Whitney

"Pants delivery was my eureka moment," Julien Ehrlich of Whitney says on the pod, and with that we have my favorite out-of-context pull quote. Ehrlich was not speaking metaphorically: when he and bandmate Max Kakacek were writing Whitney's first album, he drove a clothing delivery van that had no working radio. The monotonous drives were great sources of inspiration. Kakacek, on the other hand, was a competitive swimmer until he turned 18. Swimming endless laps staring at the bottom of the pool was a boon to his creative process. Kakacek runs now, where the monotony takes on a new shape: he listens to the same song over and over for his entire run. "Lyrics don't come naturally to our brain," they said. "Our North Star is the melody." One big change to their process is learning how to tweak less. Whitney's latest album is Small Talk .