Alternative band Atlas Genius is quickly making a name for themselves in the music world. Their music consists of a well-balanced mix of rock and pop with a unique twist.  The Australian band has toured with Imagine Dragons and is finally heading their solo tour in America. The Bite got to chat with lead singer Keith Jeffery about everything from the basics of music-making to monkeys. Be sure to check out their not to be missed show at the House of Blues on October 18.

So you started the recording process a bit differently than most bands, building your home studio before you actually started out. How did that affect your emergence onto the music scene?

I think the big effect it had was on the way that we write and record. That was the real thing—having the facility that allows you to experiment [soundwise] with what you’re doing, and write in a studio rather than write to go to a studio and construct the song the way you want to do it. That was the biggest I think.

Your song “Trojans” met a lot of success right off the bat, before you had even signed a deal. Did you have any idea that things would take off like that?

Definitely not, because of the way that we did it. Our approach was—and we actually spoke about this between [ourselves]—the approach was, let’s just focus on the music, put little to no time into marketing because I think that is a common mistake that a huge amount of bands make. I think that they spend a lot of energy on networking and that kind of stuff, and while that is important of course, you’ve got to get the music right in the first place. A lot of work goes into honing your craft…which is what we decided to do…We didn’t expect for anything to happen quickly because we expected for it to be a slow, organic growth. A couple of fans a week or something, you know that kind of thing. The way it happened was totally unexpected.

You are currently signed with Warner Brothers Records. Would you ever think about releasing another album independently in the future?

I don’t see a need to do that right now. At some point, I mean you never know what might happen down the track. I think that the great thing about the Internet these days is that you can distribute your music virtually for free, just put it up online and people can download it. I think one of the really important things now, where it’s sort of shifted where the importance comes in with a record label, is that there is only so much you can do just with the Internet. If you want to tour and do that sort of thing, you need that support of a label that can help you. We were on the other side of the world, so how do you go from having a song that people were liking on the Internet to traveling the world and touring? There’s not too much you can do. So those kinds of considerations were really one of the things about signing with a label. I mean it’s fine releasing independently, I’ve got nothing against that, a lot of people do.

When you write your music, do you normally start with writing the melodies or the lyrics first?

I find that generally melodies come first. For me, the music that I like, and the songs I like, the music has to be really interesting…what makes sense has to be the music, and it has to be captivating. I feel like if you try and shoot a melody into a set of lyrics, then that for me generally doesn’t end up with a pleasing result, whereas if you’ve got some kind of idea what you want the music to be, and the mood, then that sort of inspires the lyrics. I generally write a lot of lyrics down, and I have this pool of lyrics that when I’m writing a song I go back through what I have done over the last six months and see what sort of feels right. Then you shoot the lyrics into the song until it feels right and what suits the melody. I mean it’s give and take, there’s not a hard and fast rule.

Is there anyone that inspired your music making?

A lot of people. Beck [Hansen], his stuff is really inspiring to me because I think with a guy like Beck he is just always taking chances. He’s always pretty radical with his choice of lyrics. One could debate whether some of them make any sense at all, but [soundwise] he always takes a lot of chances.

When you guys were on tour with Imagine Dragons, did you guys hang out a lot?

Yeah, absolutely. We’re still really close friends with them…We’re actually going out and touring with them again. We’re going to Europe later this year for a while with them. We get to catch up with them a lot, during the festival season we crossed paths a few times. They are great guys, really hardworking and talented guys.

Do you have any special pre-show routines?

There’s a couple of things I suppose we like to do. I think we are all pretty much the same, especially if you are the main band on and you’ve got an opening band, it’s great to go out there and just sort of take in what they’re doing and enjoy what they’re doing. But also it sort of gets you in the right mindset to go onstage. We always do a band huddle right before we go on stage to unify the team so to speak.

What’s one of the craziest things that’s happened to you while on tour?

The craziest thing…we had a monkey backstage at one of the Imagine Dragons shows. I’d never really seen a monkey up close, and we actually got to hang out with this monkey. I forget what her name was, but she was really cute. That was pretty interesting.