Are we having fun yet? After years building their respective legacies in the independent music scene, Derek Ted and Braden Lawrence let this question guide the creation of their latest project: beaming, a playful indie pop venture built around an ethos of curiosity, collaboration, and levity.
The duo’s self-titled EP introduces the project with four infectious songs at the intersection of pop, rock, and folk. This comes as no surprise given the band’s pedigree: Braden spent over a decade playing in Philadelphia-based indie darling The Districts, while Derek is a solo artist and prolific producer who has lent his talents to rising stars like Odie Leigh, Runnner, and Field Medic.
“In the industry today, it feels like everyone has to be really efficient in order to make the machine run,” explains Derek. “But back in the day, timeless music was created by a bunch of people. Collaboration is actually hella goated, and I feel like people forget that nowadays.”
If hella goated is any indication, Derek Ted cut his teeth in the DIY music scene of the San Francisco Bay Area, busking around the East Bay while studying audio engineering and eventually working at SF’s Tiny Telephone Studios. By the time he moved south to Los Angeles, he’d found a robust community of fellow musicians and a strong desire to take full ownership over his production work.
“I turned my garage in Burbank into a studio, but I didn’t really realize I was a producer until I’d already produced a lot of stuff,” he explains. “I feel like producing took the pressure off me having to make my art the thing that pays the bills, which was always the part that took all the fun out of it for me. Once I started producing and mixing for other people, I realized I could have fun making music without having to beg people to listen to it.”
As his production work took off, Derek relished the experimentation and creative chemistry of helping artists bring their visions to life. In addition to producing for his frequent collaborator Field Medic, Derek lent his talents to a wide array of projects including Dora Jar’s “Look Back,” Hunny’s album new planet heaven, and several tracks on Jesse Rutherford’s album Wanted?.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country in Pennsylvania, Braden Lawrence was living in a very different kind of artistic ecosystem. Braden and his friends started their band The Districts when they were still in middle school and signed to Fat Possum Records right after high school graduation. “It was go to college or see what happens with the band, and we chose to do the band stuff,” Braden laughs.
Over the next 13 years, Braden wore a variety of different hats for his band as they played all over the world, touring with the likes of Modest Mouse, Hippo Campus, and Dr. Dog. He credits this experience with building his confidence on a wide array of instruments, a versatility he now applies to his work with beaming.
“Most of the instruments you hear on beaming are Braden playing, and then I’ll spend like a month mixing and hashing out the production details,” says Derek of his and Braden’s artistic process on beaming. I’m on that Rick Rubin mindset where I don’t like to play as much as I like to oversee the energy and the bigger picture and the songwriting.”
Braden adds, “I love just running around and playing different instruments. It’s a fluid working relationship where we kind of naturally let each other shine in our own ways.”
The project came together organically after a series of serendipitous encounters in Los Angeles, where both Derek and Braden had relocated. Braden was already frequenting Derek’s studio as a drummer for his production projects, and he eventually started playing drums in the live band for Derek’s artist project. After spending enough time in the studio, they began working together to produce for local artists — and, eventually, for their own project.
“We didn’t really plan to make a band until ‘first song,’” says Braden. “I had some chords but could never think of lyrics or melodies over them. When I played the chords for Derek, he started singing over them, and from there we were like, ‘Huh, maybe we should write a song.’”
This casual collaboration was the genesis of beaming, and the pair didn’t want the party to stop there. Field Medic lends a verse to “slow sinkin,” a wistful folk-pop earworm reminiscent of Hovvdy or early Alex G, and Braden’s Districts bandmate Pat Cassidy features on the slide guitar. Kississippi’s Zoe Reynolds sings background vocals on “colors,” and songwriter/producer Ben Burney provided backing vocals and additional production on several tracks.
This creative synergy is evident on the EP, which floats effortlessly between indie pop and folk over four foot-tapping, hum-worthy tracks. Lyrically, the music leans introspective, seeking to capture universal feelings through personal anecdotes about love, loss, and the passage of time. In “slow sinkin,” the band reflects on the bittersweet clarity of hindsight, singing “Wasting time thinking life is just slow sinking / Watch it wash away / Now that I know how the story turns out / Was it worth the wait?”
“colors” takes a brighter turn, cloaking its vulnerability in driving, dance-floor jubilation as it asks the timeless question of how to reanimate a life stuck on autopilot. “It’s about making a change in your life, stepping back, and finding what really makes you happy,” says Derek.
As they look toward the future, Braden and Derek only really have one firm plan: keep bringing people together to create art and make memories. The music industry may be more intimidating and isolating than ever, but the music community remains full of the joy and camaraderie that keep artists coming back time and time again. “There’s something special that happens when a room full of people all make something together,” says Derek. “The right people.”
