Clean Spill, the Santa Barbara crew of surfers that caught our attention a few years back with their oozing delivery of Strokes-sounding garage vibes, are back with new single “Friends,” and boy is it good. After two years of tweaking their sound, Pat Curren, Charlie Fawcett, Geoff Shae, and Cameron Crabtree haven’t lost any momentum. Their perspective is up, just like their feel-good jams, and their general attitude when it comes to writing songs. “We had a lot of decisions to make about the direction we wanted to take our music in,” they told me. “Contemplating took time, but we know we made the right move.” So press play, let those easy waves wash over your ears, and read our quick chat with Clean Spill below. –Maya Eslami 

Clean Spill plays SOHO in Santa Barbara on March 2nd. 

WHAT YOUTH: Hey guys. What are you doing right now?  

CLEAN SPILL: Right now just hanging out at Pat’s house doing the same thing we’re always doing. Writing music, screwing around in the practice space, and having an all around good time in Santa Barbara. We have a couple shows coming up so we’re trying to get prepared, however the surf has been good lately so we have also been doing a lot of that as well…haha.

Last time we spoke was 2016, and you guys were hinting at an upcoming LP. What have you guys been up to since then? 

The past year and a half has been quite eventful to say the least! We did record an LP at the time, but eventually we decided that we wanted to go for a sound that was a bit more raw. When we got back from a tour across the US, we ended up meeting Hanni El Khatib and recorded a different LP with him. Flash forward to record completion, going on tour with Hanni, then having Geoff break his arm midway skating in Colorado… it was crazy.  As you can imagine we laid low for the winter, but now we’re back and have the rest of our music coming out next month!

Tell me about the new single. 

‘Friends’ was written about being young and naive, having fun before the responsibilities of being an adult kicks you in the head. It dives into how you internally deal with these newfound thoughts, and represents someone being pushed to the brink of insanity by overthinking.

When did you guys write it? And is it part of an upcoming album?

We wrote it a few years back, and were trying to decide whether to release it or not, but we finally decided to release it as a single. As for the songs coming out next month, that will be all new jams!