Cleveland up-and-coming band Ottawa might only be five years old, but the foursome have been writing music together in one way or another for over a decade, and it shows. Their newest single, “Strangers,” arrives with an amount of ease that is only accomplished by confidence and comfort with one another. A perfect summer jam, “Strangers” marks the beginning of a great year for Ottawa, who plan on releasing plenty of more music before the year is up. In fact, you’ll probably hear some more new tunes before the end of the summer.
Listen to “Strangers” and learn a little bit more about the band below.
Interview by Dom Vigil
Can you tell us a little bit about Ottawa for any readers who might not be familiar?
Will Hooper [guitar]: Ottawa started about 5 years ago, but the roots of the band go even further back. Dale, Tim and myself had a previous band together, and even before that I was attempting to make pop music with Dale. So we’ve all been collectively making music together for 10 years. Jeremy joined the band about three years ago and finalized our current line up.
What is the music scene like in Cleveland? Do you feel that it has helped to shape the kind of music you’re writing and playing today?
The Cleveland music scene is very diverse, lots of different music styles and genres. There is a lot of competition, and that’s only made us work harder to stand out.
You guys all have a wide variety of influences – how do you feel this affects your sound? What do you feel you’re all able to bring to the table?
The more influences the better, but when we all get together we can agree on making guitar driven, melody heavy indie rock music. Melody and songs always come first for us over guitar solos.
You also recently release your new single, “Strangers.” Can you tell us a little bit about this track? What inspired it?
Strangers came to us really quickly, it was born out of a really slow two chord jam and some really catchy vocal melodies from Dale. We sped up the tempo, turned on the overdrive pedals, threw in a bridge and we had ourselves a killer pop song
I think a lot of people will take away one of the best summer indie rock anthems of all time. Short, simple, sweet and full of catchy hooks
With “Strangers” out now, can fans expect to hear some more new music soon?
We have 5 other brand new singles that we will be releasing all summer, Stay tuned!
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