Having your artist name as [Frenship](https://www.instagram.com/wearefrenship/?hl=en) sets the bar high, something of which you can only hope to capture the true essence of the word “friendship.” Insert the indie pop duo composed of James Sunderland and Brett Hite, who’s relationship embodies the definition of that word to a T.
With Brett describing the duo as “two boring white men doing pop,” FRENSHIP arrive on the scene with their own unique sound which straddles the genres of indie pop, rock and electronic. Coming into fruition in 2013, it’s crazy to think both members were working at Lululemon in Santa Monica, California before taking the leap of faith to pursue their musical dreams.
It was their timeless hit [“Capsize”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOyBhtPF5aw) released in 2016 that would go viral and catapult them into the mainstream light, whose music video currently hails over 27 million views and counting. Fast forward to 2019, FRENSHIP unveils their [debut album _Vacation_](https://open.spotify.com/album/08RH5oSOsDss5CuJBzaPzz?si=YppKtvgPQMOw-Nz_FMu8Jg)_,_ a 13-track project that touches on all the highs and lows of a relationship, while detailing their love-hate relationship to their current residence of Los Angeles.
Most recently, FRENSHIP tapped Lauren Sanderson for their newest single and visual titled “Try.” Flaunt caught up with Brett and James virtually, who were located in Idaho and Culver City respectively. Read below as we discuss their sound, how they met, how they got their name, collaborating with Lauren Sanderson, new music on the horizon, and more!
**For those who don't know, who is FRENSHIP?**
Brett: Two boring white men. We're two old guys doing pop. \[laughs\]
**Define old.**
James: I'm 35.
Brett: I’m 34.
**I'm 30. I feel old.**
J: We feel ancient then. We like it, we've embraced it. I'm glad we don't have a go-to answer for that, maybe that’s the point of it all. We want to be a lot of things. We're a band obviously, two guys being in a band is nothing new. As a band, you want a long career and in that long career, your tastes evolve and move. One season, we might want to be this super indie, cool electronic act. Another season, we might want to be a rock band. Another season, straight up pop. All of those things always show up in all the music we do. We like the idea of being multifaceted, Swiss Army knives.
**How would you guys describe your sound?**
J: It's not really a sound, but thoughtful pop is how I would describe us. We're not quite sitting in the middle of stuff, we lean a little left. We're not super cool though, we’re maybe headed towards that area. We fall in this caring side of pop that is a bit more thoughtful than your standard run of the mill Top 40 Pop. We can float in different genres. It's two people ramming their tastes together so that inevitably will create a bunch of different sounds. I love some electronic music, he does too. We both like pop, we both like some hip-hop. There's influences of 80's in there. It's always that hybrid. This is 40 answers so enjoy. \[laughs\] “What do you guys do?” We do everything! But we always have some hybrid of organic and electronic sounds for the most part, that's our two styles merging.
**You guys met working at Lululemon in Brentwood, right?**
B: It was two broke guys looking for a job. James’ story was all luxurious: "Oh, it's the closest thing to my house. I got a job.” I was applying all over town. I lived in a Hollywood studio apartment with two other guys, finally got a job somewhere and it happened to be at Lululemon in Brentwood. I’d drive an hour every day just to get there.
J**:** I’d walk 3 minutes up the street, and worked part-time when I wanted.
B: \[laughs\] This is very symbolic of our relationship. We’d been going at it a lot, for a while on our own. Very different paths up until that point, but we were a bit burnt out on what we were doing. I wasn't stoked on what James was doing, he wasn't stoked on what I was doing.
We weren't propelled into working together right away. It was very much, for lack of a better term, a friendship. It was very much us hanging out. Eventually, hanging out was becoming bad for our health because it usually involved alcohol or something. We said “let's go try and be productive, write a song.” We found it seemed to work pretty well. One thing led to another, we kept taking it a bit more seriously as time went on. Here we are taking it very seriously.
**Are you guys into yoga?**
B: I got really into it while working there. I'm not doing as much of it these days, but I never would shy away from it. I do, very much, believe in its benefits for body and mind.
**How did the name FRENSHIP come about? I think it’s a really beautiful name.**
J: Aw, that's really sweet. You’re the first person to say that. It was a joke. We had a bunch of music and we needed a name at some point. I learned that little saying from coaching soccer camps for kids when I was younger, they’d say "There are big ships and there are little ships, but the best ship is friendship!" Maybe learned it from a friend's kid, I don't really remember. We'd get drunk and say that, that was the mantra at the time. Eventually we needed the name, that came about. We spelled it all dumb because that’s what everybody was doing at the time, and it looked cool. It made Googling us really hard. \[laughs\]
**Let's talk about "Try" with Lauren Sanderson out now. How did that collab come about?**
J: We wrote the song with Winona Oak, a Swedish young lady who we're big fans of. That was a few years back. We always really enjoyed the song. Originally, it made sense that Winona would be on it, she was wanting to get out of the feature thing. She had a big song with The Chainsmokers, but she was really trying to build around releases. We went searching for someone else and Lauren had popped onto our radar. We were introduced to her, she seemed excited about it. We had her cut it and she's got such a cool, imperfect voice. I say that in the most complimentary way. There are times when you listen to someone who sings perfectly and you feel like they haven't been through anything. You hear Lauren's voice like, “Oh she sings her shit.” We loved what it brought to the track.
**How did you guys connect though?**
B: Our managers connected us originally with her, then we FaceTimed. It was towards the beginning of the pandemic, then Brett ended up moving out to LA to Idaho for the time being. Lauren and I kept in touch and started working on other stuff, started working on some of her music. Her and I became homies for the past two years and the rest is history.
**I love the music video, really creative. Where did you guys shoot that?**
B: This has been the theme of these releases. We want it to be DIY. We've done the major label thing, we've done the indie cool label. Every time, it doesn't feel right to us. This round, we're sitting on a bunch of music. It never felt great having a corporate thing attached to us, because we see things so holistically from start to finish. We'll start writing the song and it's quite common we'll see the video and all this stuff go with it. With this one, we didn't have that situation.
J: We didn’t have any of that.
B: We had some locations figured out. These are the ones that turn out the best though, where there's not really a plan. Lauren said "Hey, I just moved out here. There's a cool park by my place, come up.” I was 30 minutes late per usual. Justin Michael Brooks shot it, he had some old cameras. They said "Hold these, let's pass it off."
J: The only reason that happened, that he did it is because I ran into him. I was drunk at a wedding two weeks prior. I randomly ran into him at a bar in Highland Park, hadn't seen him in years. He was back on our radar. I hit him up and said “You should do this!”
B: And then he did. \[laughs\]
J: He freaking did!
**How was it shooting with Lauren Sanderson?**
B: Good, I’ve actually never met Lauren until that moment. We’ve FaceTimed, but not in person. That’s the first time we hung out, she's obviously a sweetheart. It was a very natural hang, we had fun. We've been in this whole DIY \[approach\], that's the forefront of it all. We're supposed to be having fun. I think so many artists forget that, especially these days. It's so cool to try to be cool…
J: We're at the age of not caring.
**What is it that you want fans to get from your music?**
J: I love the idea of us being that old friend you can come back to again and again. Our music can hopefully evolve and travel with you throughout your life. We're that warm welcome hug you can revisit if you need in the next 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, whatever. Hopefully.
B: We're Woody from _Toy Story._
J: It's really hard to do this. This is maybe a little bit too prolific of an idea, but we aim for timelessness. We aim to make stuff that can stand the test of time. Even if the production doesn't necessarily work in 20 years, hopefully the song can still strike a chord throughout your life or throughout someone's life.
**What’s one thing you want fans to get from _Vacation_?**
B: From the album, I hope that it leads them to our new music.
Both: \[laughs\]
**That was in 2019. Do you have a project in the works?**
B**:** Yeah, we're putting out singles right now. Right now, we're sitting on about 10 songs that we're going to release every month. It's the one strategy we haven't really tried: going single by single, including friends like Lauren and doing these features. When you do albums and even though it's trendy to do it this way, single by single, it's really easy to put all this time, energy, and work into this one — what you can hope is going to be a pivotal moment. It works or it doesn't, then you’re done with that cycle. For this, we like looking at it as this is what we do. We wake up, we make music. We shoot videos, we do the whole thing of what it means to be an artist in 2021. This is the job and this is how it's going to go. You can lose preciousness over the releases, which is a far healthier mental state to be than the roller coaster of ups and downs.
**What’re you guys most excited for next?**
J**:** I love the holidays, very excited. It’s my favorite time of year. We're excited to see what happens. We've been through really high highs and really low lows, they still come out the other end and outlasted a lot of other bands probably. We’re excited for this next step, to have a really good time and enjoy this. We'll make some sad songs, there's some sad ones coming but we'll still enjoy them. I'm personally looking forward to putting out lots of music, playing shows eventually and growing this thing. Play the Hollywood Bowl! There you go, looking forward to that someday.
B: It's not on the books, but we'll be there. \[laughs\]
J: Not quite in the books yet, but someday.
**Have you seen artists perform there, that made you want to do it?**
J**:** I saw Mumford & Sons there. I'm not even a big listener of their music, but it was a really great concert. Very emotional.
B: The first thing I went to there was M83 and Phantogram, that was great.
**Anything else you guys want to let the people know?**
B**:** The rest is gonna be a secret. There's lots more to come. It's the beginning of lots of releases, we're thrilled to be back.
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