Welcome to the first of what’s planned to become an ongoing series here on taken by sound.. As a music lover I’ve always loved sharing great musical finds with people once I’ve had a chance to really see what an artist has to offer.. Now that the world of music has gotten to the point where we’re being constantly exposed to great new artists almost every day, I thought it only fair to try to pass on some of the back stories and info about bands I’ve stumbled across (or bands that have stumbled across me) in recent times.. I’m more than excited to be starting the Introducing series with Dresses.. An exciting duo out of Portland, Oregon who’ve been kind enough to individually answer each question that I’ve put forth.. Enjoy!

So Jared.. For those readers out there that are only just hearing about Dresses for the first time, tell us a little bit about yourselves and how you chose to get together and create great music..

I’m Jared, I’m 21, born and raised in Portland! I first “met” Timothy in late 2011 when I was on tour with my friend/manager’s band, Plug In Stereo, sitting in a hotel and she messaged me on Facebook saying she really liked my solo music at the time. I messaged her back and told her we should write together when I got back that holiday season. So we met up and wrote “Blew My Mind”, and hung out a few more times. I went on another tour in early 2012, and when I came back we got together and started writing and playing more. I went on my last tour in July of 2012, and by that time we had 5 songs written and were ready to record an EP. So when I got back from that tour we enjoyed the rest of our summer and recorded our EP with Trevor Dahl here in Portland. We had to do a lot of waiting; Trevor was busy, Timothy had school (hair school), and I was working, but finally we got the EP finished and released Blew My Mind and all of our social sites. Then, of course, we decide at that point we should just record 3 more and call it an album, and push the release a little bit. With all the down time we had, we had quite a few songs written. So now the plan is to do a video for our second single in a few weeks, and putting that one out for free sometime in February as well. Then another in march, then hopefully the album in late march/early April.

Who are your main influences and what kind of bands are you guys currently listening to?

I’ve listened to so many different bands and artists over the years.. I actually was in a metal band in high school, which I’d rather never talk about haha. The last 2-3 years I’ve been more into “indie” bands and top 40. I really like The Lumineers, Bon Iver, The Head And The Heart, etc and I also like more pop bands like (old) Maroon 5, Taylor Swift, John Mayer. One of my absolute favorite bands of the last few years is Local Natives. I LOVE them. I bought tickets to their show in mid April back in December. I’ve wanted to see them for years, I can’t wait. Back to the question, I guess my personal influence would be the honesty and real-ness of the “indie” bands I like, and the catchiness and clean production of top 40 pop.

Your single Blew My Mind came as a really pleasant surprise and a great start to the year of music of 2013.. What can we expect from you guys in the next few months as far as your music is concerned?

We should be shooting our next video at the end of Jan for our next single that we’ll be putting out for free hopefully by the 1st or 2nd week of February. Then, after 2 weeks that one will go to iTunes, and we’ll release another single, then the whole album in late march/early feb. at least that’s the plan so far… Things may very well drastically change, but you never know. All the while we’ll be writing more music for the future.

You currently have an album that’s hopefully due out in March.. Could you give us a little insight into what we can expect?

Yes! There will be 9 songs on the album, 6 of them no one will have heard yet. And 2 bonus songs that you can get if you buy the whole album. (At least that’s the plan). Musically, our songs are all a little different. Some folky, some dancy, some more old/beachy sounding, some more rock-ish… The songs were all written at different times throughout the year, and you can hear that. We like writing and listening to different kinds of things, and what I like about the album is that the styles are all a little different, and you can tell it was an album written over a long span of time, but our voices and harmonies are the common thread that runs through it.

Timothy.. For those readers out there that are only just hearing about Dresses for the first time, tell us a little bit about yourselves and how you chose to get together and create great music..

My name is Timothy Heller. Yes that’s my real name! I’m 20 years old and I’ve always lived in Portland. I am currently enrolled in Paul Mitchell for cosmetology and I’m graduating in March! I have a really musical family so singing has always been a part of my life. I taught myself ukulele and some piano but just so I can accompany myself when I sing mostly. In highschool I was in a band with some of my close friends and that’s when I really started feeling serious about singing as a career. Those friends went to highschool with Jared and that’s how we started knowing who each other were. Those friends all moved away for college so when I had no one to play music with anymore Jared and I started talking and when he got back from touring we met up and pretty much immediately started writing music with each other. He was playing guitar and doing some vocals for his friends band but he wanted to start working on his own band so we decided to make Dresses!

Who are your main influences and what kind of bands are you guys currently listening to?

In most cases I’d say the style that I sing in doesn’t really fit into the same style of music that I usually listen to, but in some cases I can see the style of songs I write being influenced by artists I’m listening to at the time. More so I’d say that I get really inspired by some artists and it provokes me to include certain  parts and elements in songs I try to write. Some artists I’ve been feeling really inspired by lately are Lana del Rey and Kimbra, I just really admire both of them and while I don’t feel like our songs really sound influenced by them I definitely get inspired by some of their stylistic elements when I’m writing a song. Some artists I’ve been told my voice reminds people of are Cocorosie, Feist and Joanna Newsom which is really flattering because they’re all really talented artists with really unique voices which I feel honored to be compared to. Most of what I listen to lately aside from Lana and Kimbra is a lot of Drake, Lil Wayne, Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ocean and early 2000s R&B. So I’m not sure if any of those have directly influenced my music writing yet but it will be interesting to see if they do I guess!!!

Your single Blew My Mind came as a really pleasant surprise and a great start to the year of music of 2013.. What can we expect from you guys in the next few months as far as your music is concerned?

Our next thing coming up is our next single and music video! It’ll be the same kind of deal as blew my mind where it’ll be free for a couple of weeks and then on iTunes! Besides that well be doing a cover every week, and after the next single there will be one more before the whole albums out hopefully out at the end of march!

You currently have an album that’s hopefully due out in March.. Could you give us a little insight into what we can expect?

Since this is our first released album were trying to have a really broad variety of songs. It’s nice because I enjoy singing so many types of songs, folky ones, more pop, dance songs, and slow ones. So expect pretty much all of the above! It’ll be cool because no matter what type of music you listen to you’ll probably find something on the album you’ll enjoy.

Well there you have it.. The first of taken by sound’s Introducing series.. I’d just like to thank both Jared and Timothy so much for taking the time out from their busy schedule to be a part of the website.. I’m truly looking forward to seeing what you guys get up to in the very near future! And Please don’t forget to check out Dresses official pages and new single below!