motel void

Stray Fossa’s debut With You For Ever (2020) reflected the anxiety and isolation of quarantine in their Charlottesville home studio, while its follow-up, Closer Than We’ll Ever Know (2022), felt like a cautious reemergence. Fittingly, their upcoming third LP, Blossomer, is a study in growth.

MOTEL VOID: I’ve known your music for a few years now through your successful singles on Spotify, which have gathered millions of streams. What kind of impact has that streaming success had on your career? And do you feel any pressure when releasing new music?

ZACH: To be honest, yes. Wish I could say I didn’t feel any pressure or I didn’t care about the reception – art for art’s sake, ya know? The industry stresses algorithms so much and those streams and playlist placements are carrots on a stick held by the big platforms in front of every artist. I have to really push back against the anxiety that it all brings by trying to actively focus on the shared experience of making something new and unique with the guys—and then moving on to the next thing as soon as possible. 

MOTEL VOID: Where are you currently based? Back in 2018 you moved together to Charlottesville, Virginia. Then in early 2021, you were split across continents and many songs were about distance. Where is Stray Fossa based now?

ZACH: I live in Salem, MA where it’s Halloween all year. I’m a two minute walk from the coast and when I need a music or sports fix I take the 25 minute train into Boston. Will came through town somewhat recently, and we spent an afternoon out on the water in a historic sailboat with our partners. I love it here.

NICK: Yea so, Will and I are in Germany, Munich and Hamburg…if you’re familiar with German geography you’ll know we didn’t plan that out super well. But it’s nice. We have very good reasons to be where we are. 

MOTEL VOID: You’ve just released your new album Blossomer. How did it come together, and did the process differ from your earlier releases in any way?

WILL: All our releases up through 2021 involved a lot more organic, collaborative writing because back then we were all living together in the same house and had an attic studio where we could hash things out live. Since then, though, we’ve all been living in different places, so a lot of the demoing and songwriting is now done individually. Both this record and the last one started out that way. 

One big difference though with Blossomer is that we came together to re-record all the demos and flesh them out as a band. I think that led to a much more cohesive result, perhaps even more so than our previous record. With Blossomer we were also more intentional from the very start, agreeing to limit ourselves to more simplistic, guitar-led arrangements—whereas for previous records we often just picked our favorites from whatever we were demoing at the time. 

MOTEL VOID: What had the biggest influence on the record – what were your main inspirations while making it?

NICK: We would probably each answer this question very differently, so it is always hard to boil it down. When we are working in the studio together we’ll usually get glued to a specific song or even like a section of a song, pick it apart to figure out why it works for us, and then go from there. Like, the idea for the ‘Still There’ reprise came from ‘Strawberry Fields Forever.’ I always loved the fake fade-out and have been wanting to do that on a record forever. 

It is hard to pin down inspiration. This might sound funny, but because we are spread out and often work on music individually, whether it’s Will’s project or just random stuff we send around, I think we tend to be a big influence on each other. Is that a cheat answer? I don’t know. I guess it is good to be inspired by those closest to you.

I will say that in the midst of writing for this album I dug up and spent a day going through my old iTunes library, which was frozen in time around 2008/09…like stuff I was into at the end of high school. I think I listened to Moon Safari by Air and Death Cab on repeat for like two weeks, so I guess I’d be surprised if those didn’t weave their way in somehow. Anyway, it’s kinda nice, now I actually have music taking up space on my phone…in 2025 (haha).

MOTEL VOID: You all lived in Charlottesville. What’s the music scene in Charlottesville like? Do you feel connected to it? Do you have any favorite local venues or artists you could recommend?

ZACH: Oh man… that’s what I love and miss most about Charlottesville, easy. We lived within walking distance of five different venues, and there was live music happening every night of the week. If we weren’t playing a show, we were going to one. The Southern is a really special venue to us; we learned a lot of solid lessons about playing in front of an audience there, and it’s where we debuted so many of our earlier tracks. It’s also the place where I first saw someone in the crowd singing one of our songs, which was a trip. 

Even though we haven’t lived in Cville for years it still feels like coming home when we are there. Unfortunately, while we can’t enjoy the scene in person, we’re always on the lookout for more Cville-related music. Will [Marsh] is down in New Orleans these days, but Gold Connections just dropped a new album called ‘Fortune’  last fall and a live EP this summer that are both great listens. I also have several Nan MacMillan tunes on rotation (‘Rain for the Heavy Heart’, ‘burning in the back’ with Deau Eyes), and I was psyched to see Inning just dropped a self-titled first full length record. Charlottesville’s music scene is one of the best in the country and rivals big cities in quality of artists and venues. Yea, miss it big time. 

NICK: Films on Song is another great band from the area—they’ve already put out two new singles this year. And of course, we’ve been fans of Illiterate Light and Kate Bollinger right from the start. It is inspiring seeing them killing it out on the national stage now.

MOTEL VOID: With the new album out, are you planning to tour?

WILL: We are hoping to organize something for fall of 2026, ideally in Europe. Now that the band is split between two different continents it’s a bit challenging logistically. So we are still feeling how best to go about it. 

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