Telehope Reveals 5 Behind the Scenes Facts About the Making of Their New Album Hello to the Now

Wonderfully energetic and totally dynamic, indie-pop band Telehope is here to deliver something everyone needs now and then: a little bit of hope.

Known for their interactive live shows, whether they're full-band or acoustic, it's no wonder that the Cincinnati-based quartet has racked up over a million streams to date. They've even had their music featured in American reality TV shows like A&E's Born This Way.

Today Telehope--Mark Brad, Ben Malson, Adolph Goetz, Nate Trammel--reveals five behind the scenes facts about the making of their new album Hello to the Now, a vibrant, inspirational 11-track collection that achieves their goal of bringing hope to their fans. Full of personal lyrics and soaring triumphant melodies, it prompts listeners to dig deeper into themselves in order to discover who they are and who they want to be. From the glorious opening anthem "Has Anything Changed" to the mellow, thought-provoking closing track "Younger," Hello to the Now is a must-listen that will illuminate your day.

Learn more about Hello to the Now below.

1. Like all of our music so far, this album is self-produced. Our keyboardist Ben Malson (Knight Owl Producing) produces, records, mixes, and masters all our music out of his home-studio. It’s great to do everything ourselves because we can schedule out studio time whenever we want and take as long as we need to get things right. “A great benefit to self-producing was I was able to produce and edit a lot of the recordings in coffee shops. A studio can seem dark and boring at times so it was refreshing to be out in my favorite coffee shop, Cavu Coffee, for a lot of the work.”

2. We created all original samples for HTTN. A sample means creating a sound and reusing it as an instrument or sound throughout a song. For example, in the bridge of Remedy we layered apple-bites, keys dropping on wood floors, and shaking leather jackets to create a snare sound. We also recorded Mark slamming the vocal-booth door a few times to create a kick-drum sound. For our song, Dusk, I went in my backyard at 2am one night with my microphones to record the night sounds. I had just gotten back from rehearsal and it was so loud outside so I had to record it. There’s also rain in that song from when we tracked drums for Reverberate. We finished and I popped the mics outside for a bit. My favorite sound on Dusk is the background bird sounds. We were hanging out at a local Crossroads Church in Cincinnati, and the windows were open and the birds were really loud so I went outside and recorded the birds on my iPhone. There are other sounds on the album such as a LaCroix can opening on W/O U, and a totally random squeaky bathroom stall door closing (that I also recorded on my phone) at Madison County Courthouse in Richmond Kentucky before one of our college gigs.

3. Many of the songs from HTTN were written over a year and a half before the release, and some were written only a month or two before. I think you can even see how we matured in our song-writing process throughout the album. Heard Your Voice and W/O U were the first ones to be written, and Has Anything Changed?, Secrets Out, and Swan Song (shout out to Gatsb7 for the rap) were the three most recently written. Every song gets written and recorded differently, and we weren’t sure Has Anything Changed? was going to even make it on the album, but we completely reinvented it in the studio and created a whole new sound that we think captures the excitement and different dynamics of what HTTN represents. (fun side fact: the demo of Has Anything Changed? was called “Chocolate Pants”, and we still have trouble calling it by its official album name)

4. Not every song that goes on the album has a chance to be performed live before the studio recording begins. We’ve been playing songs like Younger, W/O U, Heard Your Voice, and Remedy live for a while, which gave us insight on how to re-write songs to make them be received better by our fans.

5. Not all of these people know it, but each song on HTTN was written about a different friend in our lives. The lyrics on these song are like a snapshot of different situations we experienced with those people, and the common themes are anxiety and depression. We wrote this album for those who ask themselves who they are and what their purpose is in this life. We made this for those who need an ounce of hope to grab onto. We made this for those who struggle with self-worth, self-image, and self-doubt. This album is Telehope’s souls recorded in audio-form. We hope you feel incredible joy and inspiration from this album, and I hope these songs cause you to ask the question we ask ourselves every day: "am I who I want to be?"

Be sure to check out Telehope on August 25 at Millikin University in Decatour, IL, and get Hello to the Now on digital music platforms.