Welcome to the first installment of our Home/Studio Tour series: where we ask your favorite artists to take us behind the scenes for a look at the spaces where their music takes shape. We hope you enjoy this look at the making of KIND with Thanya Iyer!

Stop 1: The Church

The church-turned-studio is where Daniel lives part-time in Quebec.

We have recorded all of our music here from Do You Dream?, To the mixtape, and then KIND.

Some features include the car garden, really nice friends and neighbors from the town who pop in, no running water, a wood stove and good times!

This is Daniel in his studio spot, with shelves of books and Bach records. Daniel plays drums in the band, drives the tour car and engineers, records and mixes all of our albums. He is a really beautiful and creative arranger! I was recording some piano for our friend Chuck in this shot.

Here's Pompey and Daniel eating snacks in our food/hang lounge. In this picture you can see some leftover pews standing upright to save space, and the beautiful baby grand piano where we record all our piano tracks.

Here are Pompey and Daniel recording vocals on “My Mind Keeps Running” from KIND. Pompey plays bass (electric and upright) and sometimes synth and has done some production and beat making. He's also someone I really like to workshop songs with, he’ll always contribute lyric or melody ideas. The mess of cables and instruments in the background is where we play!

There is even a lake nearby the church. Between jams and recording we’ll come here for a quick dip and swim and it’s the BEST. Swimming is my favourite thing and I’ve heard recently from my roomie/astrologer that its good for me to cool my Aries fire.

Stop 2: Home

This is the room where Pompey and I live. This is a desk where I’ve made lots of demos and we’ve even done some recording for KIND. That beautiful yellow hibiscus plant is sadly no longer because apparently I’m not great at taking care of plants. But I do love them so so much. And will hopefully get another hibiscus plant soon. And more plants! I love the life they bring. You can also see beautiful abstract art by Pompey’s brother, Sam Kasirer-Smibert.

This is a more recent picture where you can see more plants, the mic is Daniel’s 421 which he graciously lent to us during quarantine time, art by our friend Amanda, an original embroidery of Do You Dream? by our friend Shaina Hayes, and the view outside where we can see Café Resonance, our favourite vegan eatery that is home to an extremely beautiful and creative community in Montreal. They have shows every night and also late night dance parties. Last year I had my student concert there in the afternoon. They are beautiful people and it is another home to us where all the album launches happen and lots of other community magic.

This is another special guest room/jam room/yoga/exercise room/shared space that is dear to our apt and roomies! I’ve spent a lot of time in here during the quarantine, writing string parts for the album launch that’ll hopefully happen one day! The white synth is my Yamaha reface CS which I use for EVERYTHING. It started as something I used to conserve space in our tour Toyota Corolla (from lugging a huge keyboard on tour) to now being the thing I use to write songs, make sounds, perform with live, etc.

All our friends/touring band friends have stayed in this space! It’s fun to host our friends we love it.

Bonus Stop: Music School

Lastly, this is the music school I used to work at. Every time a student was late or I had a small break I would be writing songs and many of my songs were created in this spot! Especially on the album!