Home > Home - Featured

08/26/2025

SEXTILE - The OMN Interview

By MATT HANSEN // LA electronic post-punk duo will play Wonder Ballroom Sept. 13th with Nuovo Testamento

When Sextile played Crystal Ballroom this past March the release date for their new album Yes, please was still 2 months away. But you wouldn’t know that in seeing the crowd response to their new songs and the comfort the band had in playing them. Yes, please is 12 blistering tracks of high energy electronic body music where members Brady Keehn and Melissa Scaduto further expand upon sounds like synth and post punk. Sextile will be returning to Wonder Ballroom on Saturday Sept. 13^th with Nuovo Testamento and Brady Keehn was kind enough to talk to us about politics in music, exercise routines, and the bands side projects (S. Product, Panther Modern).

Oregon Music News: How was the response to your new songs when you debuted them live on tour with Molchat Doma?

Brady Keehn: Great! We started playing those songs on a previous tour that we had done in Europe, which was like a little festival run. And on our way there we stopped in New York and played this roller rink called Xanadu. We played in the middle of the roller rink that they had set it up with monitors and a stage and the whole thing was fucking awesome. When we started playing “Freak Eyes” people got up on the stage, and it was the first time we had ever played it. People just started dancing, going crazy, and jumping off the stage into the crowd. I immediately knew this one is going to be on the record. And it was kind of like that throughout the rest of the Molchat tour as well, with people responding to that song and especially “Resist.” We would close the set out with “Resist” and it always ended with what I feel like is a big kick in the nuts.

OMN: For those who haven’t heard the track “Resist,” what is your take on when people claim that music and politics should remain separate?

BK: The push for politics in the music was definitely Melissa. I’m more Dolly Parton about it. I want to focus on the music and the sound but this is a project that I share with Melissa and she feels very strongly about voicing her opinion about politics. As a contemporary artist if that’s what she wants to add to this project, then that’s what she wants to add to this project. And I’ve got her back on whatever she wants to say or the sounds she wants to make or the ideas she wants to try. I absolutely stand with Melissa on her political views. I personally have just always focused on the music instead of bringing politics into music myself.

OMN: I get a very Hunter S. Thompson vibe from “99 Bongos” can you shed some light on why you included the voice over for that track?

BK: That voice over is our friend Cesar who helped us co-engineer and co-produce this record. I recorded him telling a story from Melissa’s childhood. We just wanted something and I wasn’t going to go do what everybody does and just pull a sample from a movie or some shit like that. So I wanted to include something way more personal, and I just asked Melissa to talk about some insane story from her childhood when she lived in Florida. She started talking about it and I started writing it down and cutting it up and phrasing it in a way that would work for the track. And then we just had our friend Cesar read what I wrote and broke down from what Melissa was telling me and that became “99 Bongos.” We’re huge fans of Hunter S. Thompson so bringing that in and relating that track to him is definitely a compliment.  

OMN: Does The song “Push Ups” have a meaning I’m not aware of? I’ve seen a lot of people recommend doing 100 push-ups a day for their exercise routine. Do you follow that workout plan?

BK: Not 100, but I do push-ups quite often, every day. I do HIIT classes every day and it’s literally just to stay in shape for tour. Just so I don’t get my ass kicked on tour from being on the road and jumping up and down and singing for an hour every night, on like five hours of sleep. That’s the routine. And in terms of the other question about the lyrics of “Push Ups” having another meaning you may not be aware of, I couldn’t tell you. I did not write those lyrics, those are all Jehnny Beth. If she’s got some other meaning behind it, she’s not telling me, I have no idea.

OMN: Will either of you return to your side projects after the “Yes, please” album cycle? Or is it too early to tell?

BK: Too early to tell. I’m sure Melissa could go on why S. Product hasn’t been able to play shows, it’s kind of a point of contention there. And then Panther Modern, it will resurface at some point, but as what I’m not exactly sure. I don’t want it to be what I do in Sextile. I don’t want two projects that are me doing the same fucking thing. I’d rather have one project focus on certain aesthetics, or production, or goals, or direction and then another focusing on another thing. Just to have that different outlet for me to experiment with, and maybe try not to focus on writing dance bangers. That is what Panther Modern would be.

ON TOUR: SEXTILE / NUOVO TESTAMENTO at Wonder Ballroom on Saturday, September 13th, 2025. Doors 7:00PM / Show 8:00PM / (Tickets) ALL AGES 

Comments