Tyler Mabry and Harlow Phillips met in middle school, started making music together as teenagers, and have spent roughly half their lives learning how to make sense of the world alongside each other. Their bond is evident from the moment they enter the Zoom. It’s immediately clear that I’m speaking with two best friends who, despite spending the last few years evolving from simply being friends to friends and bandmates, still put their friendship at the forefront. Their band, hey, nothing (named after a reference to Stephen Chbosky’s coming of age novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower), has grown considerably in that time, but the closeness at its center remains.

“We’ve just been so fortunate to grow together,” Phillips says.

That shared history is audible in the band’s music, which has always managed to make room for both lightheartedness and more heavy feelings, because life rarely ever sits on just one end of that spectrum. Mabry describes that balance as key aspects of how they operate on a personal level, which naturally trickles down into how they and Mabry approach songwriting for the band. Even as the duo’s songs have become more ambitious over time as the band has found exponential growth, their process and approach to songwriting remains loose, open, and free of any limitations to how a song has to come together.

“We never really actually found something that we were super strict about when it comes to the actual creative process,” Mabry says. “We’re always just kind of having fun exploring our creative relationship and figuring out all the different ways it could look.”

That flexibility has served them well. hey, nothing first gained a wider audience with “i haunt ur dreams,” a song the pair wrote when they were 15 that eventually became a viral hit years later, when both artists had already lived enough life experience to feel a bit more distanced from the song.

Phillips says they still have “a lot of love” for the song and what it represented at the time. But they also recognize the distance between the teenagers who wrote that song years ago and the artists they are now. “It was maybe [a reflection of] who we were at that time,” they reflect. “But I think we are different artists and different people than what that song represented.”

Mabry laughs at the idea that the song might feel entirely foreign to them now. “The song is cute and fun, and I think we’re cute and fun,” he says. “So, in some ways, I do think it still represents us.”

That ability to hold two paradoxically competing emotions at once runs through hey, nothing’s new album, Hound, out August 21. The songs manage to strike a balance of being personal without being closed-off, rooted in specific experiences while leaving enough room for listeners to recognize pieces of themselves. In many ways, it feels like a coming-of-age soundtrack for the modern world. But if it feels universally relatable, that’s because the duo says they try not to write with an imagined audience hovering over them.

“We just try to tell the stories that feel true to us at the time,” Phillips says. “Whether that be where we are exactly in the moment, sitting down to write, or we’re talking about something that happened in the past, or we’re talking about something that we’re hopeful for in the future.”

At the same time, they are conscious of when a lyric becomes too specific. Mabry says that if something feels “too niche and too on the nose and too personal,” they will sometimes reshape it so that it serves the song rather than simply documenting their own lives. Other times, they let the specificity stay. “We’re pretty intentional about making [the lyrics] serve the song rather than serve ourselves, and so we try not to be too like too extremely niche and personal about it, but sometimes it’s just kind of what the song needs.” 

The same instinctive approach applies to the music itself, particularly when it comes to sonic choices. hey, nothing’s sound moves comfortably between rock, punk, folk and other genres without seeming particularly concerned about where one genre ends and another begins. Mabry says the variety comes naturally from both band members’ diverse music taste, while Phillips points to the usefulness of having two writers with different instincts.

“I could be totally convinced that we’re writing a more folk song, and then Tyler could be totally convinced that it’s a rock song, and then what comes out of that is like folk rock,” Phillips says. “Or we’re writing an emo song, and then it’s like, and then you’re rapping.” “Exactly,” Mabry adds. Phillips laughs. “And then I’m singing an ABBA pop melody over the saddest song you’ve ever heard.”

That kind of unpredictability seems to be part of the appeal. Their songs can begin with competing ideas and end somewhere neither person expected, the result of two people who have spent years mastering the art of knowing when to push and when to pull through an artistic collaboration, which is particularly useful, given the rapid upward trajectory that their career has taken over the years. What started as simple high school songwriting has evolved into major festivals and increasingly large rooms. Still, live performance remains the part of the job they love most, to the point where their relationship to stage fright has (nearly) disappeared. 

“Even if it goes bad, it’s gonna be fun,” Mabry says. “I feel like there’s an excitement at the beginning of a musical career, where it’s your first shows, you have no idea what’s going to happen. I think that’s why it is so scary at the beginning. I think we’re a little less scared. There’s still a lot of nerves before every show, yeah, but there’s also a lot of excitement before every show.”

That confidence has also come from recognizing the importance of knowing when to carry on, and when to admit to needing to pause. After years of constant momentum, the duo decided to take a break. They stepped away from songwriting for a bit, and gave each other some space to recalibrate physically and emotionally. 

“I think it’s just about giving yourself the space to breathe and to kind of reignite the flame every once in a while,” he says. But the distance ultimately served them well, as they returned from the hiatus refreshed and excited about making music again.  

And the result of that recharge is evident in the almost romanticized way the duo views Hound. When asked about what kind of feelings or emotions they hope listening to this album one day down the road will evoke, Phillips imagines hearing the album and being transported back to their life in Athens, Georgia and their house, their friends, the people they have made music with, the ordinary walks through town. “I really hope that every time we go back and listen to this, I can just put myself back in our little house,” they say. Mabry has a similar image. He wants to hear a song years from now and remember “specifically walking around Athens.”

While hey, nothing’s story has seemed to always been rooted in the lessons learned in growing up, the band now seems to have reached a place of contentment and gratitude. While it would be easy for such young artists to get caught up in the thrill of an increasingly more successful music career, both seem to prefer to relish in where they are now. They have a strong grasp, and appreciation, for the lasting friendship, community, uncertainty, and the strange privilege of realizing that the life you once imagined might actually be happening.

“We wake up extremely grateful every day for the life we get to live,” Phillips says.

And maybe that is the clearest picture of where hey, nothing sits for now. Still changing, still figuring things out, and most of all, still enjoying the fact that they get to do it together.

Hound is out August 21 via Music Soup/Interscope Records

_{Photos by Andi Elloway}