KEXP Q&A: Kelton Sears of Kithkin

Fresh off releasing their new album, Rituals,Trances & Ecstasies For Humans in Face of The Collapse, and their recent energized performance at Sasquatch Music Festival, Kithkin are continuing their reign as the Cascadian Princes of Forest Rock. The first single off their new record, "Altered Beast", is a big, screeching, Kanye-style produced track that breathes life into your computer speakers. KEXP caught up with Kithkin band member Kelton Sears to ask him about the new song, the video game of the same name, and more!

What was the discussion like amongst the band as you decided to release “Altered Beast” as the first single?

We chose it because we thought it best represented what Kithkin meant to us at the time. Our music is meant to be catchy, but really noisy and abrasive a lot of the time so that you sort of have to dig around a bit to figure out exactly what's happening. "Altered Beast" is a good balance between those competing sonic forces, and we thought it was doubly apt since the lyrics are also sort of about these perceived competing forces.How good was Altered Beast as a Sega game??

I just barely remember it from daycare when I was 6 or something, playing it on the Sega Channel, which was the first video game console that went online. The babysitters working at the daycare thought the game was violent enough that they asked me to turn it off, so I remember thinking it was really awesome.

What food or drink do you HAVE to have while on tour?

We usually end up eating a lot of different kinds of burritos. Bob drinks milkshakes almost every day.

If you could transport through time and play with one musician in one other century, who and where and when?

Probably ancient Japan, when Ame No Uzume manifested as an old woman and raged at the goddess of sunlight for hiding in a cave by playing the first Taiko drum of all time, made out of a nearby sake drum. She wailed on it so hard, the goddess came out, returned light to the world, and banished her asshole brother who was summoning a bunch of sea storms to wreck the land. That would be a fun jam sesh to join in on I think.

Favorite moment from Sasquatch – not favorite experience, but actual moment: a flicker of time.

The three seconds I filmed a stranger jiggle the smiley face tattoo on his hairy breast around.

If you could have a beer, ice cream, shoe, apartment complex, burger chain or none of the above named after you what would you choose?

The band has talked about opening a bar named "Bob's" that would just have a bunch of pictures of Bob all over it.

What’s coming up next for the band?

We're playing the Summer Solstice next. In July, we're going to tour the US alongside the full cassette and vinyl release of our debut album, which will have a special "Mythic Rare" edition with patches, a poster, laser etchings and a large booklet we made about the end of the world.