Trestles Talk New Projects, Influences, and DIY roots

Santa Cruz band Trestles is the ultimate blend of surf rock and '60s garage, perfectly suited to their California beach town. I had the chance to sit down with the four-piece band before their first gig of 2025 at Felton Music Hall. The band released their debut album, Halfway Up The Hill, in December of 2022, with “Rip Curl Sweatshirt” becoming their biggest hit. The band is comprised of Hunter Kelly (vocals/guitar), Sophia Wall (bass/vocals), Jackson Jones (guitar/vocals), and Malena Clark (drums/vocals).

Hunter and Jackson met back in high school, where they used to play in a band called Speed Walker. Hunter joked, “It was maybe not the best, and we kind of all got torn apart during the pandemic.” The current lineup began playing together in 2021.

Hunter explained, “It wasn’t until we met Sophia online during the pandemic through mutual friends that things started to take shape. She set us up with a show at the Phoenix Theater in Petaluma. Out of necessity, she got us this gig, so I put together a band just for the show, and that ended up becoming Trestles. I wrote our song ‘Dwell’ in, like, one day, just so we’d have music out and could be a real band with a name. Then it was pretty much just a bunch of friends coming together around this idea. Malena joined a little later, and there was all sorts of weird mix-up stuff.” Sophia added, “A lot of musical chairs.”

You have a unique mix of 60’s garage rock and modern indie rock. Where do you get your influences?

Hunter: Um, It’s funny because we all like different types of music and shit. We kind of just found ourselves around one central idea because it became easier without too many cooks in the kitchen.

Sophia: Yeah, I think the garage rock was really a major influence in the beginning, just because Hunter and I really like the Arctic Monkeys and The Strokes, especially their early stuff. So that was definitely, a major influence.

Hunter: The 60’s thing was more of a recent development.

Sophia: We have cooler influences now then when we were in high school.

Hunter: Yeah you grow up.

Your new EP comes out soon, with the lead single “Beach Betrayed Me” released on January 17th. What can fans expect from your new work?

Hunter: Kind of what we just said, more influences.

Jackson: I think it’s a more refined and mature sound. I think we have more of an idea of what we want out of something.

Hunter: What we want to be.

Jackson: Our first album was cool because it was kind of so many different influences coming all at once. And it was kind of thrown together, everything we had. And now it’s really like we’re gonna make a solid project that’s one central idea.

Malena: [It’s] a different interpretation of the same idea, but it’s still the same idea.

Hunter: Yeah, now there’s an idea.

Malena: Rather than us just throwing stuff together and being like, ‘It’s done.’ But another thing is we’ve all matured a lot as musicians, and so we’ve developed our own styles when it comes to our parts, and we are very fortunate enough to be at the point where we can actually afford to pay someone to help us record it and mix it. So just that alone makes it sound a lot more mature.

Hunter: No more garage recording.

Malena: It’s not Hunter mixing it on Garage Band.

Sophia: The first album was recorded on Garage Band in Hunter’s bedroom.

It sounds really good though for being recorded on Garage Band.

Hunter: Thank you, that’s very nice of you to say.

Photos by Tristan Padron (@treestamp_)

What does your typical songwriting process look like?

Hunter: It's changed. We've tried every version of collaboration, and it sort of seems like it's easier if you just get one cook and then let everyone spice it up.

Sophia: Good metaphor, Hunter.

Malena: Snaps for that.

Hunter: So recently, I’ve been kind of rolling the dough and putting the sauce and cheese on. They put the vegetables on it.

Jackson: I’m the vegetable guy.

So do you write other people’s parts?

Hunter: Sometimes. The type of music we’re going for—the idea should kind of be realized in one thing. But then we’ll go play the songs for a bit, and they can find ways of making my rough idea of a bass part [for example] better. She’ll add notes to it, maybe there needs to be a pause here. For [Malena], I’ll give her a beat, and it’s like, ‘Whatever you want to do with that.’

Malena: I really get to go off of that, which is fun for me because I understand what he’s wanting out of it. And then I get to kind of develop off of it. I like to make little motifs in my fills that I get to build upon and all that stuff.

Sophia: I also would say Hunter’s approach to songwriting—he writes in a DAW [Digital Audio Workstation], which I’ve never seen before. It’s very music-first, demo-centric, and that’s why [he] presents us with a concept and idea since it’s harder to workshop in a DAW.

Hunter: I think a lot of bands are sort of like, ‘I’ll come up with my chords on an acoustic guitar or piano and sing something.’ Then everyone comes up with their parts, and they make the parts the best version.

And then you put lyrics on after?

Hunter: Yeah, lyrics are always last. Which is odd, I think. But that’s just how my brain works.

Besides the new project, what else is on the agenda for Trestles this year?

Malena: We have a second project, another project.

Hunter: The EP is the taste test. That's the appetizer before the entrée because we spent the entire last year not really playing shows.

Sophia: The metaphors tonight are crazy. It’s all cooking too.

Hunter: I’m hungry. We've been spending the last year making an album with ’90s producer Jim Wert, who is a very cool, nice guy. And we have this whole ass album that we're gonna put out.

Malena: We’re putting on our finishing touches, and it’ll be put out at some point.

It’s often said that sophomore albums or EPs are the hardest to make. What was the process like for you?

Sophia: We went into recording and writing the songs, being like, we have to all love basically every single song on this album, or it's not going to be worth it. We all have to be like, ‘This is a good-ass song,’ to have it come out.

Malena: I feel like that's exactly how we felt right after we finished fully recording all of them. We did a sit-down, tried to come up with the order of the album, and we were trying to come up with which ones were going to be singles, and it was really hard.

That’s a good problem to have.

Malena: Yeah, and we were like, ‘Oh, this is fantastic. I don’t know which one I like the most.’ When we think that they're all single material, that's a great sign because we have very high standards for ourselves. We want it to be as good as it can be because we care about it. And we know how it is later to like a song less. So it's nice to be able to kind of sit on them a little bit more, and I feel like the more I sit on it, the more I love them. Then I just get annoyed that they're not out yet.

Hunter: We made that album before we made the EP. We made this album, and we were like, this is quality control. We're going to make the best thing we know how to make, and we're not going to stop at anything until we're completely happy with it. And we just put in so much time, work, and money into that that it's like, ‘Okay, we're not going to just put this out because it's ready.’ We're going to shop it to people. We want it to have the best legs to stand on. We want to do it right. So, for that reason, we're like, shit, we still haven't released music in two years, and we've got this finished product, but we, like, still should put something out. So this EP kind of got very hastily made, but I think we learned so much from the album that it holds to the same level of quality.

Malena: Yeah, it’s gas. We have the experience of making the entire album together that it’s like, ‘Oh, we really know when we are gonna say, “Oh, actually, probably not that one.”’ And we're like, ‘Yes, this is good. This is what we should change,’ which is awesome.

What is the DIY Santa Cruz scene like?

Hunter: It's cool. It's had its ups and downs. I think specifically right after the pandemic, it was a really good time for it, and there was a lot of really cool, hip stuff going on. It's been made harder recently due to the closure of a pretty major venue called Bocci’s—or Bocci’s Cellar, for the fancier name—but that was a really easy place for a lot of people to start as a band, play shows in a low-stakes way, and build up a fan base. But now there's just not so much of that anymore.

Sophia: It was a super-duper artist-friendly, kind of DIY venue that was out of this old restaurant, super accessible for college kids. We played there a lot and kind of built our scene there.

Now you guys play a lot at The Catalyst in downtown Santa Cruz correct?

Hunter: Yeah, love that place.

Malena: ​​So for us, we were really lucky to be able to grow up in Bocci’s, and then we were able to make enough of a name for ourselves through that that we were invited to play at The Catalyst.

Photos by Tristan Padron (@treestamp_)

When I saw you guys there last year, during one of your songs, Sophia played rock-paper-scissors with someone in the crowd. Where did that bit come from?

Sophia: That was during “Dwell,” because I didn’t play in the guitar solo, so I just started doing that because I was like, I don’t want to just stand on stage and not do anything because it’s like a minute and a half. So I would normally just stand there and hold my bass. And then after a while, I was just like, I’m just gonna start pointing at people in the crowd and doing rock-paper-scissors. I gotta say, my streak, when I started that, I think I went five shows without losing.

Really? That’s impressive.

Sophia: Yeah, kind of a bummer. Then I got fed up, and I made them not play the guitar solo.

Hunter: Yeah, we just cut it out. It was always a question of what she’s gonna do during that. We had her hitting cymbals. We had her playing rock-paper-scissors. Now, we’re just like, let’s remove that part of the song live.

That’s what I vividly remember from your set.

Hunter: It made a lasting impact.

Sophia: The bit made an impact. It’s all about the bit.

What has been your most memorable show?

Jackson: I was thinking our most recent Catalyst headliner.

Malena: Oh yeah.

Jackson: Our most recent Atrium—that was in May.

Hunter: We were playing with all friends. It was with Career Women and Plum Skin. That was an incredible show. I don't know why everyone came out so hard for that one.

Malena: The crowd was insane.

Sophia: I feel like the most memorable shows I can remember are the bad ones. I remember shows where we would play somewhere we’ve never been to, and there’s like 10 people there.

Malena: And then you have to drive home after. And you get home at like 3 a.m. And you spend more on gas than you make.

Hunter: Not even the In-N-Out on the way back makes you feel better either.

Who have been your favorite artists to see in concert?

Malena: The Fontaines or Dodie Clark.

Hunter: Go see Fontaines, great band. I saw them opening for the Arctic Monkeys with [the rest of the band]. That was cool, their opening set was mega. When we were first meeting each other, I went to a lot of Garden shows. I think The Garden is just felt so like, still DIY and achievable that just going to Garden shows was cool.

Sophia: I saw Clairo at the Frost Amphitheater and it was really cool. Jackson and I saw Wilco together at the Greek in Berkeley and the sound there was just incredible. We also saw Jack White play at like a 500-capacity venue where we played our first show.

Jackson: He was the reason I started playing electric guitar, so seeing him we were in the second row and it was ridiculous. It was crazy .That’s definitely my pick.

Malena: We also all saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and The Strokes opened, which was so fun. This was when we were writing our first album, so we were still really heavily inspired by The Strokes.

Hunter: Not that we’re not anymore, The Strokes still find their way into everything.

Check out Trestles’ Instagram, Spotify, and website for more information. Stay tuned for their new single, “The Beach Betrayed Me, ”coming out January 17th, and more new music coming soon.

All photos by Tristan Padron ((@treestamp_) via treestamp.co.