AN INTERVIEW WITH THE DUTCH KILLS
photo by Tori McGraw
The Dutch Kills are a Brooklyn-based rock four-piece composed of lead vocalist and guitarist Julia Von Dutch, bassist Maxine McCormick, lead guitarist Alec Berry, and drummer Heather Jensen. They released their debut EP “The Rot” in 2024 which was produced by Aleksi Godard and Gordon Raphael at The Hit Factory and Electric Lady Studios in New York City. Since then they have been making waves in the NYC indie rock scene. We sat down with the band at Carousel bar in Brooklyn to chat about their recent findings about the music scene and their plans for the future.
Alec I: If you wouldn’t mind introducing yourselves?
Julia: I’m Julia Von Dutch, I sing and play rhythm guitar.
Maxine: I’m Maxine, and I play bass.
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Heather: My name is Heather, I play drums.
Alec B: My name is Alec, I play lead guitar.
Alec I: Really quick, how many other Alec’s do you know in your life? Because I haven't met that many.
Alec B: In my life? Oh I don’t know. Well there’s you, me, there was this guy from my middle school who used to watch hentai in class. That might be it.
[laughter]
Alec I: Awesome. How long have you been The Dutch Kills and how did you all meet?
Julia: We’ve been together for just about two years. We initially started when I had Maxine come over to my apartment in the summer of 2022. We were just jamming, and I knew that Alec could play guitar, so I thought maybe we could all play together. Then I had this moment of like ‘we have to do this now or we’re never gonna do it’… So then we put up a Craigslist ad for a drummer, and specifically a femme drummer. We went through a few drummers before we found Heather.
Maxine: January 2023 was when we had our first practice [as a band]. I knew Julia from NYU, and also Alec and I knew each other from NYU.
Alec B: Yeah you were like one of the first people I met at NYU.
Maxine: Oh really?
Alec B: I turned 18 like two days before I met Maxine.
[laughter]
photo by Tori McGraw
Maxine: This is exposing each other but Alec and I both did improv in college and he was on my team and I thought he was always really funny.
Julia: We met Heather through our friend’s girlfriend Skylar. But she’s been the best addition.
Maxine: Yeah, Heather’s been really great. I feel like we tricked you into joining the band, because you were only supposed to do it temporarily and then…
Heather: I was only [joining the band] temporarily, because I have my own band, and so I was like ‘I don’t know if I have time for another band’. But then I liked it so much… I really enjoyed it.
Maxine: We kept trying to get Heather to tell us she loves us.
Julia: She still won’t say it.
[laughter]
Alec B: The first month we were playing with Heather we would leave [practice] and then be like ‘I think she likes us!’
Maxine: Oh my god, when Heather finally agreed to be in the band permanently us three (Maxine, Heather, and Alec) went to a concert together and we got Long Island Iced Teas-
Alec B: Yep we got two.
Maxine: Yes and after Heather was drunk then she agreed!
Heather: I wasn’t that drunk.
Alec B: I could barely stand.
[laughter]
Alec I: So you released your debut EP just over a year ago. Talk to me about that project. What was your goal for your first EP?
Julia: Whenever we started playing together I started writing a lot of the lyrics and the chord progressions for a lot of the songs. The whole EP is about a breakup. Each of the songs kind of deal with the different parts of breakups, like going on first dates and how that sucks. The Counter is about having a crush on someone and they don’t like you back. The Bitter Start is about getting back out there and dealing with the grief of being alone, but being excited for new things. So we sort of put together the EP over the first few months, just by jamming and practice. We recorded it all in… two days?
Alec B: It was two days, and vocals were separate.
Julia: Yeah. We recorded instruments live and then vocals later with Gordon. Do you know Gordon Raphael?
Alec I: Yes I do.
Julia: We got to work with him which was crazy. We just DMed him and someone ended up bailing, so he was just like “I have four hours. Can you meet us on Sunday?” And we were like “yeah!”. He had a pretty good rate for up and coming artists and stuff like that. So that’s how I met Gordo.
Maxine: Gordo has a Monster High backpack that’s amazing. He is a really great guy to work with when you’re up and coming. Because obviously he has that huge fame, but he just loves working with people who are just getting out there. Just getting their foot in the door. And yeah it’s really special.
Alec I: Yeah totally. I feel like every time I hear about an up and coming band in the rock or rock-adjacent space that I really like, I find out “oh, their EP was produced by Gordon Raphael too”, you know? Over and over again it keeps happening.
Julia: Yeah totally!
Alec I: Punk rock and rock and roll has really deep roots in New York City. How do you feel about that legacy, and how do you as a band see yourselves either fitting into that narrative or breaking away from it?
Maxine: I feel like New York punk has inspired me more than any other region of punk. Whether it’s Velvet Underground or Yeah Yeah Yeahs… There’s just a good energy in the city and it’s talked about a lot but I think it’s pretty undeniable. The music that has come out of it is so special and so unique and I feel like that has really informed us… the history of New York punk has really informed us.
Julia: Definitely. I feel like guitars are coming back. Rock sounding music is coming back. It’s having- not a renaissance, but people are wanting to listen to live bands again which is a super social thing to do. I feel like the way we fit into the rock/punk community is just by showing up for other bands. I know that for us, we’re constantly going to shows.
Maxine: I feel like that really informs our music too. Like I can’t speak for other cities but there’s so many venues and so many bands in this city. Just being able to listen to all these different music artists that are at your level. And getting inspired by the community around you is so special. There’s so much stuff to be inspired by.
Alec I: I totally agree. Right now as a band what narratives or themes do you feel are important to you in your writing and your inspiration?
Julia: I feel like our sound combines a lot of different things. Like definitely some indie, and some rock and some grunge. “Are You Kidding Me” is like a pop-punk song. But I don’t know, we love The Strokes, and bands like Hole and Bikini Kill and femme led bands that are being disruptive. Right now i am so stoked on Amyl And The Sniffers. She’s fucking crazy and I love it. I feel inspired by her and just kind of being unapologetic and writing what feels instinctual rather than trying to copy something that’s going on.
photo by Tori McGraw
Alec I: With that, talk to me about your writing process as a band. What’s that like?
Maxine: We were just talking about this actually. Julia brings a lot of ideas to practice, like the skeleton and the structure of the lyrics and stuff. We’ll just jam on it together and build on it as a unit. It feels like Julia is the storyteller, you know? But we all are also songwriters and do our own projects so being able to bring that into the music as a part of the writing process is really valuable to be able to do that and channel that into different avenues.
Julia: Yeah, like I’ll bring the bones but everyone writes their own- like I don't write Alec’s guitar part. Rarely do I ever write someone else’s part. They will normally just kind of jam on their own and figure it out. But the structure and the big picture is something I will bring to practice. “The Bitter Start” actually was one that started as just a jam and it evolved into a song. Just a lot of push and pulls, tension and release. Just playing with that at practice. but yeah, everyone adds their own special flare.
Alec I: Do you guys each have a favorite song that you’ve written? Released or unreleased?
Maxine: Hmm. For released I love Counter. I think that one is super fun and it’s really good for fast walking to the subway. I have like a 5-20 minute walk to the subway for my job so that song really helps. For unreleased, we haven’t recorded it yet but We Both Can’t Be Wrong is one of the newer songs and it’s such a beautiful love song. I mean it just feels very sincere and I think it’s sweet.
Heather: My favorite is Cheap Love because it’s fun to play. It came out today.
Alec I: Oh really today?
Julia: Oh yeah it came out today.
Alec B: My favorite that is not released is Rearrange Me because I get to play a guitar solo as long as I want at the end of it. But mostly because we just get to jump around and go crazy at the end of the set. That’s a really fun one. But yeah I like them all.
Julia: One of my favorite released songs is “Are You Kidding Me?” It’s definitely like our fun, jump around song… It feels like the intro to Malcolm In The Middle. That one is really fun. I wrote it in my room with just my headphones on so I was just whispering it to myself and writing down all the lyrics. And then I came with it to practice the next day. Unreleased, there’s this new song called “Molly Screams” and it leans into our grungier sound. It’s about my friend and about how she’s just super unapologetic. “Molly Screams” like she’s not afraid to do whatever the fuck she wants. I’m really excited to release that one.
Alec I: What’s the best gig you guys have ever played?
Julia: We’ve had so many fun ones.
Maxine: I liked Mercury Lounge. I mean we opened for Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers which was the biggest band we’ve ever played with. So being able to meet them and play with them was super special. But it was obviously at Mercury Lounge which is such a big venue, like so many big names have played there. Like even my boss has a story about Mercury Lounge. Just playing at a place with so much history for a band that we were already fans of was great. And our EP release show at The Broadway was sick.
Julia: I’d say our halloween shows are always bonkers. Something crazy always happens. But we have the most fun because we will all dress up. Two years ago we all dressed up like Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction. We all had the wigs including Alec. This year we did Rocky Horror. I did like a reveal, I was Frankenfurter. I was almost naked on the stage.
Heather: I liked the Mercury Lounge one as well just because it was the biggest show I’ve ever gotten to play. Like the biggest venue.
Alec B: I would probably say our release show last year. It was sold out and it was awesome because everyone was there for us. Just paying and looking out to see all our friends, like everyone really showed up. It was really special.
Julia: My grandparents came.
Maxine: [laughs] I remember that.
Julia: My grandma almost lost her hearing.
Alec B: There are some really funny pictures of her grandparents in the crowd and everyone around them is going crazy.
Julia: Yeah, everyone was like “protect them”. But my grandma couldn’t put in the foam ear plugs. She just kept trying to shove them in instead of squeezing them. So for the next two days everything sounded like chipmunks and I was like “oh no i’ve ruined my grandma's hearing”. And she was like “I would do it again in a heartbeat”.
Maxine: That’s really sweet.
photo by Tori McGraw
Alec I: That’s a good grandma for sure. Do you guys have a pre-show ritual of some sort?
Maxine: We were asked this last week in an interview and I think we all said that we get so weird. Julia will text us-
Julia: Yeah I’ll text the band like hours beforehand like “just a heads up I’m gonna be really weird today”
Alec B: Or you’ll text us like “I’m already here”
Julia: I showed up like 3 hours before soundcheck one time. I’ll just turn into a freak on show days and then once I play I'm like “yeah everyone let’s just hangout. Why is everyone being so weird?”
Maxine: I could really use a pre-show ritual. You know I want a pre-show song.
Alec B: Like a hype song?
Maxine: Yeah like a hype song. I guess if I had to choose a song it would be Limp Bizkits “Break Stuff”, live in Kansas City. That’s a really good one.
Heather: I guess my pre-show ritual would be to clean my earplugs before going on.
Alec I: That’s good! Hygiene.
Maxine: We should all do a secret handshake.
Alec I: What is something you wish that people understood about being a young band in New York City today?
Julia: I would say promoting yourself really sucks. For example bands like Radiohead would have never made it today because… posting Tik Toks, are you fucking kidding me?
[laughter]
Julia: Like that’s the only way to get streamers and attention. Like I was bored on Christmas so I made a bunch of Tik Toks but we haven’t made any since. It’s really really tough because there’s so much noise. It’s way easier to make music now, you just need a laptop. You don’t need to record in a studio, you can just do it in your apartment. So you just really have to stick to your guns.
Maxine: I guess on the flip side of that too though like if you’re nervous about starting a band or you don’t really know the community or whatever, there’s so many people that want to play out there, and just going to shows and meeting people you do see and experience so much. It feels like you know, at the end of the day that’s what it’s all about. Just playing music and hanging out with other people who also love to play music. It’s super true about the promotion thing, but if you just want to have fun and play it’s totally possible.
Heather: Yeah. Say yes to everything. And also protect your hearing.
Alec B: I say everyone should rock out and have fun. I think the world needs more rocking out.
Maxine: That’s so real.
Alec I: I agree. What’s something you can tell us about your plans for 2025? What’s cooking? What’s next for The Dutch Kills?
Julia: Definitely more music. We were literally just talking today. We are kind of cooking up another EP, that’s probably what’s next for us. And then some really exciting news, we didn’t get into SXSW but fuck that we’re going anyways.
Alec B: Awesome.
Julia: We are going to play two unofficial showcases. We’re flying Spirit airlines, gonna get in the airbus. I’m pumped though. The only out of town shows we've done have been New Jersey and Montreal. New Jersey was a bust man, we don’t talk about that.
Alec B: Montreal was pretty awesome though.
Maxine: New Jersey was our first show with exactly zero people in the audience. Just absolutely none. It’s okay though, because first of all we had only had our first release for a second, we didn’t have any audience in Jersey, it was pouring rain…the people we were playing with were so sweet, so nice. But I think they also probably play a lot of shows in Jersey, whereas [for us] this was more like a one off thing.
Julia: I broke a string we were rocking out so hard. It was one of our best shows. We sounded really good.
Alec B: Yeah we sounded really good. But Montreal it was like everyone coming in off the street who heard us, it was crazy. We were getting hyped up like crazy and everyone kept asking if we were some other Montreal band.
Maxine: Yeah there was some new, hot band in Montreal and there was a festival going on that weekend that they were performing at. So people kept coming in from the street and everyone was havoing a great time at our show. And after people would come up to us like “I can’t believe we saw you guys, we were trying to get tickets to see you all week”. And we were like “oh umm no we’re not them, but I’m glad you liked it”
Julia: Another EP is in play, outside of SXSW. Maybe another min tour?
Maxine: Mini tour!
Alec I: Any closing statements?
Julia: Listen to our new single, “Cheap Love”. Out now.