Los Angeles – The new band Skaters, from New York City, actually doesn’t skate. “We’re musicians first and we don’t [want] to break our wrists,” lead singer Michael Ian Cummings told a Boston music blog earlier this year. “We chose the name because it reminded us of our youth.”

Sitting around a little end table at Warner Bros. Records, and talking over a recording iPhone, the members of Skaters look… pretty much like skaters. Hats, sweatshirts, sneakers, big coats, long-ish hair. They joke a lot, and are very quick to distinguish New York as their home.  With their debut album “Manhattan” on the horizon, it’s clearly an identity that speaks to them.

Skaters was formed by Bostonians Cummings and Noah Rubin, formerly of The Dead Trees, and Joshua Hubbard, from Hull, England and formerly of The Paddingtons and Dirty Pretty Things.  They communicated between continents before finally meeting and making music.  Called “dark garage rock” by the New Yorker and compared to early Strokes music, the “fun,” guitar-driven band that infuses hip hop and electronic beats is doing their best to be unclassifiable.

Skaters, now including bass guitarist Dan Burke, sat down with BestNewBands.com to talk beginnings, their sound, and the art project that became their band. We join the conversation in progress.

Noah Rubin:…Then he’s corrupted and becomes a Manhattanite.  It was just this weird, like, epiphany I had.  That it works all the way through [to] the end.  Starting with like getting there, and bright lights, falling in love with the city and becoming kind of like…

Michael Ian Cummings: Jaded New Yorker…

N: Like fucked up.

Katie Booth: What are you guys talking about?

Joshua Hubbard: [Our] record, ‘Manhattan.’

K: Skaters seems to be very strongly connected to New York City.  What is that relationship, and how does the city influence you?

MIC: This is a band that formed in New York and drew all its inspiration from the pace and energy of Manhattan. This album is a fast account of the way we live… a taste at least.

K: What is the new album like compared to ‘Schemers’ EP?

MIC: The album is a continuation on the same energy we had in the ‘Schemers’ EP, but it’s just a little more developed, you know.  It’s a lot more new songs, also.

K: How did you guys meet?  How did you decided, across seas, that you were going to form a new band?

J: I knew of Michael, and I knew of his band, The Dead Trees.  And I’d been livin’ in New York City and was friends with his sister, so I’d listened to Dead Trees, and it was in the back of my mind.  And I liked his song writin’, I liked the band.  And [I’d] known of him for at least four or five years, and never met him.  We’d always been in different places.  He was in Portland or L.A. and I was in New York.  And I was just leavin’ New York and going back to England, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna go to Coachella,’ like 2011, and at an after party or something like in the hills, me and Michael finally met.  And we kind of had a little bromance.

K: A bromance?  That’s nice, how was that?

J: I fell in love with him.

MIC: It was very adorable.

K: So why a bromance?  What about each other…

J: Well he’s super charmin’ on first-meeting.

N: That wears off quick.

MIC: And you are [charming], too… We just stayed up all night bullshitting each other.

J: And the bands that we were in were coming to their… natural ends.  And we was talking about carrying on in the industry and workin’, and wanting to do it, and not really knowing what else to do with ourselves.  And he was like, ‘I need to be in New York.’  And I was like, ‘Well, if you go, if you make the move, let me know, cause I’m always in and out in New York, and… if I’m there, I’ll play with ya.’

MIC: He kind of… said it, too, jumping out of a car.   I was like giving him a ride somewhere or something. He’s like, ‘Come on, let’s play in a band, I’ll play anything!’ [I was] like ‘What do you play,’ he’s like ‘Anything!’

K: Really?

J: The fool.  I don’t really play ‘anything.’  I think it was a lie so we could start a band.

N: Yeah, cause when he got there, and we told him that he was gonna be playin’ the banjo, he wasn’t interested in it.

J: I was like, ‘Fuck you.’

N: So then we were like trumpet, and he was like, no.

MIC: Oboe?

N: It was like, ‘You said anything…’

J: So the fact that I could only play a certain type of guitar really—

N: We had to rewrite all these songs.

MIC: Had to replace all those French horn parts, with guitars.

J: But it was going to be like electro-folk…

N: It was supposed to be like The Lumineers, but it didn’t really work out.

MIC: Yeah, it was gonna be civil war rock.  Then it turned into a punk band.

N: We’re just joking around, sorry.

MIC: We’re just kiddin’ ya.

K: I’m assuming you guys like the same music, but do you have the same influences?

N: No.

K: What are your influences, independently?

J: My roots were like, punk.  That’s what I was playing in England. I was in a punk band.  That’s where I’m [at] mentally.  That was my ‘bracket.’

Dan Burke: I grew up listening to punk rock, too.  When I first started playing music, that’s generally what I learned… you know, when I was like a little kid.  I grew up [with] a lot of older brothers and sisters who were listening to a lot of early hip hop and R&B, and stuff from the ‘80s.  They used to like to dance and shit, so… I got early influence from that sorta stuff.  Like Michael Jackson, Motown and soul and stuff.  So that’s kinda where I started.  Then as soon as I started…I don’t know—rebelling—and listening to punk-rock and hip hop and heavy metal… that was where like my musical stuff sorta came in…

N: Dan’s like our hip hop resource.

D: We draw a lot of stuff from hip hop.  Like when we use… drum machines in our songs ever, or just like references to the New York-vibe of… what it was like back then.  [I] kinda… grew up, during that stuff, so.

N: Dan definitely like loads up our Spotify playlist with all like the hip hop essentials so that we can dig deep.  Josh is definitely the punk guy.  I definitely like, like avant-garde music and like, free music, and Mike is obviously the song-writer who has…

J: –Classic–

N: …Who knows… all that.

K: So you guys really cover a lot of the genres.

D: We just try to bring in what we need from everything that we all… come from.  Not everything.  But everything we need, for the band.

K: If you had to pick a favorite band that influences…could you?

MIC: I don’t really think there is one.  I think that’s the whole point… The kind of music we make feels familiar to people because we draw from a lot of popular influences… But the whole point is to try to create something new, right?  So, we’re trying not to have a band that we sound just like.

K: In that vein, how would you guys describe yourselves to someone who doesn’t know anything about you?  What do you think people need to know about you?

J: It’s a tough one.

N: I would definitely say, deeply rooted, deeplyrooted, in late ‘70s, early ‘80s punk.  From both England and New York.  And I would say bands to compare us to are more bands like Beastie Boys, The Clash, M.I.A.  Any artists that started grounded in something really strong, but were fearless in the way they would attempt anything.   Because I don’t think that you can expect anything from us.  I think that if we decide that we want to make a reggaeton-beat punk song, that might happen.  And that’s the only thing you can expect from us, is the unexpected.

K: Your videos are really colorful/visual.  How did you come up with the concepts, like ‘Armed’ for instance, what is that about?

MIC: It’s definitely a more, like, cinematic video.  We worked really closely with a guy named Danilo Parra, who directed that video and the ‘I Wanna Dance’ video, and they have a kind of a…

J: Sci-fi element.

MIC: Yeah, there’s a sci-fi vibe… In the ‘Armed’ video, there’s kind of a girl who, I understand her to be, an alien of some sort that is coming to recruit an army.  Although, in the beginning of the video it seems like she’s being recruited, and by the end of the video she has complete control over these guys.  It’s really just about… making a music video that people are entertained by, as well as something that elevates the song…  It doesn’t have to specifically be about what the song’s about… ‘Armed’ kind of has a political/military vibe, you know, message behind, but it’s not super important to us that music videos have to spell stuff out anymore.  They’re really just for people, online.  You know, so we just want it to be, entertaining.

K: Is that your main goal, to be entertaining?

MIC: We want to make it for other people, if that’s what you’re asking.  It’s not…

J: We’re not preaching.

MIC: We’re not trying to preach anything and we’re not making it just for ourselves, which a lot of bands do.

K: You guys are going to England soon.  Are you excited to do that?

MIC: Excited to go back, yeah.

J: We’ve toured a lot, this summer since… We first went over in December, was it?

MIC: Yeah, of last year.

J: December last year, and then we’ve been back three or four times since.  The fans out there are really good.  They’re really getting behind us, and they’re playing us on the radio out there. They love us.

K: I’m curious about your magazine, ‘Yonks.’  Are you guys still working on that?

J: It’s an on-going thing.  When we have time.  Cause it’s super time-consuming, like sittin’ and folding, page after page.

K: How do you guys make them?  Or, I guess, what is the content?

J: The content are all the artists that are in and around the band.  That are involved in working with the band.  There’s a lot of photographers that work for the band, and work shooting the band, and video-makers… visual artists… It’s basically all our friends in New York and friends of their’s.  So it’s… about building this community of kids that are working around us.  Showcasing their talent, basically.  And then it’s like, we can throw like, music away in it, and put cool things in it, that make it special.

MIC: It’s a fun, collectible thing that we can keep doing, because… having physical copies of anything is kind of lost these days and so… it’s kind of a nice way for you to have ownership over something that no one else can really have unless they went and got it…  We don’t make many of them, it’s a very limited run, like 100 each or something and…

N: They sell out fast.

MIC: And they sell out really fast and then people like want the next one and it’s fun, you know.  You have little zine-launch parties and stuff.  You incorporate it with the show, and it all makes sense, and all the people that are in it come to it and meet each other.  They’ve worked on projects… A lot of people [meeting and] teaming up and working on other stuff together, too… outside of art… So it’s cool.  It’s like a good, community-building thing and it’s something that’s fun for fans to get behind.

K: So if a fan wanted to get one, when you have another one, could they buy it online?

N: Only at shows.

J: Cross your fingers and come to a show.

K: Only at shows?

MIC: Yeah, that’s the best part.  Cause we make it and you have to buy it from us.

K: So are there going to be any at your Oct 19 [L.A.] show?

J: There’s three left.  And they’re in my bag at the hotel.  There’s one other outlet, but you’ll have to go to New York City.  There’s a newsstand underground at the train stop at Metropolitan and…

MIC: Lorimer.

J: Lorimer.  And it’s a friend’s place.  He’s got this like independent art bookstore, underground.  The Lorimer stop.  They may have sold out before this goes out.

K: So is it mostly articles?

J: No, it’s all visual.

N: Photos and paintings and art projects… Skaters started off as essentially an art project and not like a band expecting to do much more than play shows and have fun.  We were all bartenders at the time.  So Skaters was almost an art project in itself, that included the photography and the art of these artists, and once it started to take off we saw that we had a platform to push these artists that helped us get to where we were.  So, that’s how ‘Yonks’ was developed.  It was like: Alright, let’s take all these artists we worked with, ask them to submit any kind of printed format of their art and… we’re gonna make these zines and we’re gonna sell them.  So we started having parties for these magazines and we would put the posters of their work on the walls, and people would come and you could buy the artwork…

MIC: Steal a poster.

N: You could steal the posters at the end of the show.  We did a bunch of those and we’re still gonna do it, regardless of what happens with this band… Regardless of how many people are coming to our shows, we’re still always gonna push these particular artists that helped us develop our sound through their art form.

K: So have you guys played music forever?  How did you guys first get into it?

MIC: All of us have all been in other bands for [a] long time… since we were teenagers.  So, we’ve all been doing this for awhile.  This isn’t our first rodeo.

K: What do you guys think of music today?

N: It’s great.

MIC: Music’s exciting.  This is the best time it’s been, yeah.

K: Why do you say that?

MIC: Because it’s so easy and creative and… anyone can get anything out.  A band… of like 18-year-olds, in Worcester, Massachusetts, like…

J: Speedy Ortiz.

MIC: Speedy Ortiz or something—can just like pop up, in a days notice, and then become something that everyone knows.  It’s just a lot.  There’s a lot more…

J: Accessibility.

MIC: There’s a lot more accessibility.  And that’s a good thing for music lovers.  I don’t know if it’s great for music industry, but it’s really good for people that want to check out new stuff all the time.

K: You guys are signed with Warner Bros., how did that happen?

J: They turned up to uh… one of our zine parties that we were throwing in New York.  We had been a band like six months.  We had been in all these other bands and kind of knew what we wanted to do, you know.  So when we started scheming, we started the band, we had like, goals… We would achieve them.  So by the time the Warner Bros. guys saw us at [The Studio at Webster Hall], everything was in line.  I guess… It was just a good show for them to see.  And the songs were there.  You know, the EP had been out.  We’d released the EP ourselves and had a bunch of downloads. So like, there was all these elements there that were already tried and tested, so it was um… obviously they liked it.  

K: So where do you guys want to go now, what are your new goals?

J: Australia.

MIC: I want to go to Japan.  I really want to go to Japan.  I was there once.  Six years ago.  We’re just gonna grow, you know.  Like, it’s somewhat organic at this point.  It’s in motion.  So we just are rolling with it.

N: Yeah, we wanna keep making music and collaborating… Continue the opportunities we’ve had, meeting other bands.

MIC: Yeah, finding inspiration in new places and stuff.

N: And eating good food.

MIC: Eat better food, lots of steaks.

K: I’m looking forward to your show.  I’ve heard you guys are pretty crazy performers.

J: Getting better everyday.