Young People formed when Katie and founder Young Person Jeff Rosenberg moved to Los Angeles from their home in the Bay Area, Rosenberg hooking up with Angeleno Jarrett Silberman when asking about the LA music scene on an internet message board. Silberman invited Rosenberg down to The Smell, an arts performance space co-operative located in downtown LA that Silberman co-founded, and soon the trio were collaborating on the music that would become Young People. Rosenberg and Eastburn had recently visited Berlin and started working on their first songs; Silberman joined as drummer, but soon it became evident that his talents weren’t limited to percussion, and the band began to swap instruments between songs.

Within a year, they released their debut album, 2002’s self-titled release on 5RC, an icy, elemental announcement of their talents, followed a year later by War Prayers on Dim Mak. Following several tours of the West Coast and a national tour, Katie moved to New York for the Summer of 2003, to star in a friend’s play (in addition to her work with Young People, Eastburn is a dancer and choreographer, working at schools in New York and producing a DVD of new dance and music for Kill Rock Stars, out in 2006). “It was the hottest Summer in history, filthy and disgusting, with thunderstorms and all manner of craziness,” she remembers. “I loved it. I also met a boy here and fell in love.” She shuttled between LA and New York that Fall, and was ready to move East by December.

Jarrett and Jeff moved with Katie to New York in February 2003, and Young People spent a year living and working together there. As they finished touring in 2004, however, the boys returned to LA, while Katie decided New York was her home now. She chalks their continued existence, as a bi-coastal duo (Rosenberg amicably left the band in July 2004 to return to his studies), up to spending their first three years living together in the same city, rehearsing regularly and playing shows and touring together.

The new album came together from demos the pair would record alone, sending tapes and CDRs cross country for the other to audition. Katie and Jarrett soon warmed to this new approach; “It was difficult to tell how a song really sounded in the rehearsal room,” explains Jarrett, “And this was a better way to make sure the songs only had what needed to be there.”