Chaos Chaos

Chaos Chaos are celebrating the tenth anniversary of their breakthrough EP Committed To The Crime with a vinyl reissue, ahandful of live shows, and a new version of “Do You Feel It?” arranged for a string trio. 

It's the latest milestone from the restless, immensely talented duo of Chloe and Asy Saavedra, bandmates since they were 10 years old. In Seattle, they met Death Cab for Cutie drummer Jason McGerr, who gave Chloe drum lessons, recorded the sisters’ earliest demos, and remains the duo’s musical mentor to this day. Before they were teens, Chloe and Asy were pulled out of school, being homeschooled while opening up for Cat Power, Pearl Jam, Sufjan Stevens, and other indie and grunge acts. Before they even went to college, they already released three inventive, ramshackle records as Smoosh.

They moved around 17 times in their childhood, mostly on their mother’s whims. Between that and the band, they had a uniquely nontraditional childhood, and their media treatment irrevocably shaped the sisters’ relationship. Interviewers would either treat the duo as a single unit or as exaggerated opposites. The truth is, the sisters’ identities are much more fluid and mutable, and neither is “the shy one” or “the outgoing one.” “Everyone thinks we’re twins, so I think we’ve internalized that a bit, we have a sister connection that feels like our own language, but we’re also very different people,” Asy, who is two years older, clarifies. Chloe and Asy are not a yin and yang, but two intertwined, fluid individuals. Yes, Asy is the singer/keyboardist and Chloe is the drummer/vocalist, but those are just the instruments they play, not reflections of their actual relationship. 

After an adolescence spent touring, they got scholarships and studied at Bard College. While Chloe and Asy’s live talents defined Smoosh, they consciously moved away from that, and chose a new band name inspired by a shapeshifting amoeba. Their debut Chaos Chaos EP, Committed To The Crime, came out October 2014. Working with producer Fraser McCullough and mixing engineer Martin Cooke, they shifted their sound to more electronic territory, in line with other 2010s acts like Passion Pit and MS MR. Songs like "Better" took on Florence Welchian tones, with Chloe banging on layers and layers of toms. “Do You Feel It” was crafted on Asy’s 25-key midi keyboard in the kitchen of their family’s crammed Brooklyn apartment. On the song, Asy yearns to break free from the cautiousness of adolescence, and maybe also from the family home. The song became about a lot of things in the process of writing — young love, enmeshment, escapism - and the final form was a hodgepodge of all those ideas, especially as they were writing together for the first time. Yet after over a decade in the industry, Asy and Chloe were still finding out who they wanted to be.

For a while, the EP didn’t take off, and the sisters continued their studies at Bard College.  When “Do You Feel It” soundtracked an emotional moment in Adult Swim’s sci-fi comedy Rick & Morty, the song began to gain traction – as the show became massive, “Do You Feel It?” did too, with 75 million Spotify streams to date. Chaos Chaos developed a cult following beyond the individual song, with listeners falling for their dense arrangements and cryptic lyrics. In the years to follow, they would continue contributing music to the show, appearing on the Billboard rock charts in the process. 

For their 2018 self-titled record, they continued developing their sound, exchanging the ultra-digital sheen of Crime for more tactile, analog synths. Songs like “Dripping With Fire” and ambient closer “On Turning 23” were more lyrically and musically direct than before, beginning to address their bond as sisters. After touring, they released a series of singles in early 2020, including instrumental tracks and — indicating their straining relationship at the time — “Eternal”, whose animated video depicted the two literally fusing into one monstrous creation. 

When the pandemic hit, the duo split up to focus on personal growth and solo projects. Chloe’s Wtrgrl project dove deep into hyperpop with producer Zhone, whose work has since graced music from Troye Sivan and Charli XCX, while Asy wrote music of her own, scored the video game Trover Saves the Universe and co-composed a feature film. Chloe also toured with Caroline Polachek and Eartheater as a drummer. As hard as it was doing everything together, being apart felt worse, and the difficult time inspired some of their most vulnerable lyrical introspection. Reconciling and going to therapy together, they decided to reunite the band on their own terms. Their one policy: “sisters first, band second.”

For a while, the sisters were reluctant and unsure of how to talk about their past history as Smoosh or their upbringing, finding it awkward, even embarrassing to weave into the present. But now, they want to take back their narrative, and their upcoming album reflects that focus on honesty. The next record returns to the sound of Committed To The Crime, but with the spirit of the oldest Smoosh material. The songs are centered around codependency, both in their bond as siblings and in their relationships with others. It’s their darkest material yet, but also their catchiest, their most experimental and their most accessible. They’re integrating everything they’ve learned apart back into the project, less afraid to indulge in their weirder inclinations or the details of their history.

After everything they’ve been through, Chaos Chaos want to define themselves on their own terms. They’re not “the Rick and Morty band.” They’re not “those pre-teens from that band in the early 2000s”. They’re just Asy and Chloe Saavedra, two individuals with an irrepressible musical synergy, and they’re in the best place they’ve ever been.