Photo courtesy of Terrorbird Media

New York’s Milagres began with beer pong. Well, the seeds were at least planted when Kyle Wilson and Fraser McCulloch were at a party, sitting on a couch, both bored by the beer ponging surrounding them. “He invited me to go see his band at Lit Lounge and I was new enough to Brooklyn’s cesspool of terrible bands that I actually went,” Wilson tells Hive. From there, the band blossomed into the five piece that it is today, becoming the first band to be signed to Kill Rock Stars, sight unseen.

Why is that? With one listen to “Halfway,” the opening track from Glowing Mouth, it’s easy to tell that Milagres aren’t your run-of-the-mill guitar and bass and drum and whine situation. There are moody-synth textures swirling around its center, where Wilson’s slight falsetto plays nicely off the dark, crescendoing tone. But it’s not to say moodiness is a guiding principle for the band’s aesthetic.”We wanted to buck the trend of making a mood or niche album and make something that had some depth and personality. We wanted there to be movement from one place to another, though we agreed that it didn’t have to occur in a linear fashion.”

For “Halfway,” it’s a song that lies within the vague, stream-of-conscious lyrics fitting into the melodies that Wilson created, certainly an approach to song writing that’s not a linear notion. “I think “Halfway” is somewhat abstract,” he says. “But at its core, its about something very simple: A struggle to connect.”

Glowing Mouth is out September 13 on Kill Rock Stars.