In late 2015, Khruangbin seemed to emerge out of nowhere with their full-length Dead Oceans debut, The Universe Smiles Upon You, introducing a national audience to their trademark, psychedelic “Thai-funk” sound. But, in actuality, bassist Laura Lee, guitarist Mark Speer and drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson had already been carefully honing their sound for close to five years, turning heads at small clubs in their native Texas and laying down material in the Burton, Texas barn that has long served as their studio/clubhouse.

During the past decade, Khruangbin have grown into marquee-venue headliners and festival favorites around the world, releasing a series of well-respected LPs, out-of-the-box experimental recordings and cross-genre collaborations. They’ve also continued to build out the visual element of their live show—from their early days, Lee and Speer have worn wings on the stage and the bassist has utilized unique outfits during her performances—and their most recent run in support of 2024’s A La Sala utilized a striking set design framed around the windows which grace that record’s cover sleeve.

However, when it came time to mark the 10^th anniversary of The Universe Smiles Upon You, the trio decided to look backward, while still moving forward, tracking an entirely new version of the songs that comprised their debut LP. Dubbed The Universe Smiles Upon You ii, the set was recorded in the same Texas barn where Khruangbin initially laid down the songs, exactly a decade after their original sessions. They also tweaked a few things this time around, stretching out certain songs, shuffling the sequencing and weaving in some of the lessons they’ve learned after so many years on the road.

As they prepare to celebrate The Universe Smiles Upon You ii with a swing through some venues they have long outgrown, Lee, Speer and Johnson discussed their decision to refresh their first album during a joint Zoom shortly before their tour opener in Texas.

The Universe Smiles Upon You ii is both a celebration and a reimagining of your first full-length album. And, instead of reworking the original sessions, you made the bold decision to return to the barn where you originally recorded the album a decade later to track all-new versions of these songs. Can you walk us through your thinking process for that dynamic approach?

Laura Lee: We were trying to figure out how to commemorate the 10 years, and we had huddled a few times on what we were gonna do, and then I prompted the question of, “If we could have talked to ourselves 10 years ago and said, ‘Hey, this is gonna happen—you’re gonna put out this record, and this is how your lives are gonna change,’ then how would we want to celebrate that?” And DJ was like, “Wouldn’t we just want to do it all over again?”

So, we did. It was like, “Why wouldn’t we go back on the exact same days and do it again,” and it brought us back to that spirit. And then, obviously, being out there and thinking about these songs, they didn’t want to necessarily stay exactly the same. 

The barn where you recorded both versions of The Universe Smiles Upon You has long been your studio and clubhouse, where many of your recordings have been tracked and you really worked out your trademark sound. The space is located on Mark’s family property, and I heard you did a few updates on it in advance of these more recent sessions. Were those mostly cosmetic?

LL: I’d put studio space in quotes. [Laughs.]

Mark Speer: Just to hit up the space itself, there was a dance floor that was put in for a wedding that was held there back in 2010 or something—one of those easy, home-improvement, put-it-together, quote-unquote hardwood floorings. It was not high quality, so over the years it started to warp and disintegrate, and that dance floor became kind of a home/apartment complex for a lot of different critters. So, all we did was rip that old thing out, and we rented a platform/dance floor for this recording session. They just came in, put it down, and then we were done. They would pick it back up again and take it back out. So, if anything, we just returned the barn to its pre-dance floor days. And then the other thing we did was check the electrical system and make sure that it was functioning correctly. We didn’t do any insulation or add any luxuries. It’s still just a big tin building. It’s very drafty. And it got very, very cold.

 LL: It’s very much not a studio. You can’t leave anything in there.

Donald “DJ” Johnson: One of the biggest reasons the electrical system had to be checked was because we knew that we were going in and that we were gonna have to plug in multiple heaters. And when you’re doing that, you have the potential to trip breakers and all that kind of stuff. So we were anticipating it being very cold. We went in prepped for that—everybody had their own personal space heater, and, fortunately, everything went pretty well. We didn’t trip any breakers in the process. And the first day we were there it was gorgeous.

LL: It was a gorgeous Texas day, much like today. The first time we did this, it was freezing, and we were very unprepared for how cold it was. We were much more prepared this time. We had multiple sets of long johns, HotHands and all of those heat patches that you can put everywhere on your body. But the thing is it just wouldn’t really be right if it was just nice weather. That’s just not how it goes.

MS: I think, in the grand total of us recording out there, we’ve probably had four days of really good weather. And the rest of the time you’re battling the elements, whether it’s raining, windy or it’s really cold—or maybe it’s insanely hot.

LL: Yeah, but even with as cold and brutal as it was, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. There’s an ease of being out of the city noise where the anxiety that exists in your body just floats away. And the only thing you need to stress about is, “How do I play this song in the cold?”

MS: Yeah, because LL and I both live on opposite sides of the country—DJ is still in Houston, but the place itself is located between Houston and Austin—I had a colleague, an associate of mine, go and check on these things for me and arrange to have the old dance floor pulled up and removed. And his pops actually came and did the electrical work.

Once you hunkered down in the barn to re-record this suite of songs, who were some of the outside creatives who joined you? 

LL: The whole session was the three of us, and Will Van Horn—who has played pedal steel on a bunch of records—was there and played multiple things on this record. Steve Christensen, our engineer [on most of the band’s recordings], was also there. So it was the five of us doing the session. And then Jackie Lee Young, our tour photographer, came out, and I told her, “We can’t interrupt our bubble flow, so I need you to be as invisible as possible. So she was this little butterfly who came in and left. She came in day one, and then she left, and then she came back the very last day because, honestly, taking pictures day one, that’s not really what it ends up looking like. 

MS: By the time it’s the last day, it looks like complete chaos—cables everywhere, all sorts of stuff.

LL: Coffee cups everywhere to keep it as warm as possible. It was so funny looking.

MS: Yeah, we were stuffing moving blankets and stuff into the crevices to keep things from being drafty.

LL: It was winter camp, the five of us out there.

Let’s take things back to the sessions for the original The Universe Smiles Upon You. By the time you recorded the album, the three of you had already been playing around Texas together and the LP was proceeded by some singles and other tracks on Bandcamp. How much of the material that ended up on the original album had you been playing live before you entered the barn?

DJ: “August Twelve” was one of the ones we were playing ahead of that— it was one of the earlier songs that we were playing, and “Dern Kala” was on an earlier release—that was around “The Number 3” and “The Number 4.” But “August Twelve” and “Dern Kala” were the two from this album that we had been performing and the rest you, Mark and Laura, were writing as we went during the sessions. You were sending stuff back and forth by that time.

LL: Those and “Bin Bin.”

MS: I still have those demos somewhere. We would have a bank of drum loops— Laura would play bass, send it to me and, at the time, I was basically plugging an acoustic guitar into my computer and demoing things in that way. We knew that it wasn’t going to be that way [on the album], but that’s just how we were putting the notes together and composing. We knew it was going to sound completely different once we were all together in the same room, and we’d make adjustments here and there and all that kind of stuff.

LL: I mean, we had less than three days to do this—it was basically a day and a half of actual time that we had to record this, so we had to be as prepared as possible. And I remember we were still working on everything—“People Everywhere,” that was the first time we’d really played it. And that’s what’s on the record.

MS: It was like, “Are we really gonna put this on the album?”

LL: Yeah, there were a few songs like that, and then there were no lyrics written. We had a day to do it, and it was madness.

That brings up an interesting point. These days, you describe Khruangbin as a “semi-instrumental” band and, on some later albums, you have leaned more heavily into vocally driven music. At the outset of the band’s early days, how committed were you to playing instrumental music and how did those few songs with lyrics and other eternal voices end up in the mix?

LL: We were fully instrumental. We had no interest in singing or any crap like that—no interest. We really liked playing instrumental music, and we were all comfortable just playing our instruments. When we got the record deal, and we were given the opportunity to cut this record, we were very encouraged to have a vocal song. And I kind of forgot about this, but we had written a singular vocal song that we ended up hating. It wasn’t us, and we were trying to make it work, and it just wasn’t working. I remember I kind of saying, “Screw it.” Mark was like, “Are you sure?” Because I would have been the one placating the label and doing the dance in between. I was like, “You know, it’s not who we are. We’re gonna make the album that we want to make.”

And then, as we drove between the farm and Houston to do some percussion and stuff like that, Mark started humming over what would become “White Gloves,” and he hummed a melody on it. And then that aspect of Khruangbin started, where it was sort of like, “As long as it feels like us, and it feels like we could all sing it, then we can include it.” It came out as almost a texture, another instrument. It felt right.

MS: It was also one of those songs that is mainly chordal, whereas on a lot of the other songs, there’s a bass melody on the bottom, there’s a guitar melody on top, and there’s the beat. And on songs that have a chordal thing, it lends itself to needing something, some kind of top line. And so with “White Gloves,” it was like, “Well, this chord progression is really cool. Is it compelling enough by itself to be a song for three-plus minutes, but it needs something on top, so I guess it’s gonna have to be us singing.” So there it was.

One of the most interesting parts of ii is that you decided to resequence the song order. What led to that decision, which I feel makes the record stand as its own, as a distinct entry into your catalog?

MS: Well, we got in there and we played the songs in a new way. LL usually does all of the sequencing. She’s got a real knack for it. So, when we laid the songs out in the original order, I’m pretty sure it just didn’t really flow the right way because we had reinterpreted the songs on the fly. So, yeah, that’s where the new sequence came into play.

When you went in to make this new record, did you utilize the same instruments as the first time or make an effort to change things up this time around?

DJ: It’s always the same drum kit, same one on every Khruangbin record.

LL: I played a few basses on this record, so that is different. It wasn’t necessary, but it was fun. And I think part of it was that we were trying to figure out how to approach these songs differently. So I played a Höfner Short Scale hollowbody bass because it’s gonna make me play differently. I was like, “Maybe this is a way I can naturally think about the song in a different way?”

MS: You played a Höfner Short Scale on the first album, too, but it was a different one. I played the same guitar I always do, and I also played Laura Lee’s old acoustic guitar that she’s had since she was…

LL: I think I was 11.

MS: Anytime you’ve heard an acoustic guitar on a Khruangbin album, it’s been that guitar.

DJ: More than anything, what influenced the sound of this record is that Mark was really into ASMR-sounding textual music and instruments. He was really focused, intently, on making things textual, and we can really feel the intricacies of the instruments.

LL: He put contact mics on stuff.

MS: I had been to this museum in Berlin. It was a museum for Renaissance art, and they had all these instruments and the clavichord really blew me away—the mechanism is pretty simple, but the mechanism itself is loud in comparison, almost like this music-box mechanical sound, and it’s wood rubbing on wood. It sounds really close and really intimate. The viola da gamba was a huge influence, so whether I was playing electric or acoustic, or whether we were using electric bass or the hollowbody or the drums or just brushes, there’s just so much texture, and I wanted to hear all this hand stuff. It just made it feel like pillow talk.

LL: It’s really inspiring. I remember when he set all these mics up, we didn’t know what was gonna come of it. Then Steve would play back the things that we played, and it was inspiring to hear the same thing sound so inspired and so fresh, even though it’s the exact same thing. A slightly different approach in production can really yield surprising results. It’s nice when things can still surprise you.

MS: We’ve been playing these songs in Times New Roman. It’s like, “Let’s try them in an italic.”

Of course, you have been playing many of these songs live during the past decade and these new, refreshed versions reflect how they have evolved during that time. I also like how some of them are stretched out, like “People Everywhere,” which was just over two minutes in 2015 and now runs past seven minutes.

DJ: It felt right in the moment. For the most part, we sat down and just the way that we were playing these songs kind of informed where they wanted to go. So, if, when we got to a certain part of the song, it felt right to vamp it out, or to keep playing a certain section, that’s just kind of what we did. And, for the most part, we kept all of it. We didn’t really have to edit a lot down, but it was pretty much true to how we played it and how it felt in the moment.

MS: The way we did the stuff was that all of us were in the same room together—and the close miking, and the “acoustic guitar-ness” of some of the stuff made it logistically impossible to really do a lot of editing. You’re gonna get the bleed on everything, so it’s like, “Well, this is what it sounds like. This is how we did it.”

LL: I don’t think I realized how stretched out they were until the label told us it wouldn’t fit on a singular LP. I was like, “Wow, good for us!”

“Bin Bin” is also elevated from a bonus track to a key part of the LP this time around.

LL: It was just a matter of sequencing–you kind of reach this place where, in sequencing it, you have to ask yourself, “What rules are necessary, and what rules are just self-imposed?” And it was like, “Why does the bonus track of the first album have to be the same bonus track?” It’s playful to mix that up. In resequencing it, all of a sudden, your main course is your appetizer. It just made sense. It just made sense for that to change as well.

And as soon as I realized we weren’t beholden to the original order, then the bonus song also felt like it was up for grabs to change. Certain things just always feel right in the heart with music. It was the same with “People Everywhere.” It was like, “Of course, this song has developed on stage,” and we should represent that. “Bin Bin” was originally a hidden track, but it was a seminal song for us, even though we don’t play it all that much or haven’t over the years. It was like, “Why not give ‘Bin Bin’ some time to shine?”

You now have four albums as well as a variety of singles, EPs and other unique releases, and you continue to mix up your setlists to reflect the breadth of your catalog. How much of The Universe Smiles Upon You material made its way to your core setlists over the years?

MS: Of the original record, there are only really four songs that never made it into the regular rotation—“Little Joe & Mary,” honestly, because the arrangement is actually really hard. It’s gorgeous, but it just never made it into the set. Then there is “Balls and Pins” because it’s very hard to pull it off with only three people. You need that fourth person, Will Van Horn being that fourth person, to pull it off. “[The Man Who Took My] Sunglasses”—we had other songs that kind of sounded like that, so we focused on the really strong tunes that filled that space. And, then, of course, there is “Bin Bin,” which definitely found its way into a few performances. We have played that a number of times; it’s just rare.

Looking ahead to the upcoming tour celebrating the new version of The Universe Smiles Upon You, you are going to be revisiting some favorite venues you have long outgrown and will be playing a few other unique, smaller spaces. How will that change the way you approach the material?

LL: We’re bringing Will out for this run, and he will be up there with us. We’re gonna see how we feel, but it’s exciting. He did this whole record with us—it wasn’t a single song here and there. He was part of the process, so it felt right, and now it’s opened up our set because we have this fourth person that’s really doing a lot of heavy lifting for us.

DJ: I feel like A La Sala [the band’s previous release] told a different story, and it was very much a story in and of itself. And this one feels more like a celebration. Khruangbin always plays to the room and so, for the last 18 months or so, we were playing to really big rooms, really big spaces. And we were playing things that worked in those spaces. And just like we did then, we’re playing these really small rooms, relatively, for us. And, we’re really excited to get in there and play to smaller crowds and not have all the production and other things that we normally have to worry about. Because all that stuff is great, and it enhances the music, but when it’s all said and done, it’s just about the music. This is about getting back to that.

LL: When you’re in a smaller room, it’s easy for everybody to focus on looking at what it sounds like. It’s always so nice to watch a band because you watch what’s happening sonically. And as the rooms get bigger and bigger, you can’t actually see it, which is why light shows and stuff come into play because you still want to feel connected visually to what’s happening. So it’s exciting to kind of go back to actually be like, “This is what’s happening”—though we loved the windows [set design and motif on the most recent tour the trio did.]

Looking ahead to new material, have you found that revisiting some of your earliest work has shaped any new music you are working on it—or served as a reaction to that music.

MS: Only time will tell. I really don’t know. I need time to process what the heck we’ve done. [Laughs.]