band.

How did you land on the name Boys Go To Jupiter?
Luke: I have a running list of band names in my notes app that I’ve had for the past 8 years. Right before I met Jess, I remember I was walking on the street and it came to me. I was like “Boys Go To Jupiter, that’s a great band name!”.

Jess: You showed me the list on our first date and we talked about the name Boys Go To Jupiter.

Luke: And before our third date that didn’t end up being a real date, she got me a notebook that said “band names” on it.

Jess: Isn’t that fucked? I was so thoughtful.

Luke: We booked our first show at the Sultan Room, which is not a small venue, because we lied and said that we were signed to a label. I remember texting Jess and saying we needed a band name, so we really dove into creating a band persona immediately.

It’s been really cool to see you guys grow and put out more music. You’re obviously about to start your tour, which is so exciting. What is on your mind as you approach the first dates of the tour
Caleb: I called my dad yesterday and told him it’s like planning the world’s craziest vacation ever. You have to make an itinerary, but also you’re bringing thousands of dollars of gear. And you have to figure out venues and ticket prices.

Luke: And you have to get a felt board to put the merch prices on.

Caleb: But it’s pretty fun. It’s selling pretty well, and we’re really excited to go. I feel like we’ve tested the show and the vibe and our story here [NYC], but I think it’ll be really cool to bring it to people somewhere else who are a little bit bought in already. They already know what they’re seeing and have maybe heard a song or two. Now they get to see the full experience, which is this really fun show that we love putting on.

Jess: It feels like such a celebration. This has really been two years of us planning to get to this moment today. Knowing that we get to celebrate these two years and this phase of music in new cities is really exciting. Really cool. We feel ready in a way that I don’t know if we’ve ever felt before. It feels like some part of us has grown up, and we’re old enough to do this big thing. And do it the right way. I feel like we’re really ready. I’m really confident that people will get what they paid for.

You’ve slowly released a lot of the songs from the album over the past few years, but releasing it all together in one collection today is a different experience for both you and the listeners. What are you hoping for people to take away from it now?
Luke: We really pride ourselves on storytelling and narrative. It’s kind of funny because when we first came up with the idea for the album, we thought none of these songs make any sense together and wondered how we could shape this into something cohesive. But, I feel like they have naturally fallen into place. They’re all in sort of different styles, but they’re all nostalgic styles. The themes of the songs are all about growing, learning, being a kid, and all the things that come with that. We just put out a short film that came with the album that solidifies that throughline and brings out those elements in the rest of the tracks. Listening to it now, it feels a lot more cohesive.

Caleb: We didn’t write this in the normal way. Especially in those first two years, you don’t know who you are. You don’t know if you want to get big or if it will happen. These songs were written in all different places of thinking about what they will do for us and who is going to hear them. So this is an attempt to reign in ten things that were made in pretty different stages of life for different purposes, make them into one thing, and convey that to people.

Jess: And say goodbye to it too. This has been a really beautiful first two years and we’ve also grown up a little bit. We’re going to do the next set of music differently. It’s not necessarily going to be completely sonically different, but the way that we know ourselves as musicians is different. And I think a little bit less pandering now, hopefully.

You mentioned a lot of your songs are very narrative oriented, which is something I have definitely noticed. How do you approach songwriting and storytelling, and craft those narratives? Especially being that you’re all songwriters and are all throwing pieces into it.
Jess: There are different versions. There’s the version where we sit down together and write a song together. That one often is the most storytell-y version of our songs because it’s easy for us to just contribute that way. Rather than someone saying, “This is my personal experience, let me talk about that”. So when we come together these are the songs that come out. When we're writing independently it is more like, “This is how I see the world”. There’s more of an I-ness to it.

Caleb: I listened through it all [the album] last night when it first came out, which I hadn’t ever done. It’s a good balance of writing together and writing individually, and I think that balance is really good. In a band that writes every lyric together, you’re going to be giving up things. You’re going to be giving up that flow musically, but also narratively. If I have to be writing and explaining how I feel to them to convince them that that is what the line should be, I am going to start diluting how I feel and it’s not going to be honest. So I feel like this mix is important. There are songs on the album that would have come out differently had I had to explain myself. I love the balance. That’s my favorite thing about the way we’ve set this band up. We don’t write everything together. When we do, you get songs like “Virginia”. It’s super fun and it's super storytell-y, but when we write alone you get some intimacy that helps us stand out and feels really good to my brain.

Jess: I love the songs we write together and I love that experience. I also love the songs I write because they’re from me. I love, more than anything, the experience when one of them brings something to the band. I know them so well, so I know what they are talking about. Maybe not as clearly as when they wrote it, but we don’t even totally have to talk about what the song is for me to be able to communicate it. I feel them when I’m singing it. I try not to do this because I think it’s sort of embarrassing and cringey, but I sometimes try to watch them watch me sing it to see if they’re getting what they were trying to sell with the song.

Caleb: I’ll cut Jess off to compliment here. It is the coolest thing. With “I’ll Get Over You” for example, I wrote that song and Jess got it instantly. But she’s worked on it and it’s improved. It’s so cool to see something be brought to life by someone, and made even better. And you don’t really have to do anything. At least with Jess, she does it herself. She figures it out in a really cool way.

Jess: It’s also just having listened to what they like stylistically for a while, I’ve picked up some things. I know the tone Luke wants and the tone Caleb wants. It’s nice that we’re in flow with each other in a way we didn’t used to be.

Caleb: Hopefully it’ll only get better.

Absolutely, it seems like you are all friends in a way that helps make that feel very natural. I also want to talk about the short film that was released today. It was so fun to watch. It was a very realistic and human portrayal of friendship, connection, and how it grows and also sometimes declines. Can you tell me a little bit more about the intent behind that and how it was brought to life
Luke: I feel like the inception of this started with the director, Patrick Linehan. We saw another video that he had made that was this statement of purpose of this artist named Jackson August. We thought that was so cool, and totally aligned with our values and creative inclinations as a band. I remember last summer we talked about wanting to have that. We figured it would be the perfect way to tie the album together. If we’re being honest, we were a little nervous because we released a lot of the songs as singles. We didn’t want to short change people when we released the album adding only a couple songs. We figured this was the perfect opportunity to make this short film to go along with it, and then it will create this whole world that will be this one inclusive package.

Jess: It was a really cool way we wrote it too, and we’ve never done anything like that. We listened to the full album, sat down with Patrick and did a free write for ten minutes to write little things, and read them together .We saw where there was crossover and what was interesting to all of us, and then we compiled that and wrote the narrative through that.

Caleb: I think it was cool because in the search for the honesty underneath the album, this was a good writing process to make it feel really honest. We just dumped out what was in our brains. Obviously that’s not enough so then we find what we have in common, shave parts away, and then turn it into a story that we like.

Jess: We used the tracklist order as a way to map out the story plot. So this is where you start, then you get to “Overconfident” and see what you’re like in your overconfident phase as a person, then you’re in your “Lovers Always Lose” phase.

Caleb: It ended up being full of some easter eggs. There are lines that reference lyrics and things in the score that quote songs. We hope people like this. I’ve never seen anything like this, and I hope that people really feel that it accompanies the album.

Definitely! I think it reframed everything for me and was a very good way to complete things. It helped me listen to the album in a different way. You also have a few other music videos that are also amazing and so cinematic. That’s something I’ve noticed in your music, your performances, and in the band as a whole. There are lots of theatrical elements to it. I am curious to know if any or all of you have a musical theatre or film background, and if those references are intentional.
Jess: Luke and Caleb both come from cinematic scoring backgrounds. Caleb also did theatre and has written musicals. Luke’s favorite pieces of music of all time are the WIzard of Oz score.

Caleb: We all bring interesting genre preferences, but we all align on liking, for example, a song from some random-ass musical. And that’s cool because in my life I’ve done a lot of musicals and I wrote musicals. It’s like, I can’t believe I’m a guy who likes musicals. I still feel that a little bit, but it’s cool to at least find two other people who like that.

Jess: And I went to school for theatre, so that’s my background. I’ve always been in a band and done musical theater, so they’ve sort of been interchangeable. But I’ve never been in a band where the band is musical theatre to some extent.

I love that crossover. Are there any other influences or things you tend to reference, musically or non-musically, that inspire you
Jess: Yes, Adrienne Lenker of Big Thief. She’s kind of always our guide.

Caleb: She’s my guide in artistic integrity. I love her music, but I love even more that she makes her music and doesn’t listen to others. I have no artists in my family or benchmarks for what it is supposed to look like to pursue music. So Adrienne is a role model for how an artist is supposed to carry themselves in the world as someone trying to say something. So, I look up to her for that. And musically, she’s awesome.

Jess: We took a songwriting class with her, which was not when we first became infatuated with her. We had that before. She just happened to be teaching this class, and we all took it. It was a moment of us coming into a certain kind of artistry. We like the way she does things in her own way. She releases a song with Big Thief, and then she goes and releases it herself. We like that. We like that the song can live many lives.

Caleb: One recording of a song doesn’t make the song, there’s different ways to do it.

Luke: I feel like each of us has a different decade. I like the 90s, Jess likes the 80s, and Caleb likes the 70s. We all have things that we really like from each decade, and it’s kind of a cool mish mash of all those things. It’s really cool.

You can totally hear that there’s an eclectic mix of influences and different sounds, but it’s still coherent. It sounds like authenticity is a major thing you’re chasing. Are there practices you’ve evolved to help you stay true to that?
Jess: We traditionally like a hook. We’re good at that. We like a song with a chorus that you can sing to. So how do you make that song authentic each time? This is a question that we are always asking. The times that Luke or Caleb are not sure about a song they just wrote because it’s so honest are the times that I’m always like, “Let’s do that one!”. It’s a constant struggle to believe that the things you are saying earnestly are the things that are the best, and that you don’t have to package it all the time.

Luke: It’s really interesting. I work at a recording studio that a lot of more pop and hip-hop inclined people come to. Especially in the pop sphere, there’s a completely different way of writing songs. People get into a room and they just bang it out and come up with stuff. It’s not necessarily based on anything, it's just that we have to write three songs by the end of the day so let’s do it as fast as possible. I feel like a lot of music is written that way because the industry has made it that way. We are very much not like that. We are songwriters. We won’t write a song unless we know what we’re writing about. It has to be something real that it’s coming from. It has to come from something in one of us.

That’s very cool. I always enjoy any conversation about authenticity and what that means for people. Even in daily life, finding authenticity is such a journey. It’s something that you stray away from and then come back to oftentimes.
Caleb: It’s hard because it’s a moving target too. You’re going towards it and want to reach what you believe to be your authentic self, but then you might get distracted and come back to realize that’s actually not the target. It may never be a place to reach. It’s a north star.

Absolutely, it’s not a destination. It sounds like you have all been in different creative spaces across theatre and music. Do you have a creative community here in New York that you often work with and lean on?
Caleb: The last track of the album, Theme Song, the end is so sweet. Everyone is singing the melody together. In that recording, we had everyone who was in that creative community with us come into Luke’s room and stand on his bed to sing that melody and layered it up. So if you listen to that, it’s such a beautiful callout to all the people who have been there for us in this and other creative projects.

Jess: I went to NYU, so I have that little world from that. But I genuinely feel like my universe of creatives in New York has expanded from the band. All of the people from college are there now, and they’re involved with this in a way that only could have happened because we have this center. We have some people that nobody really knows how much they've done for us. A friend of ours, Lily, has been styling the band for basically two years. She works as a costume designer and has been doing it because she’s our friend and loves us. She has been such a part of the fabric of this band. People like that who just say yes and become a part of this.

Caleb: It’s just cool. I remember when I was little, I used to go to this summer camp that was a day camp for art stuff. I didn’t know what growing up would be, but I just wanted my life to be like that camp. Band aside, that’s just a beautiful thing to have. It's very nourishing and gives me a lot of purpose and meaning.

That’s so special. I’m always saying, “I just want to do creative things with my friends”. It makes it so fun to do those things with people you love and that love you. My last question is about the future. Obviously you’ve just released an album and are about to go on tour, but are there things you are thinking about and looking forward to in the future as you continue to make music?

Luke: Yes! We’re calling it season two. We don’t know exactly what it entails, or even what format. But, we’ve been dying to get these songs out so that we can start putting out more songs. We are already planning what’s next. Whether it’s an album, singles, or some EPs, we don’t know, but we know what the songs are. As soon as we get back from tour, we’re gonna have two days to relax, go to Six Flags, and then we’re gonna start recording. So, definitely more music in the works.

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