She’s a Keeper retools its sound with the Westside Royal EP

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The members of local folk-rock band She’s a Keeper are young — drummer Fritz Hutchison is the oldest at 23; guitarist and singer Zac Jurden, guitarist and singer Colin Nelson, and bassist Elliott Phillips are all 22 — but don’t be fooled. They have been playing together in an official capacity since 2010, and Jurden says the musical bond started much earlier. In grade school.

The group’s 2013 release, Sterlin, served up a generous, cushy bundle of Americana songs, full of suggestive twangs and gentle, fingerpicked chords. No one would have minded if She’s a Keeper hadn’t changed a thing. No one except, of course, the band members themselves. So the group’s newest effort, a five-song EP titled Westside Royal, swells with pop sugar and buzzy electric-guitar riffs. The sound hews closer to Imagine Dragons than it does to, say, the Lumineers.

We chatted with Jurden about She’s a Keeper’s new developments ahead of the band’s EP-release show, which happens Saturday at Davey’s Uptown.

The Pitch: How long has Westside Royal been in the works, and how is it different from Sterlin?

Jurden: Since the release of Sterlin [in December 2013], we started writing different styles of songs. We migrated away from the folky, acoustic stuff to more electric-guitar-based stuff. We went into Element [Recording Studios] maybe a year ago and started tracking when we could. We didn’t do it all at one time. We knew Joel [Nanos, owner of Element] a lot better at this point and were a lot more comfortable in the studio, and we really took time to look for new sounds and stuff like that.

You had a year’s worth of material. Why these five songs for Westside Royal?

These five were the most complete. They just felt right. We have a bunch of other material that we’re still working on, but these were the songs that didn’t need any more work, where there weren’t pieces that were missing. And it was conveniently timed, too, since it’s been a year since our last release, and we just wanted to keep putting stuff out on a consistent basis.

You guys recently had a lineup change, right? You lost a member.

Yeah, Kate Sopcich. She played cello with us, and then she went to school in Chile — that was at the end of the summer. She’s off doing her own thing, and it was totally an amicable split. And it also came at the right time because our style shifted, and the cello wasn’t as necessary as it was before.

So your lineup has changed. Your sound has changed. A lot of bands in your position might take that as an opportunity to change the name, rebrand the act and start over. What has remained the same in She’s a Keeper?

The only thing that really remains, more than the name, is the way we approach the songwriting. We talked about changing the name, but we couldn’t come up with anything better. [Laughs.] But we approach writing songs the same way: There are three principal songwriters — me, Colin and Fritz — and it’s always been like that. We each individually write songs, and then come together on them and make them a band song. On Westside Royal, Colin and I are the only songwriters represented. Three are mine and two are Colin’s, and that’s indicated by who’s singing.

This release, more than any other, is more band-oriented. It’s much more cohesive than anything we’ve done before. It doesn’t sound like what I think people think She’s a Keeper sounds like.

She’s a Keeper has been a thing for five years. What have you learned about yourselves in that time together?

They’re my favorite people on the planet, definitely. I know that I’m going to know these guys for the rest of my life. I don’t think people can do what we’ve done for this long and not want to kill each other at times, but I feel pretty lucky to have found this kind of friendship and community and creative relationship with people.

I guess what we’ve learned about ourselves is that we can be persistent. We just kept doing it, and now the real goal is to continue to get better — maybe to get more serious about it. For so long, we’ve been trying to balance school and music, and lately, the music is a priority in my life. Colin and I are both at the end of college, and so now school might not be in the way as much as it used to be.

We’ve never wanted to be playing festivals or getting huge or whatever. It’s not like that. It’s just this thing that we really like doing. I think that, in the end, it’s the right thing for us all to do.