Under The Rug

ALT-ROCK BAND UNDER THE RUG does everything in-house. They work out of a commercial building in Los Angeles, unmarked except for a small home-made sign that reads: “Rugs.” Inside, they operate a full-scale recording studio.

Singer/Guitarist Casey Dayan explains: “Tracking a full rock band these days is tough and expensive, since everyone’s taping egg-crates to their apartment walls. We all had backgrounds in audio and session playing, so we figured we’d handle production ourselves. I think it allows us to make choices a lot of music projects these days can’t.”

Under The Rug is Casey Dayan, lead vocals/guitar; Sean Campbell, vocals/guitar; Jesse Holsapple, bass/vocals; and Brendan McQueeney, drums and percussion.

“Pretty much everything we released this year has been a weird/totally unique narrative,” Brendan McQueeney adds, “Take Sarah’s Daydream, for instance. It’s a pretty succinct story of a woman looking to get out of an abusive relationship. Or Three-Legged Dog, which [almost voyeuristically] follows a guy trying to find a place to spread his mom’s ashes. These are real stories. Casey works really hard on writing these songs.”

Casey adds: “But it’s not, like, a folk project, or an Juno-indie lyrics-or-bust kind of band, either. I take a skeleton to the guys, and then everyone figures in their own expertise. It’s really impressive what this group of nerds can do with the right starting place.”