In WHY NOT’s music video for “TAKE A MINUTE,” the band members surround themselves with warm affection from friends at an intimate house party. The scene captures the spirit of the Minneapolis group’s new self-titled album, which exudes joy and demonstrates their “live in the moment” philosophy.

Henry Breen (bass and vocals), Isaac Dell (guitar) and Joshua MacGregor (drums), met in middle school and quickly wanted to start a progressive metal band. After writing one song around age 13, they knew metal wasn’t for them. The trio had strong intuition from the start. Dell describes how it was only at the point of letting go of strict intent that they evolved. “When you throw your hands up in the air, that's when the best parts of you come out — because there's no expectation for yourself,” Breen says.

WHY NOT’s genre-busting music has advanced organically without them ever sitting down to decide what sound they want to create. When they began writing WHY NOT in 2019, they were all consuming pop music and MacGregor was listening to lots of emo rock. For Dell, musical inspirations are everywhere, but he cites periods of silence as the most significant factor in creativity. 

Every song on WHY NOT radiates joy in some form — though at times, lyrics dive into darker sentiments. The group acknowledges that negative feelings are valid, especially right now, but wanted to spread happiness through the medium of music. “I'm very glad to have been a part of making a project that is going to hopefully uplift people's spirits when they experience it,” Dell says.

“This is definitely our most streamlined project yet… a lot of them are pop songs like you've heard in the three singles,” Dell says. “It's the strongest distillation of the three of us working together.” Each song has a holistic quality, when in the past, the band has focused on creating striking independent points within each song. “This time around, we took a step back in the way that we were trying to produce the whole product, instead of trying to zero in on making cool moments,” Breen says.

The band released the EP VERY WHY NOT in January. The material from this project came from one solid burst of creativity in the summer of 2021 during a stay at Dell’s family farm in Wisconsin. The group describes the project as a sonic bridge between their earlier work and the new album. At the same time, they’re two contrasting projects, with the EP being less calculated. Dell describes it as a “bombastic” and “overload of WHY NOT,” with the album serving a “healthy dose” of the band.

VERY WHY NOT was the band’s first time featuring other artists on their work. Lupin (Jake Luppen, guitarist and vocalist in Hippo Campus) sang a verse on the enjoyably glitchy, “WE CAN BE ALWAYS.” The song “CASKET” was co-written with Papa Mbye, another Twin Cities artist who’s accelerating within the local music scene. With a cramped schedule, Breen thought it would be fun to enlist help from friends. When Mbye arrived at the studio, the group played the song’s instrumental, and he sang the chorus on the spot.

Mbye first discovered WHY NOT when “No Suggestions Here” and “Ding Dong” came out on the 2020 EP, Dust. He spiraled through their discography and got in touch with Breen via Instagram DMs. Mbye describes WHY NOT’s collaboration process as free-flowing. “All ideas are invited, and I think they're just really trying to make the best song possible. There's no hierarchy,” Mbye says. He emphasizes the pleasure of working alongside a band with expansive components that aren’t over-produced. “It’s more than just indie rock,” he says. From Mbye’s perspective, WHY NOT is making music well beyond their years.

Another Twin Cities artist who’s excited for the band’s upcoming material is Raffaella, a singer/songwriter originally from New York City. “There's something beautifully abnormal about them, and I think everybody deserves to experience their music as soon as possible,” she says. Borrowing from Dua Lipa, she describes their music as “future nostalgia.” “[It’s] honoring the sound of Minneapolis but also furthering it by pushing boundaries, experimenting with sounds and structures, and I feel like the songwriting is always very honest, and also very particular and careful. Which is a really hard balance to strike.”

One person who’s been essential in striking that balance is MacGregor’s brother Caleb Hinz, who has served as the band’s producer since 2019. He describes the group’s experimentation as fearless. “It’s almost like there's the signature thing with WHY NOT songs — oftentimes a moment in a song that's going as far as it possibly can go… the things that they want to try are just never ending,” Hinz says.

Hinz started from scratch with the group to facilitate writing the majority of songs on WHY NOT. He defines their music as an amalgam of a new era of rock with electronic keys and modern production. As visible on the album cover, the producer succinctly sums up their current music style as an “orangey, bright cornfield.”

Although his professional work with the members began in 2019, Hinz has witnessed the band’s development since day one. As young adults now in their early 20s, WHY NOT make music moving at a consistent, steady pace. Hinz thinks their gradual progression is working well because of the group’s keen awareness and intuition.

Writing almost all instrumental parts together has created interdependence within the group.  “We’ve always tried to highlight the chemistry between the three of us and our music. It's that kind of spirit that emanates from it,” Dell says. Hinz sees it the same way. “Very early on, [they] kind of had established spiritual roles within the band,” he says. Plus, they were all friends before they were bandmates.

Trust is important as they continually push their sound. Dell refers to himself as his harshest critic, and it took him a while to feel fully confident when writing “YOU’RE MY KIND.” “We had never written something so sugary sweet. It’s like cotton candy,” he says. What seemed to come out of left field took a while to sink in, but working in a room with others eliminated negative internal dialogue. For Breen, it’s encouraging to be surrounded by people who believe in what they’re doing. “I think it makes you round off your own corners in a good way,” he says.

The pure location in which WHY NOT exist functions as a motivator. Breen loves the Twin Cities music scene. Compared to music spaces in larger cities, “It’s localized and supportive in a very proactive way, be it producing each other's songs, featuring on each other's songs, [or] never missing a show at 7th Street [Entry],” Raffaella says. Breen has been feeling a profound appreciation for the space because people genuinely care about others’ work. “It’s actually pretty rare to find a subset of a community that's like, ‘Come one. Come all.’ You will have people lifting you up,” he says.

To the band, “why not” is a statement, not a question. What began as a cool-sounding band name to a group of teenagers has only recently come to life for them. “Over time, it has revealed itself to us as actually a pretty apropos motto to what we are doing,” Breen says. Their songwriting has clicked, and they’ve found their trajectory. WHY NOT serves as an anchor for what’s to come.

WHY NOT is out now.