The Western New York indie rock band that records in living rooms, puts baby chickens on album covers, and finds beauty in happy accidents.
When the band sent over their new album, Down in the Bush Leagues, they also mentioned that they’d made a zine to go along with it. As someone who’s always been a visual person, I was immediately curious. And honestly, the artwork and thoughts gave me plenty of reasons to keep looking.
There was a giant baby chick standing inside a miniature dollhouse, playful collages, and photographs documenting the recording process. Everything felt personal, a little strange, and genuinely fun. Then I started listening to the music, and suddenly there was even more to unpack. The album moves between indie rock, folk, electronic sounds, and unexpected instrumental moments, with songs written years apart somehow finding their way onto the same record.
What I loved most was how much personality came through, both visually and musically. The more I explored, the more questions I had. How did all these ideas come together? Who was behind that ridiculous (and wonderful) album cover? And what’s the story behind a band called The Rainlamps?
Thankfully, the band was kind enough to answer all of them.
DicePressPlay: First of all, thank you so much for letting us hear Down in the Bush Leagues ahead of its release! We had such a great time listening to it, and we’re excited to dig into the songwriting, production, and all the wonderful artwork you’ve been putting out.
DicePressPlay: First things first, where did the name The Rainlamps come from? And for anyone discovering your music for the first time, could you briefly introduce the band?
Alex Fantauzzo (The Rainlamps): Naming a band is always brutal – inevitably you’ll come up with an idea you think is great and then find out someone else has already used it. We landed on “The Rainlamps” by matching up random words together until we found something that had a good ring to it. It turns out that a rain lamp is a type of niche oil light fixture that was briefly popular in the 70s. Most importantly, no one had named their band after it before us!
We’re an indie rock band based mostly in Western New York. Jeremy Kowalski (vocals/guitar/bass) is our band leader and main songwriter, he’s the straw that stirs the drink. Brandon Le (guitar/bass), Juliya Smith (modular synth), Ben Fantauzzo (drums), Sam Miller (guitar/keys), and I (guitar/bass/keys) fill out the rest of the band.
DicePressPlay: We’ve noticed that animals keep showing up in your artwork, from the crying dog on Like You Back to the giant chick on Down in the Bush Leagues. Is there a particular meaning behind them, or is it something you guys just find funny?
Jeremy Kowalski (The Rainlamps): We put the dog on the Like You Back cover to link it to the closing track “The Girl and Her Dog”, and it’s an aussie because they are just really pretty animals. The chick was a happy accident, I kept trying to get these little paintings I was making to work and then Brandon sent us this picture his wife Emily took. It wasn’t advertised as such but it seemed obvious right when I saw it that we found our album cover. The third album might be animal adjacent, like a big egg.
DicePressPlay: Speaking of artwork, we have to ask about the cover of Down in the Bush Leagues. What’s actually happening in that photograph? How did the image come together, and is there a connection to the music?
Emily Lê (Cover Photographer): Honestly, it was a happy accident. Early this spring we got baby chickens for our girls. Our oldest, Charlotte (4), is the chicken whisperer. She picked up a couple chickens and had the idea to place them in a wooden dollhouse Brandon’s grandfather handmade. The size of the chicks were nearly perfect for the dollhouse and when I saw that, I knew I just had to take a few pictures. The photo that ended up as the album cover perfectly captured Charlotte’s unique creativity! There’s not really a huge connection to the music, unless you count our “spring chicken” as a good analog to the song “February Fever”, a song about longing for spring.
DicePressPlay: We also love the collage-style visuals you’ve been sharing on social media. They’re playful, nostalgic, and a little surreal. Who comes up with these ideas, and how involved is the band in shaping its visual identity?
Jeremy Kowalski (The Rainlamps): Once we had the album cover set everything else fell into place really easily. The zine was compiled entirely from artwork we had painted for the singles and pictures we had taken along the recording process, and the collage was a composite of these pieces cut up and rearranged to make little jokes by me and my girlfriend Talya. So the direction comes entirely from the band. The materials themselves are all in-house, either from the band themselves or the inner circle.
DicePressPlay: The album title, Down in the Bush Leagues, also appears in the lyrics of “You Wrote My Favorite Song.” What does that phrase mean to you, and why did it become the title of the record?
Brandon Le (The Rainlamps): When we were discussing album names, I immediately thought of lyrics from the album that stuck with me for one reason or another. The entire phrase the album title came from, “Daydreaming down in the bush leagues,” captures the light-heartedness of the album and the longing that each of us have had of wanting to make music as meaningful as the music of our favorite artists. There’s an underdog spirit to the phrase that embraces our fully DIY approach to making and recording music in a world filled with AI slop.
DicePressPlay: According to your zine, these songs were written over several years, with “Georgia” dating back to 2020. How did you bring material from different periods together? Did any of the older songs change significantly along the way?
Alex Fantauzzo (The Rainlamps): Georgia was an instrumental piece I had written that I could never quite turn into a full song. The band started using it as a jam to open our live shows, and eventually it fleshed out into something we thought could fill the same role on the album. A lot of our songs go through multiple iterations in the recording process as we cycle through different ideas. Georgia and Serotonin Surf, for example, were completely retracked a few years after we started recording the album. Serotonin went from a fairly straightforward noise rock song to having more lo-fi acoustic elements that blur the genre a bit. The album covers a lot of stylistic ground, so tying it all together is really down to Jeremy’s writing plus a consistent sonic footprint from mixing and mastering.
DicePressPlay: There’s so much happening musically on this record, from guitar-driven indie rock to electronic textures and moments of folk and vintage pop. Since you recorded and produced it yourselves, how did these arrangements come together? Do songs usually arrive fully formed, or take shape through collaboration?
Alex Fantauzzo (The Rainlamps): About half of the songs were initially arranged for live performance in 2023/2024, with some tweaks as we shifted from stage to studio. We frequently arrange at least the core components of a track by jamming together in a room, with additional ideas layered through trial-and-error overdubbing. With the overdubs especially, we try to allow ourselves the freedom to fail every now and then. We’ve all written parts for this album that ended up getting scrapped or reimagined as the songs evolved or went in a different direction. We never want to limit ourselves to a particular genre or feel; everyone has carte blanche to try pretty much anything they want, with the understanding that not every idea will pan out. We’ve gotten pretty good at putting ego aside and making those decisions based on what’s best for the song.
Jeremy Kowalski (The Rainlamps): No two songs are alike on this record. Some started as jams, some were just loose riffs, some were full song skeletons I brought in with acoustic demos, like how we made the first album. Unlike the first album which was mostly arranged piecemeal remotely during covid, this one was mostly in person, which gives it much more of a live performance feel, even though a lot of overdubbing was still involved.
DicePressPlay: “Georgia” is such an unexpected opener, especially with Dasha Todua’s Russian spoken-word performance. How did that collaboration happen, and what made you decide to open the album with it?
Jeremy Kowalski (The Rainlamps): Like Alex said, the track was demoed for the first album in 2020, so it was something that was sitting around while we were starting to think about a second album in 2023. She was someone I had met around that time through online dating. It was a strange dynamic; she had recently emigrated and was going through a tough time. I think you can feel the anger through her performance even if you can’t understand what she’s saying (I am still not entirely sure). It felt right to put it at the start of the album for the chronology of it being the oldest track, and coming from a more difficult period before life started getting really light and easy.
DicePressPlay: “You Wrote My Favorite Song” references artists like Slowdive, Radiohead, Pavement, and Adrianne Lenker. How much of the song comes from your own experiences as music fans? And since we have to ask, what’s actually your favorite song?
Jeremy Kowalski (The Rainlamps): For a long time the title sat in my notes on my phone without any words, I just thought “You Wrote My Favorite Song” looked good. Eventually I got around to adding references and in-jokes, seeing if you could make a coherent dialog with just the names of different songs I like. Adrianne Lenker’s Bright Future came out around the time, it was a big road trip album for me and my girlfriend when we first started dating. So I was Team Cell Phone Says, and then because she has that song “anything,” I wrote “can we play anything-else instead?” Jokes are better when you explain them. Strawberry Fields Forever (Take 7)! The Beatles! Favorite song.
Alex Fantauzzo (The Rainlamps): It depends on the day, but today I’ll say A Long December by the Counting Crows.
Brandon Le (The Rainlamps): There are too many to pick from, but I’ll say Weird Fishes/Arpeggi – Radiohead.
DicePressPlay: There’s an interesting mix of humor, frustration, and affection throughout the album. “Lucky Breaks” finds reasons to celebrate, while “Beginner’s Luck (Thumbs Up)” feels much more confrontational. How do you approach writing about such different emotions? Does humor come naturally?
Jeremy Kowalski (The Rainlamps): I try to mix it up every time I start a new song. I never want two songs to sound the same or cover the same ground if I can help it, which is harder the more of them you write. I usually start with an idea or a specific feeling, or a title before I have any music or melody ready. Those things come easier than interesting ideas for songs I think. I wish I was better at getting humor to fit into songs, it’s tough without crossing the line into parody or throwaway. I forget who pissed me off enough to write this song, but the feeling definitely has to be strong if it’s going to make a good song. I have a new one called “Sleeper” I’m working on about chronic insomnia, which is a really terrible experience (hopefully the song turns out good!)
DicePressPlay: Brandon takes the lead vocal on “Passenger,” bringing a different voice to the record. How does songwriting usually work within The Rainlamps? Does everyone bring their own ideas, and how do you decide where a song should go?
Brandon Le (The Rainlamps): The songwriting itself is generally pretty insular with Jeremy writing the lyrics primarily. Here and there Alex and I will make suggestions and tweaks. The progressions and arrangements themselves usually stem from demos from each of us that we share and collaborate on. “Fake Eyelashes” is one example where Alex, Jeremy and I each contributed to one section of the song’s progression. “Passenger” is an outlier as I penned the lyrics and wrote the progression and the main rhythm guitar parts and guitar hooks in the outro. In terms of the direction of a song, we keep things fresh by changing up who plays what part in our songs. Whether it’s Alex, Jeremy, or me playing bass or guitar on a track, each person contributes their own musicality to the part, but are unified in the approach of making sure the part we’re playing serves the song. We determine what each song needs individually, sometimes we take a back seat and let the direction of the song develop naturally and other times we’re tinkering with parts to find the right aesthetic. We each have very discerning tastes in the music we consume and use those tastes as a filter to find parts that we would enjoy as listeners.
Jeremy Kowalski (The Rainlamps): This album was much more collaborative than the first both in the songwriting and the arranging. There are only a few tracks that I had ready to go before bringing to the group, so there are a lot of cool musical turns I wouldn’t have arrived at on my own. February Fever was a quick jam over an impromptu riff Alex got going one day, and then I glued some song scraps I was working on over top of the jam. Beginner’s Luck started as a jangly acoustic song I did on my drive home from work. It wasn’t a contender for anything until Brandon put some great Big Star-style licks over it. Most of these songs passed through the 3 of us before they resembled anything like the result you hear on the record.
The next album is different. Post production on this one took a long time, and I kept writing and arranging on my own, so it’ll be a bit of a return to the more insular approach of the first album. Band dynamics are a pendulum, I’ve always admired Animal Collective for their fluidity. Some albums have the whole gang, sometimes they’ll have an album that’s just two or three of the guys. Sometimes I like being really hands-on, and sometimes it’s more fun being part of the gang. It really just depends on the songs and the sort of music we are trying to make.
DicePressPlay: Yes,“February Fever” feels like a perfect ending, especially after the anger of “Beginner’s Luck.” Suddenly, there’s a sense of spring arriving and everything starting over. Was that contrast intentional, and why did you choose this song to close the record?
Alex Fantauzzo (The Rainlamps): That feeling of renewal to close the record is definitely intentional, glad it came across. One of the recurring themes of the album, that this song really speaks to, is this sort of radical, defiant optimism – recognizing how messed up the world is but deciding to push through it anyways. We wanted to take the listener on a fairly linear journey from the angst of something like Serotonin Surf through to February Fever as the ecstatic closer to leave things on a high note.
DicePressPlay: Finally, what’s next for The Rainlamps? How do these detailed arrangements translate to a live setting, and are there any upcoming shows, new music, or other projects you can tell us about?
Alex Fantauzzo (The Rainlamps): We’re hoping to get back to the stage at some point, but don’t have anything on the books at the moment. A few key members of the band live several hours apart, which can make gigging tough to organize. We’ll spend a couple months promoting DITBL before turning back to arranging and tracking our third record, which is already in progress and seems to be taking a more experimental direction, incorporating some strings, horns, and woodwinds. In the meantime, many of us have other ongoing musical projects – Ben is working on a solo LP, Juliya has a new EP coming soon, Sam and I have some songs in the works with our folk band Consensus Lake, and I’m also producing some tracks for Jeremy’s girlfriend Talya Gelfand, who is a fantastic songwriter.
Jeremy Kowalski (The Rainlamps): It’s tough when you spend 3 years on an album, the natural inclination is to move on to the next thing. The next album is mostly written and partially recorded. It’s a bigger sound with a lot of new instruments for us, and lots of guests. The parts are still mostly written by us so it should sound like us, but the next step. But first, we have to get people to hear the good work we did on this album, and I’m not entirely sure how to do that. So that’ll be an ongoing thing well into next year. If you know anyone ready to make a Bush Leagues tiktok dance, please be in touch.
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