Pl*net F*tness will be your first album with Asian Man Records.

We re-released [our first album] Real poetry is always about plants and birds and trees and the animals and milk and honey breathing in the pink but real life is behind a screen with them and they put it out on vinyl last year. What’s funny is that everyone thought it was new, so now people just think I’m crazy and I’m putting out three records in one year or whatever. [laughs] This is the first official one, yeah.

The announcement video was really funny, with you signing over all of the rights.

Oh yeah, that was all Mike. It was very funny. We really ran with that joke; it’s the entire theme of the era now. Like, “Pacing has sold out.” [laughs]

What’s it been like working with Asian Man Records?

It’s great! Mike’s hilarious, he’s such a character. I’m pretty sure he signed us because we lived down the road from him. We actually just moved, but we were neighbours, so I would go over there all the time and pack records for free.

It’s so funny, he’s always like, “I don’t know how to do anything, you should sign to Lauren Records instead. I have no idea what I’m doing.” But he’s so helpful! Throughout the entire Cheekface tour, he was so valuable with advice along the way, and he helped us a lot. We brought not nearly enough merch. We severely underestimated everything. He got us merch printed and shipped it to us along the tour.

He works with District [Recording Studio] in San Jose; he’s a partner there. They’re so awesome. I spend a lot of time there and we worked on the record there, so that’s been an amazing resource. Asian Man Records rocks! It’s great. I love selling out, it’s awesome! [laughs] There’s really not any other labels like Asian Man left, I don’t think. It’s kind of amazing. I’m fully subsidised by Alkaline Trio right now. [laughs] Mike’s like the Robin Hood of record labels.

Half the record was recorded at District and the other half you recorded at home. What was that like?

Yeah! It was kind of a big experiment. When we first went into record the song “Pl*net F*tness”, and a number of other songs, I was like, “Ok, we’re a band and we’re going to record like a band! This is the new unveiling of Pacing The Band.” So we went in and I was like, “I don’t want to record to a click. I just want to go in and record the song like us playing it live.” Then I was like, “Oh, I hate this! This is not gonna work at all.” [laughs] It’s funny that that doesn’t work.

There are other bands - like bands that are much better than us - that are amazing live bands that have amazing live energy and you’re like, “Ok, cool, just put it in the studio. We’ll record it and it’ll be awesome.” Right? Wrong, for some reason! Tragically, that doesn’t always work. Sometimes it just doesn’t capture the magic at all. Anyway, I quickly learned that wasn’t gonna work, and actually, we’re not a band. It turns out that I’m an insane control freak. [laughs] I think that Pacing will always be me and there will be other people involved, depending on what the needs of the songs are.

I tortured poor Ryan [Perras] at District because normally he records bands and it’ll be like: guitar one, guitar two, bass, vocals, drums. Then when you mix it, it’ll be like, “Alright; guitar one, guitar two, bass, vocals, drums.” Just looking down the tracklist, my record isn’t like that. Take track number 3 ["Mastering Positional Chess"], for example, it has a different vocalist, there’s a piano part, there’s a mouth trumpet, and there’s a bunch of samples of chess pieces moving. Then on track 12 ["Never Go Down"], we have Jim Jones’ monologue and we have 8 lead vocals. We’re doing the Pacing I’m-in-your-face-talking-to-you thing for the first half of the song, then I wanted 8 lead vocals like we’re doing a soft, Elliott Smith vibe. Every song is completely different. [laughs]

It was a big learning experience, basically the whole thing. I went in being like, “We’re a band” and then I came out being like, “Oh.” I think I have a better idea of what the things are that make my project what it is. I think it will always involve different collaborators. I love all the collab songs on the album, with Copeland James, with Career Woman, and with Star 99, who were a hilarious ordeal to try to wrangle. I think my project will always be about the songs and then you just bring in the people, the sounds, and the genre even that will best serve the song. Then later, you go on a tour and you deal with trying to figure out how to play the songs live. Sometimes you’re just like, “No, that one’s not happening.” There’s a number of songs that I’m like, “Oh well!” [laughs]

What was the story behind wrangling Star 99?

There’s five of them and they’re all the most chaotic people on earth, which is what makes the band so special. The creative energy in that band is through the freaking roof. Just on a normal day, trying to make plans with Saoirse or Chris is a hilarious ordeal in which you can expect them to be 45 minutes late. [laughs] I tried to get 5 of them, 5 of them, to do something at once. [laughs] I started with Chris because Chris and I do Heavy Lemon together - the DIY shows - so he’s already at my house like once a week. One day he came over and we were about to do radio and I handed him a bass and was like, “Play this.” [laughs] So I got him, then I got Aidan, who plays synth and guitar in the band and does some writing.

I was trying to get Jeremy on drums, and I failed, but it’s ok because Joe [Sherman], my other drummer, played a great part. I got Saoirse and I was like, “Mission accomplished! Three out of five, we did it!” Thomas and Jeremy were both out of the country, I think, at that point. It took literally a year. I think that song was the one that took the longest of them all to finish. At the end of the record, I was like, “Just one more Star 99 member to go!” [laughs]

I’m busting their balls. I’m railing on them for being irresponsible, but they’re actually not at all; they’re actually highly responsible. [laughs] They just got off a big tour, and they are freaking road warriors. They’ve never missed a show, they show up on time, they’re insanely organised when it comes to doing these brutal DIY tours that they put themselves through.

It’s all the logistics of timing. You have to plan around the tours.

When we were making this album, Pacing was going on tour starting in April, Star 99 was on tour for all of March, and we overlapped for one day. Chris and I run Heavy Lemon together with our buddy Scout, so I went to the Star 99 show that was the end of their tour. I gave him the Heavy Lemon cashbox and then left on my tour. [laughs] We had to plan all this before anyone left.

They’re like my favourite band in the world. It’s their fault that I went into the studio wanting to do the band thing because I love Star 99 so much that I was like, “I wanna be in a band”, but then I realised that my project is not like theirs. They’re a band! They’ve got three songwriters and they’re all incredible. They all write together, they arrange together. They’re like one big mind-merge, which I think is amazing. I’m obsessed with that. That has yet to happen to me. [laughs]

How do you decide who to work with on each song?

Pretty chaotically. If you write a song that sounds kinda like your friends, it’s tempting to be like, “Oh, I should have my friend play on it because it sounds kinda like them”, but I think it’s better to not do that. I think it’s better to make surprising choices, I say knowing that I did not do that at all. With “Things we bought tickets for” I wrote half of it and sent it to Melody [of Career Woman]. It was highly inspired by conversations we had had recently about songwriting. I was very much emulating her style. Theoretically, I think it’s good to not just be like, “I’ve written a song that sounds like this person, let me send it to them!”

In general, what I do is I make a demo, I’m excited about it, and I usually just send it to whoever I was recently texting, literally whoever I’m currently talking to. It’s usually my friend Kabir from Sun Kin because we’re talking all the time. I’m always talking to musicians because my entire life is this DIY scene. Basically, I’m always open to people jumping on my stuff. I love to have people on stuff.

With the Career Woman collab, Melody and I had just had a session and we were talking about songwriting style, like a sort of stream of consciousness style of storytelling where you’re maybe catching up with a friend. It’s conversational like, “Here’s what happened.” I was specifically trying to write something like that and like Melody. So I sent her half the song and I was like, “Let’s write this together!” Then she was busy; she was on a road trip.

I will sometimes write a song and be like, “I need this person to finish it”, and then I will immediately finish the song. It’s something about being like, “I shouldn’t finish this”, like oppositional defiance that highly motivates me to write. I’m like, “Oh, actually, I have a great idea for the second verse!” [laughs] I knew I had to get her and her band into the studio for that one because it was very much channelling her style, even with the production. I had the driving drums that they do and everything is very forward-moving. That was straight-up a Career Woman homage.

How would you describe your songwriting process overall?

I feel like I’ve been overthinking this. Well, now that I’ve quit my job, I guess I’m a songwriter. It’s suddenly horrifying, like the idea of writing a song is like the worst thing in the world. [laughs] It’s very chaotic. I typically am a through-writer, for some reason. I usually write the first line of the first verse like, “Real poetry is always about plants and birds and trees / And the animals and milk and honey breathing in the pink” on “Bite Me.” Then I write the second line of the first verse and I go that way. That’s how I write when I’m sitting with a guitar, usually. I usually start with a concept. What makes me sit down to write a song is, “Oh, I have an idea of a feeling, a situation, a title, a line." I’ll have some material that has been marinating in my brain about that concept or theme, but I’ve written all kinds of songs in all kinds of different ways.

The other main way would be on the computer where I’m producing and making kind of a beat, I’m messing around over it. Like the song “Annoying Email” from my first album. I started with the concept, I was like, “The song is an annoying email that you would send.” [laughs] Then I made the bass loop and I was like, “Ah, the new concept is that all sounds in the song are going to be different sounds on the bass.” I’m very much about the concept and I love rules like, “Ok, this song is about an annoying email and it only involves this one Logic synth patch at terrible octaves that it should not go to. These are my rules.” So I made a little loop and got on the mic and started improvising. Those recordings were the song. I did the bass and Kabir came and worked on the other instruments, but the vocal in that song is the same recording. I’m laughing and I’m making up the words and that is the song. I don’t know where “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Steve” came from. It’s so stupid. [laughs]

“True Crime” and “birthday song” are two distinct songs, but they’re packaged together on this album. What went into the decision there?

I always like to do that. I like to just stick stuff together for some reason. They were actually both written during Escapril, a poetry challenge that happens in April. I wish I’d done it this year, but I was on tour and it was way too chaotic. There’s an account that every day posts a new prompt and then a bunch of people write poems. A bunch of my friends and I write songs and upload them. In 2023, I did this every single day very meticulously, and then this year I just completely fell off. [laughs]

For “True Crime”, the prompt was fear. I wrote that in April. “birthday song” was another prompt and the prompt was drugs. I had a scrapped lyric for it and the line was like, “Drugs are boring / An overdone subject.” [laughs] I was like, “I don’t wanna write about drugs, that’s boring!” Then I was just noodling and thinking about things that are boring, so that was kinda a theme.

I love to do a weird noise interlude. I had one on the last album, so I was like, “Ok, I have to have a weird noise interlude on every album.” [laughs] I think because “birthday song” is all one chord, it was just an opportunity to make a weird, noisy drone song. I tacked it onto “True Crime” for no particular thematic reason. [laughs] I think I wanted it to be like you fall asleep watching TV or something, because I also have a TV theme going on.

You have the song “The TV” that has a bunch of different clips including the Jim Jones death speech, “tortilla chip bag song”, and “weird hell song.” How did you decide which clips to use in that song?

I was trying to tie stuff together, I like to tie stuff together. One of the clips is Daniel Naroditsky, the chess player. One of the themes on the album is definitely parasocial relationships. There was a period where I watched Daniel Naroditsky’s YouTube videos every night before I went to bed. He was just a person in my life, this chess streamer. He’s such a niche, micro-celebrity that it’s pretty funny to have this deep parasocial connection with, so I put him in there. Then I put in Jim Jones. The chess love song is funny like, “I have a crush on this chess player” and it’s full of innuendos professing my love to this chess player, but then I thought, in classic fashion, that it should spiral out of control. Like on “Never Go Down”, it’s this unconditional love for a cult leader. I think of it like, who to follow? I think that’s a theme on the album.

I don’t believe in God, unfortunately. I’d love to, but I don’t, so therefore I have to make up my own values or find someone else to tell me values. I think that’s something we all do. We think we’re free-thinking people, which we are to an extent, but you’re influenced by people around you, like your family and the people who you trust in your day-to-day life. We have a democracy in which we choose people to represent us. I liked the idea of hopping from Daniel Naroditsky over to Jim Jones. That’s the easiest way to live; to find a notorious cult leader who will tell you exactly what to do and what to feel and what to think and just be like, “Alright, well, I completely submit.” [laughs] So he’s in there.

I initially had “tortilla chip bag song” on this album, and I wanted it to be mastered 10 dBs above everything else and be like an advertisement. You know when you’re listening to an album on SoundCloud and you get to a super fucking loud McDonald’s ad? And you’re like, “AAARH! This is so annoying!!” [laughs] I wanted that experience, but I decided to put the song on the songs EP instead. I worked on both this record and songs at once because I like to do that now. I think it helps take the pressure off the “real” record. There was a lot of moving songs back and forth. There are several songs that I think fit the themes of both.

The theme of songs is stupid bullshit. It’s songs that are stupidly simple about a specific object or thing. “parking ticket song” I put on both because it just fit both. It’s about an object, which is a parking ticket, but it also fits these themes of time and space and taking up space and sort of the annoyance of figuring out how to live and what to care about and being like, “I did not sign up for this, this is bullshit!” I felt it needed to be on both. That is an explanation of every single audio clip I stuck into “The TV.” [laughs] It’s advertisements and then we go into “Advertising”, it’s a little on the nose.

I think “Advertising” is my favourite song on the album.

Oh, thank you! That one was really a worker, and I almost gave up on it like a million times. Kabir, from Sun Kin, really saved it. There was like 10 times I was like, “Ugh, I don’t know where this song is gonna go” because I had the first verse and I really liked it but then I just didn’t feel like it was going anywhere. So I was like, “Maybe it should just be 30 seconds long. I should probably just scrap it.” Then every time I played it, Kabir would be like, “This rocks!! This is a great song! This is a hit! This is a banger!” I needed that; that was what motivated me to keep going. I brought Kabir to the studio with me when I recorded vocals for this album, just to be in the room and be like, “You sound awesome! This is great!” Just really good energy in the room. [laughs]

Your video for “Nothing! (I wanna do)” is made up of footage from your recent tour with Cheekface. Do you have a favourite memory from this tour?

People keep asking me stuff like this and I’m like, “I don’t remember a single thing that happened.” [laughs] It was just my life. It was two months, so it was my life for two months. It wasn’t COVID, we all tested for COVID, but the first and second half of the tour we all got sick with different, terrible illnesses. The second one was so bad. Greg totally lost his voice and so did I. I was giving him shit, and then, three days later, I completely lost my voice. I was like, “Ah, yes, karma.” [laughs]

He was such a pro when he lost his voice; they completely changed the show. He would still sing the verses of the songs and he would have the audience sing the chorus and he brought people on stage and did fun bits. He talked to the other band members. He masterfully worked around not being able to sing and continued to sing anyway.

He had me come on and sing “We Need A Bigger Dumpster” with the Chappell Roan interlude. I was like, “Let me know if you need anything! I’ll be right over here if you need anything on stage.” Then he got on stage and was like, “Is Katie here?” And I’m like, “Yeah, do you need water?” He was like, “Can you come sing this song?” And I was like, “AAAAAAAAAA!!!” It was a dream come true. I’m on stage with my favourite band. I have socially engineered myself into this situation somehow and this is insane. [laughs] It was an adventure. Being sick was horrible, though.

Your video for “Pl*net F*tness” is really fun and a lot of people are dressed like zombies. You have the “Mastering Positional Chess” Easter egg in there too.

Yes, great job! [laughs] Well done. I think that stack of books is like my parasocial idols. I’ve got David Sedaris in there.

Amphibian Facts.

Yeah! A Field Guide To Reptiles and Amphibians. I always want to do Easter eggs but I’m always like, “No one cares!” It’s funny being a tiny artist and doing them. With Taylor Swift, people are like, “There are five holes in the fence which means there’s gonna be…” [laughs] It’s funny to do that kind of thing, fully knowing that no one will ever notice.

Do you have other Easter eggs in there that I missed?

Ben [Krock] is a doctor and we have him as a doctor also in the “Boyfriends” music video, so I’ve decided Ben has to be a doctor in every video. We’ve got the “death checklist” as the lyrics from my song “Sunny < 3”; it’s an older song. The things that are on the list are from that.

I stole my outfit from Caroline Rose. The top half of my outfit is Caroline Rose and the bottom half is Michael Cera in Juno. [laughs] You know the Loner album cover? There’s a shot in the mirror that’s like her album cover. Also, I stole her album cover for my album cover. The layout and the type I fully stole but mine’s blue and hers is red.

What was filming that video like?

It was super fun! Oh my gosh, full credit to Brett Koehn, who directed it and came up with the idea. He did everything. He was interning for Mike at Asian Man over the summer and he wanted to make music videos. I wasn’t even on Asian Man yet, actually. This is why Mike is so helpful; he just did all this stuff for me. He’s like, “I don’t know what I’m doing” but then he’s like, “Here’s a person to make a music video!” [laughs] So, Brett showed up at a show and I don’t know him at all, he’s a random film student. He’s like, “Can I make you a music video?” and I was like, “Maybe.” [laughs] I sent him the album in its really rough form and I was like, “Pick a song and see if you have any ideas.” He sent me this five-page, elaborate script for the “Pl*net F*tness” music video. It was the whole thing exactly and I was like, “Yes, this is awesome!”

I had very little to do with it. I added some aesthetic details. He was like, “Where are we gonna get a big anvil?” and I was like, “How about a cardboard box that says ‘anvils’?” [laughs] I made some aesthetic choices to make them Pacing-y. I inserted all the Easter eggs, but the entire thing is Brett. He filmed it, he directed it, the whole thing was his idea. He spent a million hours editing it, I’m sure. I then changed the song on him. He made the video to the demo and then I was like, “Here’s the new recording” and he had to change the entire thing. Brett is a hero. He did such a good job. I was completely blown away by what a good job he did.

Speaking of Mike orchestrating stuff, the AJJ tour.

Ah yes, a classic Mike scheme. [laughs] You can see the trail of the scheming if you look closely. There’s an Instagram post from six months ago on Asian Man Records where Mike is like, “Katie loves AJJ!” [laughs] Which I do, that’s not a lie.

They’re so nice. I’m so excited to tour with them. I’m so spoiled, it’s unbelievable. It’s ridiculous. It’s all downhill from here. My first tour was with literally my favourite band. My second tour is with my favourite band from when I was 15. They’re all the best people. Sometimes you meet your favourite band and they’re assholes and it’s devastating. My favourite bands just happen to be wonderful. [laughs]

In some cases, meet your heroes.

It’s not lost on me that I am an industry plant. [laughs] I won the lottery. People think that when they get on a record label that’s how it works like, “I’ll get on a label and they’ll get me into a good studio and get me on good tours” and labels do not do that, they mostly make records for you. I’ve just wandered into the greatest situation on Earth, and I only know how to play, like, five chords. Cancel Pacing! [laughs]

You also have your album release shows in August and September. What are you looking forward to about those shows?

Well, I gotta learn the album. [laughs] Actually, I hate headlining, I hate it. I love opening. There’s just so much pressure when you’re headlining. You hope people show up and if they don’t show up, it’s your fault. The pressure’s on. I love playing first because then you’re done. You get to enjoy the show. I hate headlining, but that being said, I booked my best friends for these shows. It’ll be super fun. I will be stressed because I’m headlining, but I love all these bands that I booked and I love the venues. It should, hypothetically, be fun. [laughs]

Since it’s your show, you could be like, “The headliner goes first.”

I actually might. For LA, I actually might put myself in the middle so I can watch Suzie True last because it kinda makes sense, the energy is going up. I spent a lot of time on tour with G of Suzie True. G is the tour manager for Cheekface, so we’re like best friends now. She was my ray of sunshine on that tour. She’s so posi every day. Like, whatever horrible shit is going on, like we’re all deathly ill, she just has this huge smile on her face. Her voice is completely gone and she’s selling merch with a sign like, “I can’t talk! :)” [laughs] She’s a ray of sunshine.

G’s awesome!

I’m obsessed with her.

How would you describe the music scene in San Jose and your role within the DIY community?

It’s amazing! I, once again, am so lucky. It’s really not like this everywhere, and I didn’t really realise that. First of all, I got so lucky that I found the scene really quickly because I started going to stuff and I was not quite finding it. Then I met Aaron - god bless Aaron Kovacs from Lauren Records - who introduced me to Melody from Career Woman and introduced me to Chris from Heavy Lemon. I started going to Heavy Lemon shows and it took me six months to convince Chris to let me help because he’s one of those people who’s doing so much. The poor guy is overworked, putting on these shows. It’s kinda harder to let someone help you because it’s more work to tell them what to do. I jumped in there.

The scene is amazing here. It’s really nice because, well, everyone is really nice and great, which does not happen everywhere. There’s sort of an unjadedness to San Jose. It feels like a normal place, not like Silicon Valley, not like San Francisco. It has kinda an underdog city feel to it that I appreciate in the scene specifically. Everyone’s really nice, and that would be great in itself, but they’re also really fucking good. [laughs] Which is amazing because that does not always happen. I have dear friends whose music I do not particularly care for, it’s just not my thing but I love them as people, and then there are bands that I love but I think that they seem like dicks.

San Jose is a miracle; we have such great bands. Star 99 are like our hometown heroes. There’s this band called Friendship Games, who I highly recommend checking out. There’s a rumour that perhaps they will end up on Asian Man Records, I’m just manifesting it into the world. They’re a My Little Pony-themed emo band. It’s the songwriting project of Jenny and she is the nucleus of the next generation of San Jose. She’s in two other amazing bands, one called Colonel Macabre - that is recording at District now, which is exciting, and one called antlion, which is Fremont emo/screamo. There’s this really exciting next generation of shredders that’s happening, I would say. Natasha Sandworms is one of my favourites. Natasha is just a bomb songwriter. She’s just crazy, I don’t know where these things come from in her brain. Her band is amazing. I have my foot in some other cities too and I personally believe that San Jose right now is special, it has special things going on.

Which part of Pl*net F*tness are you proudest of?

Well I hate it all so…[laughs] I love “Never Go Down”! I think “Never Go Down” is my favourite, probably. It just came together. It’s so nice when you have a clear vision and you execute it really quickly and it comes together like it was in your head. That does not happen that often. I just really like that one. I’m down to listen to that one.

I think “Pl*net F*tness”, the song, is a really good song lyrically. I think it does the thing I wanna do with Pacing songs, where it has a surface level thing and then it has a punchline. It’s funny but sad and is doing a couple different things on different levels. I think it’s a good song, but I don’t know that anyone wants to listen to it. It’s like you listen to it once and you’re like, “Ha-ha, I get it.” [laughs] But I am proud of that song.