The Nashville trio strip everything back on their most intimate release yet, transforming homesickness, longing, and reunion into a slow-burning alternative anthem
Sometimes missing someone doesn’t feel like loneliness.
Sometimes it feels stranger than that — like being homesick while sitting inside your own home.
That realization sits at the center of Indigo Syndicate’s latest single, “Howling at the Moon,” a stripped-back, deeply personal track that finds the Nashville trio trading their usual groove-driven production for something more exposed.
Written by Samantha Sanford for her partner and bandmate Jharyss Granger while he was away on a week-long work trip, the song began almost like a diary entry. The house was quiet. The absence was noticeable in small, ordinary ways. So Sanford started writing.
“I realized that I wasn’t lonely,” she explains. “I was feeling homesick in my own home.”
That distinction gives “Howling at the Moon” its emotional specificity.
The song doesn’t dramatize separation into something catastrophic. Instead, it focuses on the discomfort of routines suddenly missing the person who normally inhabits them. The opening stays deliberately sparse, built around acoustic guitar and Sanford’s vocal, allowing lines about overthinking, empty rooms, and missing someone beside you in bed to land without much protection.
Then Jharyss came home.
And the song changed with him.
The version Sanford initially submitted contained almost nothing beyond guitar. After returning, Granger added drums, synths, and bass, gradually expanding the track until its intimacy erupts into the chant-like refrain: “Woohoo, woohoo, howling at the moon.”
The production effectively captures reunion in real time.
“The first thing he did when he got back was add those extra elements,” Sanford says. “To me that perfectly portrays the feeling of him coming home. We could finally howl at the moon together again.”
That creative process also reflects how Indigo Syndicate operate as a band.
Comprised of Sanford, Granger, and Preston Pospisil, the trio are entirely self-produced, but collaboration doesn’t necessarily mean democracy at every second of the process. They understand when a song needs everyone — and when it doesn’t.
“Too many cooks in the kitchen can burn the food,” they joke.
It is an unusually healthy philosophy for a group whose music moves freely between alternative, pop, indie, soul, R&B, folk, country, and whatever else happens to emerge from their studio. The band even have a name for the hard drive containing their unreleased archive: Meatwad.
Rather than attempting to make every song fit some rigid definition of “Indigo Syndicate,” they let personality create continuity on its own.
With Sasquatch already establishing the group as an emerging Nashville act and placements across Apple Music, Live Nation’s Ones to Watch, and several Artists to Watch lists building momentum around them, “Howling at the Moon” feels less concerned with proving versatility than simply allowing listeners into a quieter room.
Mundane spoke with Indigo Syndicate about writing through distance, the beauty of missing someone, why self-production requires knowing when to step back, and the surprisingly large genre universe living inside Meatwad.
“Howling at the Moon” feels incredibly intimate, especially given that it was written for your partner, Jharyss, during a work trip. How did that physical distance influence the way you approached the songwriting process?
The songwriting process felt more like I was writing in a diary that was always meant to be shown to Jharyss when he came home.
Through writing “Howling at the Moon,” I realized that I wasn’t lonely, I was feeling homesick in my own home, and writing the song was a way to cope with that.
The song starts with a very raw, acoustic sound and builds into a much larger, cathartic finale. Was it a conscious decision to mirror the emotional arc of longing in the production?
The way the energy flows is my favorite part because that was a result of Jharyss coming home!
I originally submitted it to our lovely distributor with no other instruments besides the guitar. That version is still great and will possibly be released with another project, but the version we have out now came from Jharyss’ musical mind.
The first thing he did when he got back was add those extra elements of drums, synths and bass to boost the energy at the end, and to me that perfectly portrays the feeling of him coming home.
We could finally howl at the moon together again.
You mention that the house felt quiet while you were writing, so you “keep on singing.” How important is music as a tool for you to manage the isolation of being away from someone you love?
Music used to be my only outlet for a very long time.
Whenever I’m alone, I always end up in the studio tinkering around, so yeah, it’s everything!
I’m really not sure how else I would have spent my time.
As a trio that is fully self-produced, how does working as a team change the way you balance those personal, vulnerable lyrics with the technical side of the production?
The reason we’re able to make the music we do is because we all have an understanding that not everything has to involve everyone.
Too many cooks in the kitchen can burn the food.
It helps that we understand that music is something we love to share and also something we love to call our own.
This particular single was mainly mine, and I think the other two members cherished that more than making sure they threw their two cents in.
You blend pop, indie, alternative, and soul influences throughout your music. When you’re writing a song as stripped-back as this one, do you find it harder to maintain that “genre-fluid” identity compared to your more groove-driven tracks?
We view ourselves as genre-fluid artists rather than just our music as genre-fluid.
While many of our singles bend genres individually, we also really love making songs that are one genre this time, one genre the next, etc.
We have a stock pile of songs on Meatwad, our hard drive, that are just country, just folk, just R&B, just rap, and much more.
The refrain “Woohoo, woohoo, howling at the moon” becomes a real sing-along moment. Did you know from the start that you wanted this song to have such an anthemic release, or did that develop naturally in the studio?
I knew from the start.
I am such a sucker for a good chant-y, singalong song, and we haven’t released one that was SO chorus-coded yet.
Indigo Syndicate has been recognized on several Artists to Watch lists recently. How has that external momentum shaped your goals as you look toward future releases after Sasquatch?
We still take everything one day at a time.
In this industry it’s hard to bet on anything, so we just keep making whatever the studio has in store for us that day.
We got a couple long-term goals in the works, but until things are more concrete, we’d rather keep those close to our chests.
You’ve noted that distance can be transformed into something universally relatable. When you share a song this personal, does it ever feel strange to know that your own private longing is being heard by strangers?
I guess I don’t really think about it like that.
Music has helped me through really low lows, and I think we all just want our music to do the same for anyone who listens.
We as a couple do a good job of keeping more intimate details private while still sharing our experiences as a whole, so I think that helps us focus more on how beautiful sharing pieces of ourselves with our listeners can be.
You have a very distinct sound profile with textured harmonies and groove-driven production. How did you ensure the simplicity of the guitar and vocals on this track still felt like an Indigo Syndicate song?
We hardly focus on keeping our sound, it just naturally ends up that way.
If we get too caught up in making sure we meet each bar every time, the music wouldn’t be as fun to make.
Even if what we come up with doesn’t sound like our norm, that’s okay.
We take pride in being different and changing it up!
Looking back at the process of creating this track, what do you hope your fans feel when they hear you singing about such a quiet, private moment?
I hope they connect to the feeling of longing and understand that even though it’s hard, missing someone you love is beautiful in a bittersweet way.
At the very least people should kick their shoes off, crack open a beer and sit around a fire, enjoying the scenery our lives have to offer while listening to such a home-y tune.
There is a temptation to treat longing only as pain.
Indigo Syndicate seem more interested in the strange gratitude buried inside it.
You miss someone because their presence has changed the architecture of your life. The room feels different. The bed feels different. Silence suddenly has a shape.
And then they come home.
On “Howling at the Moon,” that return is not simply described. You can hear it happen as the song grows around Sanford’s original guitar, gathering drums, bass, synths, and eventually a chorus designed to be shouted rather than quietly endured.
The loneliness becomes communal.
The diary entry becomes a sing-along.
And for a band that refuses to decide whether the next song needs to be alternative, folk, R&B, rap, or something else entirely, that emotional instinct may be the clearest definition of Indigo Syndicate there is:
follow the feeling first, and let the genre catch up later.
