First Spin

Magenta Wave on Seattle Rock, Living with Bandmates, and the Influence of Flipturn

• First Spin • Season 1 • Episode 10

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This week I sat down with Nathaniel McCurley, bassist for Seattle’s own Magenta Wave. We talked about what it’s like to live in a house with your entire band, how much distortion is too much before you stop calling it indie, and why their track “Why Am I In Love With You” caught fire.

Nathaniel shared the story behind their move from Bellingham to Seattle, the lessons learned from producing their early songs with friends, and what it’s like to build momentum in a city stacked with serious musicians. We also dug into the band’s influences—from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Hendrix—and how newer artists like Flipturn are shaping the way Magenta Wave thinks about their sound.

You’ll hear Magenta Wave tracks in this order:

  1. Solitude
  2. Why Am I In Love With You
  3. Texas (Very Often)

Stick around for the Final Spin, where Nathaniel talks about opening for the Chili Peppers, why Wynton Marsalis is on his personal playlist, and his pick for an under-the-radar Seattle artist you should check out right now: Avery Cochran.



If you enjoyed this episode, it’d mean a lot if you left a quick review—it's one of the best ways to help new listeners find the show.

And if you want to hear more artists worth your time, follow First Spin on social:
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Thanks for listening—see you next week.

Hayden (00:01)
Hello and welcome to First Spin, a podcast for people who are tired of explaining why their Spotify rap is just steely Dan and whale sounds. Each week I'm going to introduce you to an artist who isn't yet getting the recognition that I think they deserve. Now there are only two rules. Number one, I dig it. And number two, the artist has less than a hundred thousand monthly listeners on Spotify. Now the goal here at First Spin is to help the artists we like continue to grow their fan bases. And honestly, just by being here, you're helping to make that happen. So thanks for joining.

to another episode of First Spin. I am your host Hayden and before we get into the episode, I wanted to take a minute to say thank you to Matt, aka Fuegestein. Many of you follow him on social media. He took the time to chat with me the other day about this whole thing and I really, really appreciate it. So definitely be sure to give him a follow. My guest today is Nathaniel McCurley, bassist for Seattle rock band Magenta Wave. We had a great conversation about living with your bandmates.

How Heavy is Too Heavy for music to still be considered indie, and the one band that Magenta Wave can all agree on. Here's a snippet of a song that was released shortly after we recorded called Solitude, and then we'll get into my conversation with Nathaniel from Magenta Wave.

Nathaniel (01:34)
I think I'm over solitude and love And I think I'm over what it all was

Hayden (01:45)
We have

I came across you guys, I was at the gym and then Texas very often, is your most recent release came up on like a Spotify playlist of some kind. And I immediately like, as soon as I was done with my set, I went and grabbed my phone and you know, saved the song because I was so pumped on it. how did that, how did that song come about?

Nathaniel (02:34)
Well, I'm glad it was motivational to acknowledge that as well. It gave you a little extra gusto for what you're working on. Our songwriter, know, Grayson, he's always writing. And we have a band house over here in Seattle. We all live together. So we're always working on new material and brought us kind of the backbones to the song. One day in the garage, we were going through a really good creative spell at that time where we kind of had four or five different songs take shape.

that will be released over the next five, six months as well here. And brought it to us and it was a great song from the start and it deserved our attention. And from there we began to nurture it. And yeah, it took a little while to actually get it out. We were hoping to actually get it out in January, February, but it came out early in May and that's okay. And we're stoked to be able to share it.

Hayden (03:28)
So with the rest of these ones that you have planned for release later in the year, are they going to come out as an EP? Are you just going to drop them as singles one at a time? Do you have a plan with that?

Nathaniel (03:38)
Yeah, we absolutely do. We are very intentional with everything that we do. I think there's two perspectives here. One, good music is good music. you know, often it has ways of finding the people that need to hear it, but also at the same time as a small artist with limited resources and a small advertising budget, you know, you have to maximize what you're doing at these earlier stages. Might not necessarily be as artistic as we would wish to support.

But I think we're going to be looking at a couple more singles, yes, and then an EP. people might argue that this encompasses the notion of an album. I think it's something that we've talked about a little bit and had a little bit of influence towards maybe considering that as our marketing strategy. But for us, I feel like we want our debut album to be a right way, like a gateway, a passage almost, as a lot of the artists that we look up to. And want to make sure that when we...

really start to write the music for that. has the quality and the caliber that we want to start to achieve as songwriters as well.

Hayden (04:42)
Yeah, no, that makes sense. ⁓ So who are some of the artists that you guys look up to? I know you, read or was listening to a podcast that you guys were on a while back where you're talking about everybody kind of bringing different influences. What overlap do you have? What are some of the artists that you guys all are just like, yeah, this is it. This is what we want our sound to be like.

Nathaniel (05:03)
that is a great question. Honestly, we there, there, it's so tough to actually answer this question as all of us do come from kind of different backgrounds to a certain degree. think in our genre right now, Flip Turn is a band that we really admire. Just like holistically, I feel like they have a lot of things going for them sonically and the emotion and vulnerability to the music really speaks. The Backseat Lovers, definitely another group that

Grayson, you know, connected with early on and influenced his, you know, songwriting as he started to write music. And I think Bristan Moroni, another name for him that kind of comes up. For the rest of the band, you know, we fell in love with music, not necessarily listening to what you might classify as like indie rock in the first place. So for me, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were a magical group. I'm just a really absolutely love flea, you know, as a bass player myself. And I...

just adore John Franchante and everything that he does with his guitar. And then our lead guitarist takes from Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and David Gilmore and loves John Franchante himself. And our drummer just loves classic rock. So we do kind of have a couple of different influences that come together here for what our sound is. And I feel like as you might call us an indie rock band right now, I prefer to use the term rock band to keep it open.

I like to think as we start to really explore the depths of our sound, that'll be the direction that we take. But as an indie rock band, you might not necessarily see as much distortion or as heavier sounds as we kind of like to explore a little bit with our early stuff as well.

Hayden (06:41)
I feel like that term indie kind of comes with some connotations, but it also seems to be expanding a little bit. You do kind of, I think we associate indie as being kind of softer and mellow and acoustic, but I think, you know, it's short for independent, right? So anybody who's more or less doing it on their own, you can kind of throw that indie label in front of. And I think that that's appropriate. You mentioned Flip Turn and Backseat Lovers, two artists that I actually saw different years, I think.

at the Ohana Festival down in Orange County that Eddie Vedder puts on. I don't know if you're familiar with that, both of those artists put on a great show. And I'm thinking like you guys are Seattle guys, like you gotta get on that Ohana bill. Let me get Eddie on the phone and I'm gonna pitch Magenta Way for next year's Ohana.

Nathaniel (07:29)
If you're able to make that happen, we're itching to play anything and everything at the moment.

Hayden (07:35)
And then you mentioned the chili peppers, which obviously, you know, I mean, I'm a massive, I live in LA, like chili peppers are gods in Southern California, right? So I hear the flea influences in your, in your bass playing for sure. There's a cool part in, in Texas very often that leads into the solo where you have like a little bass, like, like a walk down and then a walk back up and then it goes back in and then the guitar kind of does something similar before it.

blast into the solo like I is such a flea fuchante move right there. Was that where is that what you guys were going after there?

Nathaniel (08:09)
It was just how it worked out. I don't like to think that I write like with the lens of trying to necessarily play like as a certain individual now, but everything comes together a little bit and know, flee for him. Jimi Hendrix was one of his greatest inspirations. So as I kind of started to emulate what he was doing early on, like all I'll have whispers of Jimi with certain fills that I'll play myself. Well, that's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome that you picked it up and it's fun. You know, I don't get a lot of opportunities to go on a little run here and there like that. So I like to have fun with it.

Hayden (08:39)
Yeah. Anytime, anytime it opens up, that's great. So you released an EP in 2024 called, Sold My Soul. there's some, there's some great tracks on there. Tight Rope is a really cool one that I love. There's another one called, Why Am I In Love With You that has a lot, it like has like four or five times as many streams as any of the other songs, at least on Spotify. Do you have a sense of like why that song in particular is resonating with people?

Nathaniel (09:06)
Absolutely. ⁓ I think lyrically it really paints a vignette of the emotion between the romance and that highlights the romance itself. I think Tie Rope is just as good of a song honestly for us as well like doing things independently. We were significantly better at advertising releasing our second song which is Why Am I In Love With You so I felt like that.

you know, having a bit of an understanding of how we wanted to create like our visual content and how we wanted to translate our emotion, you know, on our screen for people to connect with. I think the songwriting itself though, it highlights what we do really well is kind of lay a bass with a verse and then come in with the dramatic chorus. And Taylor loves to play guitar and you you hear that on the solo towards the end and I felt like you did a really good job with that one.

Hayden (09:57)
Here's Why Am I In Love With You by MagentaWave.

Nathaniel (10:02)
So stay still, stay still, you're hurting

me

You

you

with you

Hayden (11:08)
Yeah, I mean, a lot of the songs do, they just build into just a beautiful, just kind of crescendo of noise and, you know, guitar solo, they like start kind of mellow and have that, that real prog rock feel to them, which is cool without kind of some of those other elements of prog rock. It's, it's a cool kind of middle ground, I think. So you were talking about social media and, and marketing and all that kind of stuff. Do you guys handle that all yourself?

Nathaniel (11:35)
100%. Yeah, 100%. It is, yeah. And also, you know, just one of the responsibilities of trying to, you know, make it as a band in today's age as well. I had a kind of some advice given from another musician saying, you know, realistically, you're responsible for your songs and you're responsible for your content. you know, until you hypothetically have millions of dollars to work with, that is just the reality of situation. That's okay.

Hayden (11:38)
Or it ought to work.

Nathaniel (12:04)
Absolutely okay, but yes solely handling our social media and our advertising direction as well. And that is like part of the puzzle.

Hayden (12:12)
Do you all have jobs outside of the band? Very much And you all live together? Which is like in some ways probably a blessing, but in other ways I'm sure creates some challenges. Only a blessing. I love that. I love that. Practice like anytime all four of you are in the house or do you have like very strict schedules that you stick

Nathaniel (12:16)
100%. Yep.

Only a blessing.

We got a pretty strict schedule. It's usually Tuesday, Wednesday. Ideally, we hit the three hour mark on a session and then if we can supplement it, maybe on a Friday or a Saturday as well. That'll happen. I think, know, realistically, we would like to practice three or four times a week, but just all of us are working still 25, 35 hours a week at the moment. Got to pay the bills and just schedules are kind of all over the place for the four of us. So we do our best to come together and

Luckily, you know, we have a garage in our house that we can practice with and that makes things easier than it is for a lot of other groups that are maybe paying for a space they don't necessarily resonate with or playing in maybe like a shed in a backyard or a garage with like an angry neighbor. We've gotten really, really lucky with our ability to play.

Hayden (13:22)
Hey, I was gonna ask you, so neighbors, I mean, it's cool. Like, you know, I feel like the neighbors are lucky. They get to listen to you guys all the time, but do you have cool neighbors?

Nathaniel (13:32)
I think we have an elderly woman next door. We don't actually see her too often. We are on a corner lot. Kind of just the luck of the draw as well. We moved down from Bellingham, Washington up north the fall of 2023 here in Seattle.

Hayden (13:46)
So cool. I love that. Yeah. It's so cool.

Nathaniel (13:50)
I'm glad that you actually recognize the name. That's awesome.

Hayden (13:53)
I went to college with a couple girls who were from Bellingham and like when you get to college, like everybody is like kind of shitting on their hometown, right? Like I certainly was like, I was like, you know, I was not a fan of where I grew up when I was 18 years old. And I feel like most people, especially where I went to school was very rural in Northern California. But I remember these two girls, I don't even remember their names, but I remember that they were from Bellingham, Washington, and they were obsessed with their hometown. And I thought that was like the strangest thing.

But then a couple of years later, I got a chance to go to Bellingham and I was like, no wonder these, no wonder they were obsessed with this place. This is fucking awesome.

Nathaniel (14:28)
It's a special, it's a special spot. A little sleepy, absolutely love it and that's okay. I miss the swimming to say the least. Yeah, you just get a slice of everything up there. It is beautiful.

Hayden (14:40)
But you guys, so you moved down to Seattle a couple years ago, I assume to just kind of be closer to more venues and more opportunities.

Nathaniel (14:49)
Yeah, yeah. In Bellingham, there's a couple like gorgeous venues up there, but you know, it is a collegiate scene. I went to school myself, you know, was kind of heavily involved in what it was like to both be in a band pursuing music at the time and kind of understanding actually what that meant and being in college as well. And, know, you come down to Seattle as a collegiate band and you're playing with adults and everybody is extremely technically advanced on their instruments. And that was great. That was exactly what we needed to be like, all right, you know, here's the next step.

We're a little younger than a lot of people here and that's okay. And we're excited to get better and just, you know, start being surrounded by a scene that has everything to offer. ⁓

Hayden (15:27)
Do

feel like that helps improve your technical skills, just being around more seasoned musicians?

Nathaniel (15:35)
100%. Yeah, we've been pretty disciplined from the start in regards to practicing, but especially coming down to Seattle, it wasn't necessarily a no days off mentality, but we're here to play music and we get better and we are a little competitive with things as well. And that was just exactly what we needed. We had really a basic understanding of Seattle geography at the time too.

Hayden (15:55)
Go ahead.

Nathaniel (16:02)
moved into a little bit of a quieter neighborhood still kind of close to the heart of the city and a lot of the venues and kind of got blessed actually with a house from a friend of a friend that had a couple like old associates moving out of a place that they needed some tenants to fill and had a nice like quiet spot here and we have the garage to play in and it kind of felt like a blessing almost from Seattle to be like you know here's four young guys really trying to pursue music like the opportunity is yours you know here we go and we're trying to take advantage of that day by day.

Hayden (16:32)
Yeah, no, that's great. I know you have a, you have a show coming up soon. think this episode will air probably after that show, but I'll definitely promote it on the socials beforehand. The Capitol Hill Block Party, I think I saw. What's that all about? I'm not from the Seattle area, but it seems like a kind of a cool event.

Nathaniel (16:52)
It is. It's pretty rad. I'd say there's two main festivals at the city like D'orazon. Well, the organizations within the city. Capitol Hill and then a festival called Bumper Shoe. Bumper Shoe, a little older, definitely has some serious prestige associated with some of the names that have played the festival back in the day. ⁓ it's a coveted spot for a band to start to get recognition being placed in these local spots on the festival lineups.

Hayden (17:01)
Yeah, I've heard of Bumper Shoot. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nathaniel (17:19)
We've been working really hard here now for almost a couple of years and we're excited to play. It's a fun thing, you you get a pass to the festival as an artist and it's just always nice putting around music for the entire day no matter what.

Hayden (17:31)
What did you guys have other shows, other shows coming up besides that one?

Nathaniel (17:35)
We're playing an event called Fremont Fridays Tomorrow, which is like an outside show. It's kind of a summer series downtown Seattle with like a psychedelic funk group called MidPack that are good buddies of ours. So excited to kind of switch up the genres for the night and have some fun just listening to their set as well and get to play a show with them. It's always fun. We're playing another event. It's called Bite of Seattle, July 26th. And that's kind of like a

Hayden (18:04)
That's my birthday. Cool.

Nathaniel (18:06)
No way. Well, happy early birthday. It's like a food and music event down at the city center under the space needle. it's a little bit more of like a passive style of performance, which necessarily isn't our forte playing to passive audiences, but we get to play outside. That's always fun. Get a little bit of money from it. Never hurts. And they get to play in front of us in new phase as well. So stoked for that as well. Yeah.

Hayden (18:10)
Yeah

It hurts, yeah.

and you pick up a few new fans from an event like that, then it's definitely worth it.

Nathaniel (18:42)
But when there's no pressure on us to sell tickets, you know, for the most part, as long as it feels like things are done at least all right, we're happy to play. I still feel like in these early stages, it's just about playing as much as you can, building experience and just having fun with it as well. Not losing that for sure.

Hayden (18:59)
Yeah. And the song, like the recorded songs are so well done. They're so well produced for a, you know, indie band, you know, for lack of a better term. What, what was that process like? Did you have a lot of studio experience or it looks like you had some, some help, some producers in the studio with you guys. Tell me about that.

Nathaniel (19:18)
Great question. So our first four songs, we played with a band called Marvel. They're a Seattle Portland based, kind of have a really beautiful alternative sound. And we played a show with them. They're a little bit older than us and just connected really well during the show. Us being four guys that have no clue about anything related to the studio or starting to take these next steps and kind of transition as a band needed a lot of help.

And we had the blessing of them just coming in on their goodwill, holding our hands, of providing a strategy with pre-production in regards to maybe some more advanced songwriting techniques at the time. A couple of their members came over to the garage and we just have sessions with us kind of working on the song. this is type cool. Yeah, it was just as beneficial of an experience that we could have had at the time. I'm truly, truly grateful for that time spent with them.

And then they really just like held our hands throughout the entire thing, brought us down to a studio in Portland called the Hall of Halls. And that was great and helped us with the audio, like recording production and then the mixing as well. And then we sent off the songs to get mastered by somebody else. But they were there from start to finish, just making sure that these songs got the attention that they deserve. they were pretty messy. You you hear that in our music right now, the sense of like a ballad or not necessarily an epic.

But for us as earlier musicians, not to say that we're not still there here and there, but we love playing the hell out of a song sometimes. So these were all a couple minutes longer. There's a lot of ideas going on and maybe it was time for us to start to learn how to be concise as writers and to express what we needed to say and the right amount of words and phrases. So that was great. And then after that, Texas very often, we...

are working with a very young producer in Seattle. His name is Ethan Bovi. He is 22 years old and he is phenomenal. Just absolutely brilliant. ⁓ One of the best professionals that I've worked with today, you know, as a producer and as a musician and actually recorded most of these songs in his home. Yeah, which no longer exists as the city of Seattle had different plans for the lot. yeah, that is okay. We got drums tracks there and most of our like bass layer sounds and we've

We've just been tracking overdubs, so guitar, vocals and bass at our house actually, he'll come over and just set up shop and use our TV as the monitor and he's turned into a really, really good friend and just a wonderful professional as well.

Hayden (21:56)
I mean just like having that because I find that all that stuff like the in-studio stuff is just so incredibly intimidating. The couple of times I've been in that environment in my life it's just like what there's so many knobs and switches and buttons and and everybody else seems like they know what they're doing and know where everything goes and so it's got that's got to be just so nice to have people around who are patient and willing to walk you through. I mean that's also got to be just such a huge compliment.

to know that people are spending time on that with you. Like they must know that the songs are good, right? They must believe in the songs or they wouldn't waste their time.

Nathaniel (22:30)
You'd like to think absolutely. And we've been working really hard. You know, we'll play our songs hundreds of times before we actually think they might be ready to record. And we're also meticulous with what we decide to actually bring to the next step and what we want to just, you know, keep in the vault for ourselves. And I think conveniently working with Bovi, we had this first experience to kind of give us the infrastructure to understand how to explore our sophomore studio efforts with a little bit more experience and a little bit more respect.

And we try to come prepared, be respectful of his time and respectful of his work. And he gives it 100 % as well. for him growing as a producer and for us growing as artists, it seems like it's a really mutually beneficial relationship. just, yeah, we couldn't do any of that by ourselves. His understanding of sound itself is so impressive, especially for such a young person to just have that much quality and experience as well.

whole different world and it takes somebody I always consider to be producers to perhaps be the best musician in the room as they're holistic, know, understanding that music has to be so great to just make sure everything is in check. It takes a special person for sure.

Hayden (23:45)
Yeah, well, like I said, you hear it in the recording, they're just so professionally done. You get such a clear, crisp recording. Even the distorted guitar parts, which there's a lot of, are still just crystal clear in the way that... I know it doesn't make sense, but the distortion is clear in the way that it's supposed to be and in the way that it's done by the professionals. So yeah, that's awesome. Where does the name Magenta Wave come from?

Nathaniel (24:13)
Great question. During the early stages of our band's career, was just Taylor, our guitarist, and then myself at the time. This was a little bit of a vision that started during our junior, senior year of high school. We actually went to high school together, which is kind fun to fall in love with music with somebody that you went to high school with and grew up with in that regard. Who was that in Olympia, Washington? Okay, yeah. Yeah, so not too far away, just an hour south of Seattle.

Hayden (24:36)
Was that in Bellingham or where?

Nathaniel (24:43)
Yeah. He was spearheading the quest for the hunt for an aim and we were at a climbing gym in Seattle called the Seattle Bouldering Project, pretty popular gym in Seattle. And he was walking down the stairs and saw a painting that kind of had the resonance that we were looking for in regards to our emotional connection with things. And the painting was called Magenta Wave and she proposed it as a name and it felt like a great name. you know, I think here we are three or four years later and it feels like it encompasses, you know, who we are.

as musicians and also people at the same time.

Hayden (25:16)
Yeah, it feels like an appropriate name for the sound for sure. Thank you. Here's Texas Very Often by Magenta Way.

Nathaniel (25:26)
if

Hayden (26:29)
The last little segment here on the pod is called Final Spin. It's just kind of, you know, quick rapid fire questions. So first thing that comes to mind, the first question is if you could open for any artist living or dead, who would it be?

Nathaniel (26:43)
I'm going get greedy here and say the Chili's for sure. Yeah. That's been a dream since I picked up the bass in the first place. You I hope they keep touring for the next five, 10 years and maybe down the road we actually get a lucky shot at that. But long ways to go.

Hayden (26:58)
Manifest. Just manifest it. They're making ⁓ a biopic. Who's playing you in the movie?

Nathaniel (27:05)
That's a crazy question. man. Any age actor?

Hayden (27:11)
Yeah, whatever comes to ⁓ mind.

Nathaniel (27:14)
Leo. Yeah. Yeah. I think he's the best.

Hayden (27:15)
Sure.

Who's an artist or a band that you love that people would be surprised by?

Nathaniel (27:22)
Wynton Marsalis, trumpet player. Really nice jazz. Just great stuff.

Hayden (27:28)
Please a hell of a trumpet player too. Yeah.

Nathaniel (27:30)
Yes,

he is. Yeah. You definitely hear that in his playing as well. Just the first name that came to mind though. Love soul music, love jazz.

Hayden (27:34)
Yeah.

And the final question is who's an artist with less than 100,000 monthly listeners on Spotify that you think people should be listening to? A lot of people grab their phones and start messing around on their Spotify, so feel free to...

Nathaniel (27:50)
I couldn't answer this off the top of my head. I'd be disappointed in myself. I'm gonna have to say Avery Cochran. She's Seattle based as well. Yeah.

Hayden (27:56)
Avery Tocque. Okay,

I'm writing that down. What style of music?

Nathaniel (28:01)
Indie folk pop. Yeah, I think her songwriting lyrically is really tasteful and deeper than a lot of other faces in her genre and the production's great as well.

Hayden (28:03)
Look out.

Awesome. Awesome. I'm excited to check her out and I'm excited for the music that you guys have on the way. I hope you make it down to LA for a show sooner rather than later. Maybe I'll be up in Seattle when you guys are playing. great. Like said, I'm going to try to send Brian to come see you guys at the Capitol Hill block party in a couple weeks. Yeah, man. Keep doing what you guys are doing. I think you guys have such an awesome, awesome, unique sound and I'm just, a big fan of what you guys are doing.

Nathaniel (28:42)
Thank you, Ian. I appreciate your time.

Hayden (28:45)
Thank you again to Nathaniel for joining me on this week's episode of First Spin. You can check out Magenta Wave live in Seattle at Madame Lou's on September 20th. In the meantime, check out their music, their socials, buy their merch. That's all for this week. Follow along to the First Spin socials at First Spin Pod. Thanks to Brian for making this sound good. Thanks to you for listening. And you know what? Send this to your mom. I think she's going to like it. OK, bye-bye.