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Photo: Ilona Donovan 

We don’t play favorites, but we have them, and Dogpark is routinely dominating our aux cord regardless of setting; be it roadtrip, riverwalk, or houseparty. Fun, endearing, quick to pivot between revealing singalong rock and introspective instrumentation, Dogpark is as talented as they are exuberantly lyrical. In Corporate Pudding, the band does its proverbial thing, spinning up melodic rock, pithy choruses, and general fun in its familiar, pull-you-in-for-more tempo. While anchored by the lead single "September," the EP has enough terrain for anyone to dig in, muddy and moody one moment, celebratory and riff-filled the next. And speaking of digging in, we wanted to dial in on this band's immense progress on record, so we dialed in our laptop camera to explore via Zoom.

 OnesToWatch: Why are you guys a band, especially in an era where everyone's an individual content creator and musician? What makes it fun to be Dogpark, the band?  

Dogpark: I think that's part of the ethos of our creation. I'm speaking for myself personally here, but I think there's a lack of bands in the mainstream right now. It's kind of unique to any time period, dating back to the birth of rock and roll and the '60s, it becoming a mainstream thing. There's always been rock bands in the zeitgeist, but it's kind of coming back now. When we started, I feel like even more so, there were not a ton of bands outside of the rock community. But, in the mainstream pop sphere, there haven't been very many bands. When we started as a band, we were all in college, just kind of looking to play parties and it's hard to do that individually. It shows how organic it started. We weren't trying to make it in the industry. We were just a group of guys who wanted to play shows and have fun. 

So my pull quote is, “Dogpark sets new precedent for bands as pop groups, challenges, the ecosystem, incentive structures, drinks beers and parties… and it all happened organically and authentically.” 

I guess pop has two definitions. I wouldn't say we're trying to make pop music, but, like, at the same time, Led Zeppelin wasn't pop music, but it was popular music. People know their songs in the mainstream. That's kind of the gist of what I'm getting at. 

Elaborating what Eamon was saying, we're just trying to make reasonably accessible music that's interesting. Maybe it's somewhat indebted to some historical rock band, but we're trying to also do new stuff. I think that's the goal. For us in the writing room, every band member is involved and everyone's influences create something new. Everyone is limited in their depth of whatever they've heard, so the more influences you can bring in from whatever Declan or Chris has heard in their lifetimes. There's these little unique pockets that don't overlap between us and that creates something new that might not have existed if it was just one person.  

Given you guys started organically, when did that shift? When did it feel right to be like, “Yo, we're an actual band.”

Our second post on TikTok got like 1,000,000 views, which kind of started it all. We were just playing covers from our studio at school. That kind of started getting managers interested, and a couple that we had been talking to brought us out for a couple of sessions in LA, but it didn't really work out. So we hit up another manager and like, “I got this producer that you can get in with.” We took every meeting we could. We were just playing frat parties as a band at the University of Richmond. Individually, we had all been writing music. But the culmination of the band as a group, beginning to write music together, happened on our first trip to L.A. Besides Billy, we were all music majors. Billy's a biochem major, so he had real career aspirations. [Laughs]

Damn Billy. Medical field. 

Declan was younger, he had more years in school. He left when we started this. When you're a music major, being in a band is definitely, like, one of the better career paths you can have. We also started to make money, even while we were in school, playing parties. It became a business pretty quickly. We played maybe two or three free shows, and then we started charging. That's when we were like, we can make money doing this. 

Do you guys have a system for writing and composing? Do each of you individually bring concepts, ideas, and then sort of hammer it out? How do you guys write a song as a group?  

We definitely don't know the system. There’s no one way we approach every song. We wrote the whole first EP in one-day sessions, and we just cranked out the songs the day of with the producer and writer. Since then, it's been more like, "Does someone have an idea to get us started here?" Or someone comes out with a fully fleshed out idea they thought up on their own. We've done both ways.

How do you guys decide what goes into a cohesive EP? Are there themes? Are there storytelling narratives that string along? 

 There’s two things mainly. One is quality-wise: how much do we believe in the song on its own? And then secondly, does it fit? Which we didn't consider a ton of the first 2 projects we did, but for this new EP, we made the decision to leave out some solid songs just because they didn't quite fit thematically. We're making an effort to be more cohesive going forward, in terms of the content of the song. We don't feel quite constrained to put this forward a staunchly cohesive body of work, yet. To some extent, they're just songs that we wrote in the time period, and recorded in the same studio. I'd say that's the biggest similarity between each EP, which makes it their own. You can hear the room that we recorded in very clearly; they all have that through line. We wrote them in a similar time of our lives and my vocal performance can be pretty similar from that week. That’s what keeps it cohesive on its own without any kind of thought. Even in the writing process, we try to write songs that will somewhat work together. I guess we haven't landed on a theme that we find to be an album-worthy thread.

So the album will be when that moment happens. 

The decision between EP and album, it's kind of out of necessity. Time in the studio, and you know the label has their own opinions on everything. We have to balance, so we haven’t had enough time to really sit down and just write 1000000000 songs and see which ones we can really find that thread through. We've kind of made the decision to keep our 2026 relatively clear in terms of touring, and we're just now starting to really sit down and start writing. I feel like we really have the chance. 

You guys are definitely pulling, as you mentioned, from a lot of different references, influences, etc. Do you collectively have an ambition of what you want to be sound-wise? Is that always evolving with each project, which seems to be representative of a place and time, or do you have a collective goal you’re looking to nail? 

I don't think that we can really point out an end goal, sound-wise. The point we're at in our lives, we don’t see a finish line. I'm just kind of more excited to see how far we can take it, how wide of a range we can go. I think the goal is to have your own identifiable sound. We’re not trying to reach a point where we sound exactly like Radiohead. We’re trying to reach a point where Dogpark sounds exactly like Dogpark. If somebody heard a song and didn't know it was by us, they'd be like, “That sounds like a Dogpark song.” I think that's how you make it to the next level. People always talk about branding and marketing, but if your music is good enough where it's so cohesive and individualistic, it'll just market itself in a way. Because nothing else will sound like it. 

Who has the most consistent ideas in the band? 

I'll say this. I bring in the highest frequency of ideas. Your numerosity. That's a good thing because that doesn't mean they're all good. Maybe I just don't have a filter, you know? 

I think we both bring in a lot of ideas. There's very few and they always hit it. It's almost always like a banger. But that's not the same for me and Declan, I feel like. 

Billy, with “Dreamwalker”? Was that like, one for one? The line part and the chorus of “Don't Lie”, I think that was you. That was a banger idea. Also, Eoman writes the lyrics for every song. So, in terms of consistency, that is a job that he has.

Well, I have to come up with something. There's a world where we could help with lyrics, but it helps to have Eoman really feel his lyrics and write something that he wants. I wouldn't want to play somebody else's guitar. 

I appreciate them allowing me to do that, as well. 

Who has the worst ideas, and why do they end up being the best ideas? 

Billy. Because Declan comes in with a fully written guitar part and then we're like, “Billy, just find something to do in this.” It’s always such a busy section. If any of us were put in that…

I definitely have been working on my sparsity. 

I've been a lot of help with that too. 

It takes a while every time to land on the right thing. I brought in stuff that's basically thrash metal, like, not a song that we should really be doing. 

We all have to an extent. Also, too much shade on Bill. We've been writing recently, and Bill cooked up an amazing verse part to his song. Everybody comes up with some really shitty ideas. You have to be okay with sharing a shitty idea. That’s why we're trying to write a lot of songs and just pick after. It's hard to know in the moment, is this one better than the last one?

Who's the mediator? Who settles the disputes? 

Chris? I would say, Chris definitely has a logistical lead, but Bill's a good glue guy. 

I feel like all of us, it's usually me or Declan. Chris has a surprisingly level head and we all kind of defer to.

You guys are celebrating something. You come back to a place that has a kitchen. What are you cooking and who cooks?  

Billy's cooking. 

What are you cooking, Billy?  

Back when we were in school, they would come over every Wednesday and I'd make gyros, because I'm Greek. 

He makes a killer hamburger. 

That's a glue guy. 

And he can do stuff beyond that, but the gyros are always great. 

To finish, I would love a recommendation that's not music from each one of you, and then I would love a music recommendation from each one of you individually. 

Declan: There's an 80s sci-fi book that pioneered the cyberpunk and digital world genre, like the concept of the Matrix. It’s called Neuromancer by William Gibson. It's really fantastic, if you're into sci-fi or even if you're not. I finished it and then I immediately read it again. For music, there’s a guy who has a project called Jam City. His album called Dream A Garden is an ambient, trip-hop, instrumental thing with the most beautiful guitar and synth, textures, hunched, sunken beats that just roll underneath the whole thing. It's the most tranquil but simultaneously exciting music. 

Chris: My recommendation would be kind of a well-being thing, which is journaling. I've been trying to learn Spanish for the last few years and I started journaling in Spanish the last few weeks as a way to practice. I'm just enjoying it a lot. It's a way to think about your day and what you’re doing tomorrow. I feel like it's a good thing to practice writing and not just typing. It makes you think about things a little longer as you're putting them on the page. Musically, I've been listening to Wet Leg. I feel like I'm a little late on the train there, but that's all I've been listening to for the past week or so. 

Eamon: I’ll do my favorite movie, which is “In Bruges”. Or any Martin McDonagh movie. His screenwriting is amazing, so really any of his movies. For music, I’ll go with the Jordana and TV Girl collaboration. Then listen to her album, Lively Premonition. I'm really into that album, it’s beautiful. That was one of my top albums of the year.  

Billy: For non-music, I went to a cool comedy show this past Monday. It was called “NYC’s Secret Comedy Show.” It was at this place called the Overlook Bar, and they had you lock your phones in a little bag and then you walk into this room with a sick jazz band playing. They brought out these really cool comedians. It was a fun night. For music, I admittedly don't listen to this artist very much or know their catalog, but I think a song that everyone should listen to once in their life is a song called “Schvingo” by a band Mungion. It is an absolute thrill ride of a song. The musicianship is incredible. It's an epic story about a pirate trying to find the cure for his parrot's disease. It's really incredible and 10 minutes long.