RadioUTD’s Summer Kulcsar interviewed lead singer of The Dear Hunter, Casey Crescenzo, on his new album Sunya. 

(Interview has been edited for clarity)

My name is Summer Kulcsar, and I have a very special guest with me today. Could you please introduce yourself?

Yep. My name is Casey Crescenzo, and I’m in the band The Dear Hunter.

What type of music does The Dear Hunter make?

I guess I would say when people ask, we usually just say like rock music, but that’s out of not really knowing what word to call it or what name to give it, but it can be really sort of anything we want it to be. Usually leaning into like a bit of a poppier version of whatever that would be. Like, if we do a jazzy song, it’s never going to be like avant garde jazz or anything. It’s going to be pretty poppy. So yeah, generally rock music, I suppose.

So, oftentimes, your albums tend to tell a story. What draws you to telling a tale in your music?

I think I tend to feel a little bit icky just writing songs that are from the perspective of just being me or about like people in my life or relationships with people in my life. And it feels a little bit more natural for me to take whatever experiences I have and funnel them through or some sort of conceptual prism and then letting that kind of naturally exist to represent whatever those other like experiences or ideas would have in, but allowing them to be a little bit less self serving.

So conceptual music just offers that ability to sing about the same things that you might sing about if it was, just, like you know, autobiographical without necessarily having to be like me, me, me about it. Not to disparage anybody else for why they write music a certain way but just what comes more naturally to me I suppose.

So, your new album Sunya, hopefully I’m saying that right-

I think you can say it however. I say it’s Sunya I but also like within the band itself it changes and I don’t really like to correct anybody else. But yeah, I say Sunya.

Well it does have a “u” in there so it makes sense.

I appreciate that. 

So, Sunya comes out in a couple of days. Literally less than 3 days. It continues the story that you started in the Indigo Child and Antimai. Are you excited to finally release it?

Yeah, I think so. I’m getting past the little bit of a fear stage I get especially for this band. This is another record that isn’t really the intuitive next thing that the band would do for a lot of the audience. And that’s always a little bit of a gamble to see how the response will go. But the response so far to what we’ve put out and teased from it has been really positive. So now I’m sort of past that fear stage and more into the anxious energy of wanting to hear what everybody thinks of the whole thing.

Well, I know I’m excited. What can fans and people find in the new album?

I think that it’s a continuation of that last record, Antimai. It plays with a lot of the same colors and musical styles there. It’s a little bit less serious in in terms of genre, a little bit more

like fun and colorful and exciting and shimmery, positive, hopeful kinds of sounds. But like where Antimai was this record that had this duality of being a world building record for this concept while also being a bit of a creative parallel to modern-day concepts. I think that this is more of a personal internal record. Antimai was a lot of singing from the perspective of these like fictional groups of people where every song is representing a different group of people and and the

like the concept being shared between all of that music, and it wasn’t so linear from song to song. This record is much more like various experiences through one perspective and so it just naturally takes on the shape of a more personal, relatable internal record. So this record follows

with those genres while kind of pushing a little bit further and exploring some stuff we didn’t do on Antimai. And then lyrically, it is a more personal record through all of its concepts.

An immersive web page was launched, set in the album’s world. What inspired you to create the experience and make it kind of ARG-like?

There’s just a really wonderful point between this vague idea that of making the promotional

period of a record more deeply associated with the concept of whatever that record was about. 

So I have a friend, his name is Jay. I know that I’m going to be butchering his last name because I’ve never actually heard him say it, but I think his last name is Mongiello. So Jay Mongiello is someone who contacted me a few years back when I first released the short film that I made called Cycle 8. He was super into the Indigo Child stuff that was coming out and was talking to me about trying to develop like more with it online and trying to break down the boundaries between where the record exists and the concept of the record. What I would do to flesh that concept out in the past would be making a graphic novel or something like that. 

He had always had this idea of there being that interactive experience. And I would say that a lot of the experience itself came from him. I would be super involved in the lore and I would be the one who did all of the 3D modeling and texturing and stuff like that for the cockpit of the ship on our website. A lot of like the gamifying of it and the sort of figuring out how to hide these like Easter eggs, how far to go into lore. I would give him all of this information. We talk about it, but so much of what I would say is like the design of the game came down to like Jay and his passion for this and wanting to see this just in the world. 

Not even necessarily like The Dear Hunter having this thing in the world, but an opportunity to have or or be a part of building that sort of experience for people. So, it’s been really fun because, you know, in the past we will work really hard on an album and we’ll put that album out and so we have that nervous energy of waiting to see what people respond to and and hoping that they feel like some of the same emotional journey that we feel in making the record and listening to it. I’ve shared that experience a lot of times with my band, but I shared it with Jay this time, when we would be going back and forth and making sure we had everything ready to go for like the next day. For him it was a lot like releasing an album for him as well. 

And so him having that relationship to it, really loving the source material, but also seeing that opportunity for how to be creatively involved, it wouldn’t have been nearly as special of a process if it wasn’t with him. 

And not to be too longwinded, but a really good example of that is the cockpit for the ARG. I designed the cockpit at first, and it was really sort of run-of-the-mill typical looking with just random buttons, a ton of random buttons and knobs and things that didn’t really do anything. And then while he was starting to work on the website, I started designing the exterior of whatever the ship was going to be. And this was like early on before I was finished animating the music video for Giants. 

He came back to me and told me, “Hey, the cockpit that you designed didn’t really feel lived in and it doesn’t really match the exterior that you made.” He pushed me a little bit further. Then I went back and designed and modeled and textured the cockpit that ended up being used based purely on him saying like, “Hey, I think this is like from the from the perspective of someone um hypothetically experiencing this and seeing this music video and doing this game, doesn’t feel as good as I know it could be.” 

And me going back and working on that and then working on that gave me the cockpit I was able to use in the music video. There was this really awesome sort of like cyclical relationship where the ideas he was having for the game were feeding me in terms of like the visuals I was striving to achieve, and then the visuals I was driving to pushing him to like see new opportunities with what to do which ended up resulting in a lot of those mini games that show up on the website. 

Sorry that was so long-winded. It took me so long to say all that.

I liked hearing about how you decided on what the ship would look like because on The Dear Hunter’s Instagram posts with the new album’s lyrics, the ship’s journey has kind of been like the focus.

Yes, I think I think that sort of mirrors this like single person’s approach or or perspective

um that the record takes on in this journey through like a hostile sort of world um you know that that sci-fi

kind of trope of constantly being chased. But um yeah, it’s been it’s been really

creatively rewarding to go through this process. Mhm. 

So, speaking of creative, I know that you’re kind of like just now birthing your new baby, but what are you planning next in the world of Antimai? Have you thought about it yet?

I mean, I think that interestingly enough, there’s this point now where once Sunya comes out, there wouldn’t be any more records to make like Antimai and Sunya. It’s a choice of am I going to dive in and try and tell this main narrative that is the first thing I wrote for The Indigo Child in 2017 and then have just been developing since then? I don’t know if that’s necessarily going to happen. Right now, I’m working on a novelization of that whole story with my friend Dustin Reed, who I don’t know how dug into The Dear Hunter band lore you are, but we put out a movie last year called The Dear Hunter North American Tour 2023. And Dustin is the guy who plays this character, Gleeb.

I’ve heard of it. I haven’t seen it, but I know of it.

It’s super fun and it’s super silly and it’s kind of like the antithesis to something like this. There is a lot of humor to the Indigo Child that hasn’t necessarily come through for a lot of people just yet. It’s a sci-fi concept that isn’t like making fun of sci-fi or anything like that, but the movie that we put out is absolutely the band at its silliest and most. It’s a pretty fun polarization between working on something like that movie with Dustin that’s just meant to be absurd, and funny, and engaging in a different way, and then working together on this adaptation of a screenplay I wrote to put the story out. I think there’s a part of me that feels like if I never got the time or focus to really dig in and make Indigo Child narrative concept records that are similar to like The Acts concept records that we’ve done that I would feel pretty satisfied knowing that this book series is out there with the two versions of that of the theme song of The Indigo Child and then Antimai and Sunya. It’s very complimentary material in terms of giving the world that a story takes place in an identity and then allowing that story to kind of exist either parallel to it or or within it. 

So there’s no real concrete plans. Everything’s on the table and it’s just a question of, you know, like if this record comes out and people just [ __ ] hate it, like I’m gonna probably be a little bit less apt to go off and dig even deeper into the project. Not because I would feel like anyone necessarily pushed me away from it, but if it’s clear that it’s just something that people aren’t relating to or enjoying, it would be a hard sell on like my band and everyone else involved in this to say like, “Okay, now it’s time for us to sign up for 10 narrative records back to back for this project that nobody wants to hear.” I think there’s a little bit of just waiting to see the way it goes.

Well, you have one person. That’s a start. How have you been preparing for the upcoming tour?

I’ve been working out. When I was in my 20s, I’m just a generally out of shape person, it almost didn’t matter how out of shape I was. I could really do whatever or scream as loud as I wanted. It was like the Lazarus pit, just every night going to bed and then waking up it was somehow miraculously rejuvenated. But at this point it’s like I don’t want to age out too early and be lethargic and put on a boring show. There’s so many examples of people who just shouldn’t be performing anymore. It’s just so boring watching them, and they’re phoning in what they can do. So for the first time in my life, for an extended period of time I have been thinking like I really don’t want to be falling apart on stage. So that requires a lot of exercise. So I am actually preparing for the tour that way. And then also just trying to sing more. Like when I don’t have a project that I’m actively working on, I really don’t like the sound of my voice. I don’t walk around the house and sing, or I sing so rarely that I have to force myself to get in the mode of like, hey, you’re going to be singing every night for an hour and a half a night for a few weeks. I need to

get back to it and remind my body that it sings. It’s really just trying to remind my body of the things it’s supposed to be doing out there in the world.

It’s good that you’re preparing. I would have awful stage fright if I had to go up there and everybody would be looking at me.

Oh god, definitely. If you asked the band, my stage fright is debilitating at times. The 20 to 30 minutes before a show, there’s an exponential rising in pace of me pacing around back and forth in the backstage. I’ve never been someone who likes it. There’s a one or two song to about four or five song decompression period from when I get on stage before I start to feel okay in any way. I’m so self-conscious and so I do not like people looking at me or anything like that. So it’s tough. It’s really tough. 

I just have to keep reminding myself that can’t be the reason that I don’t do it because it is so ungrateful for the position that I’m in. I’m really lucky that there’s people who want to hear this band and and that we’ve managed to be a band this long without really ever being, you know, like traditionally successful, but at the same time, our audience has supported us for long enough that we’ve managed to be able to legitimize continuing doing this, which I think is one of the hardest things. 

It’s kind of like a professional sport if you think about it, it’s like well everybody does that when they’re a kid and like nobody gets paid for doing it, they just do it because they like doing it. But if somebody was spending all of their time playing basketball and they weren’t able to make that a career, you’d probably look at them and ask, “Hey, why are you playing so much basketball? You have no job and this is not bringing you money and it’s costing you money.” 

I think that we’re really lucky, and not to disparage anybody from playing music just to play it, but we’re also lucky to be in the position where anyone’s going to like to listen to our music or they’re going to come to a show and support us. That stage fright that I feel is so heavy that I even feel it to the point of like, you know, genuine panic. Still in the back of my mind I know that I need to force myself to do it out of just the means of honoring and and and paying gratitude to the position that I’m in and that we’re all in.

Where can people find The Dear Hunter online?

Oh man, I wish I knew. I wish I knew where our things were. I know we have a Linktree that helps like do all of that stuff. This is so embarrassing. I mean, I think on some of our socials we are listed as the @therealtdh. There’s like TheDearHunter.com, where we’ve got that game and where you can find all of our upcoming shows and links to our music. Our records are available at a website called uh caveandcanarygoods.com and that’s our record label for self-releasing music. I think our Instagram is @therealtdh. All of our stuff is available via linktr.ee/thedearhunter. That’s probably the best way you can get most of what we do.

I can confirm it is the @therealtdh on Instagram. 

There we go. Perfect.

Do you have any final messages for the readers of this interview?

Just that I’m grateful that you didn’t think it was like such a [ __ ] move to be 30 minutes late to an already rescheduled interview and that you were able to still do the interview. I’m really grateful for that. Also for anybody who decided to read about some band they don’t know about and is going to go and listen to or investigate what that band’s about, thank you to them. And for anybody who just doesn’t read it at all I guess I have nothing positive to say to them.

Thank you for meeting with me. 

Absolutely. Thank you.