Premiere: Go Indigo’s “Do It Again” is the ’00s throwback you didn’t know you needed

Go Indigo. // Photo Courtesy of Ben McBee

You might know Kansas City-based musician Beau Harris from his current work with acts including Field Daze, or possibly from his former band, Wichita’s Old News, of whom we are big fans. Harris has a new project—Go Indigo—with collaborators Will Erickson and Joey Lemon, which the musician says is heavily inspired by by mid-2000s Meet Me in the Bathroom-era bands like Bloc Party, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and so on, combined with the European electronic music Harris has been around during the last couple of years he’s spent living in France and Spain.

Go Indigo plans to release singles every six to eight weeks in the lead-up to a summer EP release, and we’re excited to premiere the first single from the project, “Do It Again,” which takes all those influences and ties them up with super Death From Above 1979-influenced guitar line. Take a listen below, recorded at Gray House Studio and mastered by TJ Lipple (MGMT, Snail Mail, STRFKR), as you read our interview with Beau Harris. You’ll be happy you did.

The Pitch: How’d the band come together?

Beau Harris: The idea for Go Indigo came around 2022. I’d spent my early to mid-twenties playing and touring with some really fun, vaguely heavy Midwest emo bands and I wanted something new. I love playing that kind of music, but it’s totally dependent on a live show environment. In 2021, my partner and I moved to Nîmes, France, and the next year to Madrid, and I was completely separated from the music context I had cut my teeth on. I had to figure out how to continue making music in a new way, in a new place, with new tools.

It also doesn’t hurt that some of the best electronic music in the world comes from that corner of the world. That led me to get really interested in dance music and French synth-pop. I was also on a deep dive of early 2000s indie, particularly LCD Soundsystem, The Ting-Tings, and Bombay Bicycle Club. I started to wonder how I could fold all those sounds into the guitar-driven music I had been immersed in for so long. Plus, I had a drum machine with me, not a drum set, so I felt some sort of synchronicity with that. I started experimenting and writing kind of fucked up pop music though that lens.

Coming back to Kansas City, I started reverse engineering those electronic-ish songs in the band environment I was used to. Midway through the first session, I had this huge smile on my face and I knew we were onto something really cool. That rock to electronic and back again thing really clicked for me. I wanted to expand on that, and so Go Indigo was born.

What was the arc of transitioning from Old News to Go Indigo?

The transition between the two felt fairly natural. Old News—which in a sort of Han Solo carbonite situation at the moment—is 100% dependent on being live, frenzied, and in your face, so when I left for Europe, it couldn’t be done with the level of intention the music and our listeners deserved. Logistically, it was just very difficult. Also, when I came back, I was moving to KC and not going back-and-forth to Wichita as often. Since the musical ideas came from a new musical workflow and a new place, it felt exciting to start a whole new band and loop in new voices. More importantly, I think the transition to Go Indigo reflects some growth as a songwriter, too. The music feels more focused and vocally driven to me.

That said, everyone in Old News is still in touch, and we’ll swap feedback on new projects or collaborate on tunes or hang out when in town. All my love to Max, Joe, Sage, and Blaine, by the way! Hi!

Go Indigo. // Photo Courtesy of Ben McBee

Were these songs you wrote on your own or did you collaborate with your bandmates?

It’s definitely a bit of both! For this first collection of songs, I wrote and arranged a good first pass at each tune before looping in my dear friends Will Erickson and Joey Lemon (of the top notch band, Berry, who has a phenomenal new EP Half-life). They’re both excellent songwriters, producers, and engineers at Grey House Studio. Will played drums on these first several songs, and both of them produced, engineered and mixed all of them. Will and Joey pushed me a lot, both in preproduction and in-studio, and I think the three of us together made these songs the best versions of themselves. They’ve both had a profound impact on my musical development over the years. I couldn’t have done this without them.

What made you choose “Do It Again” as the first single?

“Do It Again” was the first song written and recorded, so it made sense to have it go first. Funny enough, that song was really more of an experiment. It was recorded in another session, a couple months before anything else. I wanted to hear a song go through the whole writing, recording, and mixing process before committing to really starting Go Indigo. Rather than building the plane as it was taking off, I wanted to build the plane and more-or-less evaluate if the plane was worth flying or not. If it didn’t work, I’d go back to the drawing board and try again. Luckily, it did! I’m really glad we went for it. Also, selfishly, I really love that last chorus and wanted that to be one of the first things people heard from us. It’s a total earworm.

Where do the rest of the singles go, musically?

I’m so excited about the other singles. They all sound so different from one another, which I’m wild about. Musically, the next few tracks are decidedly more adventurous with sampling and electronic elements. There’s a lot of playing guitar or synth, recording it, slicing it up into little pieces, and then playing it with a sampler. It’s a whole other texture. Other than that, I think the next 4 songs—which we’ll compile into an EP sometime later this year—are significantly more confident, sonically and personally. They have a noticeable funk and ’80s influence, too.

How will this translate musically into performance, and where will people be able to catch it live?

Translating this into a live set is a whole other project that I’ve been really excited about. Personally, I love it when bands allow the live and recorded versions of the songs to diverge and become the best versions of themselves within their own context. If recording is about making the most focused version of a song there can be, playing live is about making the most fun version of a song there can be. That’s where my headspace is at right now. We’re able to extend arrangements and improvise more, and it’s a more high-energy, human thing.

The live band is coming together beautifully and I can’t wait for people to see us this summer. We should be announcing our live debut really soon. I hope folks will keep an eye out on socials—@goindigo.band on Insta and TikTok—for that show. We’d love to see you there.