Blanket Approval | On Our Radar
We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Brooklyn, New York’s own Blanket Approval. We’re so excited to share our conversation.
Blanket Approval
Moredopemusic: What’s something about your journey as an artist that most people don’t know?
Blanket Approval: What most people don’t know is that our continued journey as a band is a story of happy accidents and lucky timing. In early 2022, shortly after I moved to New York, I (Rah) joined Blanket Approval primarily as a means to make friends. I was working on my own set of songs as part of my solo project but most of my friends were still in New Jersey and I wanted to build a crowd of music friends in NYC; what better way to do that than joining a band? I saw this dude Jack's facebook post on the 'NYC musicians wanted' group asking about a guitarist, saw he listed Arctic Monkeys as an influence (cool), saw he went to Princeton (interesting) and so I hit him up, met him for a jam (which went ok) and joined the band in what seemed like a fun casual side project as I continued to write my debut album. I thought we'd meet once or twice a week max, play a couple of shows and I’d learn a thing or two while having some fun light nights out.....Or so I thought....
I joined the band in February, we played a pretty disastrous first set that spring at Union Pool but by that summer, our insta reels started to go viral amassing more than 5M that year and garnering us with over 20,000 new followers on insta. For a band that had 3 songs, played less than five shows and had formed that year, we suddenly found ourselves in front of a lot more eyes than we’d ever imagined. Filming the reels, at first done quite sloppily and usually crammed in the last 15 minutes of practice, was always something I tolerated more than enjoyed and I never thought seriously that they'd be a tool to promote our music but suddenly a 30 second clip was going viral in South Korea and our song 'Stop' was getting thousands of plays a day. I have memories of being super hungover one morning, not even showering, tumbling up to the fourth floor of Jack's Bed Stuy apartment on a Sunday and hastily filming a number of reel ideas that Jack (our singer and wanna-be comedian, dont tell him I said that) had that morning. One of those reel ideas was making fun of our bassist Max for just being a bassist ended up going viral propelling our viewership even further. We ended up riding one of those first insta-band content reel waves in 2022, something it seems like every small band is doing nowadays. We knew we could make funny content, but did we have the music to back it up? The answer to that question took over much of our lives for the next three years.
Moredopemusic: What current project or release are you most excited about right now?
Blanket Approval: After a DIY tour the summer of 2023 that involved us staying in some sketchy air BNB’s in Boston and Vermont and playing in small New England towns to mostly empty rooms, we decided to record a full length album to show the world that we were more than some ‘content’ band. This personally got me a lot more emotionally involved in the band. Until that time, I had continued to work on my own songs and also had been beginning to develop my singing voice. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to get my songs in the mix and learn more about producing/writing/releasing. As part of the upcoming LP, I personally wrote 3 full songs for the album and wrote the first parts of the arrangement for almost 3-5 more. I remember being so nervous when we all congregated in the basement of the band house one February morning where each members were to showcase what songs they’d been working on for the album (we had 20 total demos and narrowed down to 13!). This was the first time anyone would hear me sing and each time it was time for my tracks to play, I’d be laser focused on who was tapping their foot or what people’s reaction was. One of those songs I’d played that day was a song called ‘Heartbreak City’. The band ended up making this song single. It was a dream come true personally to see that song released earlier this year, garner some decent streaming numbers and I even saw someone singing the lyrics to it last week. Somehow along the way though, Tyler Joseph of Twenty One Pilots (TOP) fame heard our song ‘My Soft Spots My Robots’ and decided to interpolate that on TOP’s 2025 full length LP ‘Breach’ as part of a song called ‘Robot Voices’. No one could’ve predicted the impact this would have on us as a band. Suddenly, all these TOP fans were listening to our music and taking interest in our shows. That brings us to the end of 2025, probably our most transformative year as a music group yet and ready to release our debut album in early 2026 to all these eyes and ears that I’d never dreamed of. As an only child of indian immigrants who was always tinkering with his guitar in between algebra homework and advanced placement tutoring sessions, in many ways this feels like the defining period of my life as an artist. It will be the first time anyone will hear at least three songs that I’ve composed, arranged, sang on and written the lyrics to. It will be the first time people will hear basslines, riffs or key lines that I came up with in the confines of my small brooklyn apartment or between recording sessions or on the balcony of my grandparents Calcutta home. It will mark my first collaboration with other artists in general - with three other people who in 2021 were complete strangers but who have taken up an almost indisputable presence in my life.
Moredopemusic: What message or emotion do you hope people take away from your music?
Blanket Approval: In the summer of 2014, I found myself sitting in the back end of a dimly lit classroom at Dickinson College in Carlyle, PA as part of a college-prep course my parents thought would look good on my HS resume. I was 15 at the time and the professor, who had been pacing around the classroom a slow controlled stroll as he gave his lecture on cellular structure, was keenly aware that I was not paying even the slightest bit of attention. My mind, instead, was on the furious guitar strums of 'The Modern Age'. How did they get that tone? Was that a strat or a humbucker style guitar and what were the voicing of those chords and my god, I just cant get Julian's vocal melodys out of my head?! I felt like I just wanted to burst out of the classroom and stroll down the sunny sidewalk by the shops in mainstreet while listening to modern age and just shout out the lyrics. I felt dangerous, like anything could happen, like I was in on this exciting secret in this sterile world. I'd never felt something so real and I felt the same things when I heard the keys on 'Light my fire', or the riff on 'Satisfaction' or later-on, madlibs production on 'Pinata'. I want my music to feel the same way. Dangerous, heightened, like this is the last meal you're ordering because you're on death row or like its the last manhattan you're ordering on a night out before a wild heist at the national bank the next day. I want my music to feel out of control, like that extremely charismatic but chaotic friend that doesn't show up to any of the plans you invite him to but the one time he does show up, you feel like you've talked about all your life's afflictions and even solved some of them.
Moredopemusic: What keeps you going during moments when you feel like giving up?
Blanket Approval: Being in music is really challenging in the 2020s but what keeps me going is a reminder me that every song and album is really multiple stories converging. I was tinkering with my guitar in Calcutta in the summer of 2018 and recorded a guitar line. That guitar line turned into the basis of the verse in ‘Heartbreak City’ which on one winter day in 2023, when I happened to record the defining bass line. Later that day, on the walk to gym, the chorus lyrics came to me. We recorded the arrangement in early 2024 with a producer that ended up leaving us and with a studio that went out of business before the song was completed. Our new producer breathed life into that song and hope into me. That song, really a compilation of isolated moments in the band and my life, became a part of other peoples life when Todd from the audience of a show told me it was one of his favorite songs. This journey and how we got to ‘Heartbreak City’ was completely accidental. Even us meeting was accidential.. I mean Jack and Max met randomly at a punk show when they were both hitting on the same girl..but somehow this band refuses to die and give up. We crossed 1M total streams a month ago and I’ve got a feeling this album will be really special because it would never have happened if all these strange coincidences and little moments of our life didn’t occur and thats what keeps me going. Creating things from little tiny moments of inspiration to hopefully inspire other people.
Moredopemusic: What legacy do you hope to leave behind through your art?
Blanket Approval: I'd be happy for some tapping toes, nodding heads and melodies that stick to the brain. I'm not going to pretend to be entitled to anything beyond that but personally I'd love for improvisation to come back in popular music like jazz or classical Indian and hope to do that with future releases. Music has always been a friend that I could talk to when i felt lonesome, a narcotic alternate reality I could turn to when the drudgery of routine and process has worn me down. I want to leave behind something interesting like that for other people, a friend that people can talk to. Sorry for the crazy long answers if you've gotten this far. Ended up writting more than I planned for this but great questions!! - Rah from Blanket Approval
