DENYM do not have a neat story about the exact moment five musicians suddenly became a band. There was no dramatic rehearsal where everything locked into place and everyone knew what had changed. Instead, the shift happened gradually as individual ambition began giving way to something shared.
“There wasn’t really one specific moment when it clicked that we were a band,” they explain. “The dynamic just gradually shifted from everyone focusing on showing what they could individually do, to being completely invested in working out what the songs really needed from us as a group.”
That distinction matters for a five-piece arriving with plenty of experience before releasing anything together under the DENYM name. The group brings together former solo artists, session musicians and performers, with Elijah Chase and Gracie Val sharing the front of a sound rooted in pop while leaving room for country influences and whatever else the five members bring into the room.
For DENYM, becoming a band meant recognising that experience was only useful if everybody stopped trying to prove the value of their own contribution. “It became much more about how we could bring our different experiences and strengths together to create something that felt new and genuinely unique,” they say. “Songs started to be rewritten to create space for each other and everyone’s parts were considered.”
That process also changed how comfortable they became with disagreement. “I think you know the moment you become truly comfortable as bandmates, because you’re comfortable challenging each other’s ideas, but at the same time we’re always there to lift each other up,” they explain. “Once you start caring more about what you’re creating together, than what you can individually contribute, it starts to feel very different.”
The friendship underneath it all seems just as important. DENYM describe themselves as “genuinely just friends enjoying making music together”, which means the creativity, arguments, adjustments and breakthroughs do not have to be forced into some grand narrative about chemistry. They say the most exciting parts of being in a band have started to feel natural because the relationships were there before the need to present DENYM as anything bigger.
Learning when your best contribution is less
The biggest change has been learning that more input does not automatically mean more value. Solo artists are used to carrying songs themselves, while session musicians become skilled at delivering a specific part well, but DENYM say a band demands a different kind of discipline. Sometimes the best decision is to remove yourself from something you could easily have dominated.
“I think we had to unlearn the idea that the value or quality of the end product is determined by how much of you is in it,” they say. “When you’re used to being a session musician or solo artist, you get very good at delivering your part and that’s your most important concern.”
That instinct had to be dismantled. “In a band, actually sometimes the best thing you can do is play less, sing less, or change or let go of an idea that you loved or let someone else take it somewhere better,” DENYM explain. “We’ve all had to lose a bit of ego in that sense, but in the best possible way.”
The point is not five people competing to leave fingerprints over every bar. “The aim isn’t for five individuals to compete for space, it’s for us to make something together that we couldn’t have done alone.” That may be the clearest explanation of what DENYM want the group to become.
Nowhere is that balance more visible than between Elijah and Gracie. As a dual-fronted band, DENYM could easily fall into the trap of dividing everything neatly down the middle, but they say the vocal arrangement developed much more instinctively than that.
“We actually fell into a natural rhythm with it very quickly,” they explain. “When writing a song, sometimes you immediately know whose voice should lead the story; other songs become more interesting when both perspectives are equally shown.”
Neither singer appears particularly interested in keeping score. “Both of us care more about making the song the best it can be than our level of vocal contribution,” they say, describing a process of stepping back and trying to hear the song as though they were listening to it on the radio or standing in the crowd at a show. That distance helps them decide whether one voice should lead, whether both belong together or whether somebody needs to disappear from a section entirely.
“Both of our voices add something completely different to the band and so it’s important to use that to decide what works best for each song on a case by case basis,” they add. “It’s always about what makes the song land emotionally rather than making sure everything is divided 50/50.”
The same willingness to let difference remain visible runs through DENYM’s writing. Asked what they heard in each other that made the band feel capable of producing something none of them could make alone, their answer is immediate: “The differences, really.”
“If everybody brought the same influences, instincts and strengths, there wouldn’t be much point in forming a band,” they say. “The friction of all of us hearing things differently and coming at the process from a different perspective with different experience is normally what produces the best music. The magic.”
That means songs are expected to change hands without remaining precious. “An idea can come into the room sounding one way and by the time everyone has given their input it’s become something totally new,” DENYM explain. “You can hear all of our personalities come through in the songs, our individual styles and inputs, but the finished sound doesn’t belong to just one of us, and that’s what’s so beautiful about it.”
Listeners will get their first real chance to hear that collective identity when DENYM release their debut single in October. The group describe it as sitting somewhere near the middle of what they want the band to be, with “huge pop energy”, an equal male and female vocal presence and elements of country music already inside its DNA.
It was not chosen simply because it represents the band on record. DENYM are already thinking about how the songs will translate when five people have to turn them into a live experience. “It’s such a feel-good track and we all enjoy playing and singing it so much,” they say. “We want our live shows to feel like a whole experience and our first single will definitely play a big part in creating that electric atmosphere we’re going for.”
At the same time, they are deliberately resisting the temptation to explain the whole band in one release. “We didn’t want the first single to give everything away,” DENYM say. “We want people to follow our journey and gradually discover that we have so much more up our sleeve.”
They are even more direct about the limitations of judging the group from one track. “While we love the song, one single will barely scratch the surface of everything we want to do and show audiences.”
Industry interest has arrived before that first song, bringing another contradiction with it. DENYM admit the attention feels validating because it suggests there may be room for what they are building in the current pop and country landscape, but they are equally aware of how quickly early excitement can become pressure.
“Obviously it’s exciting that people are interested this early on because it validates that we’re naturally filling somewhat of a musical gap in the current pop/country scene,” they say. “It also hopefully means that what we’re building is connecting with people already, which is all that we can hope for at this stage.”
They are trying not to let that interest become an instruction manual. “We’re making sure not to make decisions purely based on what we think people in the industry want from us, though,” they add. “It’s far more important to us that the listeners connect to it and care about it. So, while the attention is encouraging, we still have everything to prove.”
That pressure is not limited to the people waiting to hear the music. Like most young artists now, DENYM are also expected to maintain a constant digital presence, turning rehearsals, personalities, jokes and unfinished ideas into material that can be judged almost instantly by numbers on a screen.
“The hardest part is probably feeling like every moment has to become content,” they say. “The world we live in, people can very quickly start judging a rehearsal, a song or even your own personality by how it performs online, which is a pretty strange way to reflect on music if you think about it.”
Having five people helps spread that burden. “We split a lot of the content creation and online elements between us rather than expecting one person to constantly be the face of everything, and everyone naturally brings something different to the band,” DENYM explain. They want listeners to see their personalities, but not at the expense of remembering why anybody should care about those personalities in the first place.
“We’re also conscious that the music has to remain the reason that all of the other stuff exists,” they say. “Views and followers are useful and appreciated, but we really just focus on making music that we enjoy and hopefully through that, people feel connected to the stories we have to tell and to us as people.”
Perhaps the clearest indication of DENYM’s ambition is how quickly they want their previous credentials to become secondary. Those histories are useful now because nobody has heard the band properly yet, and the group are proud of what everyone did before, but they do not want an introduction to DENYM to require a list of former jobs forever.
“Ultimately, the goal is for that to become unnecessary,” they say. “We want the interesting thing about each of us to be that we’re in DENYM.”
The measure of success is simple enough. “If, a few releases from now, the first things people talk about are the songs, the live show and the chemistry between all of us, rather than what we were doing beforehand, then we’re doing something right.”
Follow DENYM on Instagram as the band prepare for their first release in October.
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