Learning The Alphabet With Feathers

After meeting as waitresses in Texas, Anastasia Dimou (vocals, guitar), Courtney Voss (bass) and Kathleen Carmichael (keyboards), decided to quit their jobs and have a go at forming a band. It’s a risk that paid off, because Feathers has become a pretty big deal. By combining juddering bass lines, emotionally intelligent lyrics and intricate percussion, the three-piece synth-pop group caught the attention of both Robyn and Depeche Mode, who they supported on tour last year.

Their debut album If All Now Here is out on 27th May and was mixed by Steven DePalo, who has previously worked with Cold Cave. Throw Brian Foote, who produced two of the tracks on the album, into the mix, and you’ve got yourself a pretty exciting record. And now they’re in the UK, ready to play Dot To Dot and Field Day later this month before returning to the States to tour with Little Boots. But first, they’ll be playing at VICE’s issue launch at The Old Blue Last on Thursday.

So to get your prepped for that, here's an A-Z of everything you’ll ever need to know about the girls from Austin.

A is for… ALKALINE WATER

Pop stars are fussy about their H2O. There’ll be no Perrier or San Pellegrino for these chicks. “Volvic and Evian are better for my voice because they’re alkaline,” Anastasia told me. “A lot of bottled waters are on the acidic side, and that messes with your voice.” What a nerd.

B is for… BOPPING

Which is how Courtney describes her moves when she's shuffling around to George Michael or Aretha Franklin. “She’s very free, all over the place, even a little bit wild,” said Anastasia.

C is for… COFFEE

Kathleen used to be a barista. “She’s serious about coffee,” Anastasia warned me. “For her, baristas are celebrities. On tour, we go out of our way to track down the most famous ones. She knows them all by name.” Showing off her caffeine prowess, Kathleen told me that if your coffee’s shit, sugar makes it drinkable. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I already knew that.

D is for… DEPECHE MODE

This is who Feathers kind of sound like.

E is for… “EASY ON THE SPRAY TAN!”

So these girls have stayed with some interesting characters while they’ve been on tour. “One host who was putting us up at her B&B played a hilarious trick on us,” Anastasia told me. “We got home from a late night of dancing at 5am and she said, ‘Before I got to bed, I need you to spray tan me.’

“I was like, ‘Don’t you need to exfoliate before you do this?’

“She said, ‘No, I want colour for tomorrow.’ So she handed me a spray bottle, I didn’t even look at it. I sprayed her and it turned out, it was meant for legs. She had this spray dripping from her face and it was all patchy and way too brown. Her body was pale and her face was terrible. I was freaking out. She partied for a few hours before she told us it was her gag.”

F is for… FRENCH FRIES

Which Kathleen reckons is the best hangover cure. Anastasia votes coconut water and Courtney thinks it’s Coca Cola. I told that I have a friend who thinks you cure a hangover by eating an entire melon. They disagreed. “No,” said Courtney. “Fruit is so wrong.”

“A whole melon? That’s so large. I think your friend is confused,” Anastasia added.

G is for… GREEK TOMBSTONES

The lyric, “There’s nothing I want, there’s nothing I fear and all the things I want, you make me believe,” from (you’ve guessed it) "Believe" is Anastasia’s fave. “It’s a declaration that love is love and it doesn’t matter what form it takes, whether it’s straight love or gay love. Love and making love is love. Period,” she told me. That’s a whole lot of love.

BTW she found the lyric off the tombstone of a Greek writer.

H is for… HIGH KICK

“See this bump on my nose?” Kathleen asked me. “I got it from a high kick I did in my teenage years. I kicked myself in the face. It was so painful.”

I is for… INTERNET

Anastasia fucking loves the internet. She literally cannot get enough of it. “I have a scar on my arm from punching through glass when I was trying to get to the internet,” she told me. “My sister was hogging the internet cable at my parents’ house, and I was like, "Let me in." She was like, "No," so I banged through the glass of the door. I had to go to hospital. They had to take glass out of my arm because I went through and then I pulled back out.” Eew.

J is for… JAPAN

Which is where Courtney most wants to visit before she dies. Then she wants to go to Australia.

K is for… KLEPTOMANIA

That’s an exagg. But this is a convo that happened during our interview

Kathleen: “I stole a handful of gummy worms out of one of those supermarket bins once.”

Anastasia: “Me too!”

Courtney (the secret dark horse): “I still do that these days. Yum.”

L is for… LOCK JAW

“My most embarrassing moment lasted three months,” Kathleen told me. “I got lock jaw. I was brand new at school and my mouth literally closed shut. I had to meet everyone with this very weird voice and face. I didn’t make many friends that year.”

M is for… MATH CLASS

Which is where Kathleen cringed again. “I remember walking into high school math class and having a string of toilet paper attached to my pants,” she said. “I told you; I didn’t have many friends.”

N is for… “NOOO, I FORGOT MY WORDS BECAUSE I’M DRUNK”

“Once I forgot my words on stage,” Anastasia said. “I never drink at shows anymore.”

O is for… “OH MY GOD IT’S RYAN GOSLING”

Kathleen met Ryan Gosling once. “I was out at a party in a bar. He was in town because they were shooting a film in Austin. It was so much fun. He was at all the music festivals. He grabbed my hand, and I froze. Then I just said, "Hi Ryan.”

P is for… PUNCHING

The girls aren’t into this. “We’re lovers, not fighters.” Courtney’s partial to a jovial punch though. She gave her manager a friendly shoulder one last night.

Q is for… EQUIPMENT

“Amps, microphones, synthesizers and my most expensive possessions,” Courtney told me. Anastasia used to own a pricey leather jacket but someone robbed it from her Green Room in Brighton. I think they call that karma (see: K is for… KLEPTOMANIA).

R is for… RETAINER

Specifically, Anastasia’s. It’s her most treasured possession. “I’ve had it since I was 14,” she told me. “It’s the one thing I would freak out about if my house was burnt down because it’s the one thing I can’t get back. I’m vain, I guess.” How very Marnie.

S is for… “SHALL WE GO TO THE BEACH?”

Courtney’s worst habit is drunkenly inviting strangers to go to the beach with her. “When I wake up and realise I’ve invited a bunch of strangers to the beach again, I think: I don’t know these people, I don’t want to go to the beach with them. Why did I make those plans?”

T is for… TATTOO

The girls reckon one crazy fan got inked because of them. Problem is; it’s hard to tell, because he got a tattoo of a feather, which could mean literally anything. Courtney insisted they inspired it, but Kathleen was more realistic. “It was partially to commemorate his trip. He just saw us play at a music festival and then got it.”

“He was wearing a gladiator helmet,” Courtney added.

U is for… UGLY SCARS

Courtney’s family has a weird motorbike curse. “On my 22nd birthday, I let a friend drive me around on a motorcycle,” she told me. “When I got off, I stepped a bit too close to the tail pipe, so I have a giant burn mark on the back of my leg. I found out, after talking to my mum about it, that she got one of those on her 21st birthday. It must run in the family.”

V is for… VEGETARIANISM

Kathleen broke her vegetarianism of seven years on tour. Why? “Peer pressure,” she told me. “I’m kidding. I just thought rabbit stew looked and smelled so good. It was amazing. It was juicy and perfect.”

W is for… WHISKEY

Which is what they drink before every show. “Then we have a group freak out,” added Courtney, not explaining whether the freak out is whiskey induced. “We huddle together and shout chants that make no sense. It’s different every time, but usually we just stand in a circle and shout someone’s name – whoever our favourite person is at that time. Last night, it was Chris, our manager.”

X is for X RAY

Courtney has to get X rays all the time because she’s so damn clumsy. “I have a scar on my shin,” she told me. “I used to have a road bike and I let a friend borrow it. There’s a removable front tyre and if you don’t secure it correctly, once you put it back on, it’s dangerous. I was riding it once, after I let him borrow it. I went over a bump, the wheel came off and the fork on my bike drilled into the ground. I had these metal foot pedals and it scraped a whole piece of skin off my shin.” Gross.

Y is for… “YOU ALRIGHT?”

This is the line British men use to get into these girls’ knickers. “We’ve had so many guys get a little too close to our faces and go, "You alright?" and it’s like: "No, I am not. Go away,’” said Courtney, who advocates simply handing someone her number and waiting for them to call. “Once I did that and he called the next day,” she boasted.

Z is for… BIZARRE VENUES

You thought I was going to say, “Z is for… ZZZ”. OMG! The girls miss their beds when they’re away from home! Those girls just love their home comforts!

Well, you were wrong.

I’ve gone for the slightly shitter "bizarre venues”. “We performed in the desert once,” Courtney told me. “And once we played at The Salton Sea, which is a deserted town with this man-made sea. But the weirdest was Salvation Mountain. It’s this man’s religious shrine. He built a mountain and painted it. It looks like Mad Max but painted with rainbow colours. It’s in the middle of nowhere.”

So there you have it. More info than you’ll ever need about girls you don’t know.