After a few years and several EPs, Toronto’s Cootie Catcher are emerging from their basements with their excellent new LP of freaked out modern indie pop Something We All Got, now out via Carpark Records. PONY’s Matty Morand spoke with members Nolan Jakupovski, Joseph Shemoun, Anita Fowl, and Sophia Chavez ahead of their March tour dates about the album, Canadian music, and more.

MATTY Thank you for talking with me. I’ve been listening to the record all week. It’s so great. I listened to the record today at the gym. It’s a good basketball record, I have to tell you. There’s three songwriters in the band. What’s the approach when you’re putting together an album? Do the songs experience a significant change when you bring them together?

NOLAN: Yeah. They all start as small ideas, usually presented as a skeleton to the band and then whoever it most makes sense to will write lyrics and melody over top of it. When we present it to the band is also when the acoustic drums come into the element. It usually starts as just, like, very, very demo-demo and whoever makes sense will write for it because sometimes a guitar part is hard, and I’m like “I can’t actually sing and do this at the same time.” Sometimes a synth part is too crazy, and it’s like “Okay. Well, Sophia can’t sing this while doing this crazy synth thing.” We just wrote a bunch of songs like that, and it’s just a collection of a bunch of songs, I guess.

MATTY Cool. So it sounds like it’s a quite democratic process.

NOLAN: I’d say so, yeah.

MATTY: In the press release, you mentioned that this is your first time experimenting with recording in a studio. How did that differ from the way that you recorded your previous material? Did you think it influenced the way that you guys made the songs? How did you feel about it?

SOPHIA: I think it was different because we were shy at first. Before, we could do as many takes as we want because we were recording at someone’s house. This time we recorded somewhere in another city, it took us a while to drive there so whatever takes we took is just what it’s gonna be. I’m happy with how it turned out, but I remember being really stressed out and not that happy with how it was. But, yeah, I think that’s a big thing that influenced me.

MATTY: So you’re feeling like it was a little more restrictive than it’s been in the past?

SOPHIA: Yeah. I think my vocals on this album are a little more raw than the other albums. I appreciate that now but it was just really stressful when we were recording.

MATTY: It can definitely feel like the walls are closing in a little bit when you’re when you’re looking at the clock.

JOSEPH: Yeah, same for the drums. It was just kinda difficult because we were going there really early in the morning and it’s just the time constraint of pumping out five drum tracks within a few hours, you know? It kinda makes it a little more tough. It’s the same thing Sophia was saying, you finish and you’re like “Oh, well it could have been better,” you know? But I guess it always could be better.

MATTY: I do think that is part of making a record. You sit with something for so long and then it comes out and since the time that you’ve recorded it’s changed and the way that you play it has changed.

ALL: Yeah. Yeah.

MATTY: The songs on this album owe a debt to 90’s and early 2000’s indie and twee. A lot of the songs feel like they could fit comfortably on a Sarah Records compilation or something like that but at the same time they also do have all these very modern elements that don’t make it feel like nostalgia work. Was that a conscious move, to blend those influences?

NOLAN: That’s the goal. Yeah, of course. I really don’t wanna make something that’s just throwback. I don’t think anyone’s really doing the exact kind of thing that we’re doing. There is a whole genre that we’ve discovered and people have brought up…

MATTY: Laptop twee.

NOLAN: Yeah. Not that I knew it going in. We were just doing it doing it and it turns out it was a thing. But, yeah, it’s definitely on purpose. You’re not supposed to try to reinvent the wheel (Laughs) but we tried to do something different on purpose. Yes.

MATTY: I love the way that that all comes together because it does feel so natural. I was thinking about the laptop tweet thing today and, especially listening to the whole record, I don’t really feel like it fits into that.

NOLAN: Yeah. No.

ANITA: I agree.

MATTY: And so it makes sense that it’s not something that you were aware of coming into it.

SOPHIA: It’s just funny because we are, like, the words laptop and twee. We are both. But we listened to it one time when we were out and we were like “I don’t really know about this.” But, like, sure. Objectively the words make sense.

MATTY: Do you find that frustrating? Playing in PONY we get the 90’s thing all the time and I was resentful of that for a long time and we have just kind of had to embrace it at this point. But when people bring that sort of thing up, are you kinda just like, “come on” you know?

NOLAN: No. I I feel like it’s so niche. I don’t know if anyone’s ever said it in person. That’s like a really online-people only thing.

MATTY: What do get in person?

(All laugh)

NOLAN: Dumb stuff.

ANITA: Really random stuff, I wish I could remember.

SOPHIA: There were some funny ones. I just can’t remember.

NOLAN: I think it’s funny when people say we’re emo.

ANITA: That’s kind along the lines of what I was thinking of.

SOPHIA:
Tweemo

ANITA: We’re tweemo.

NOLAN
Like, “oh, okay.”

ANITA: Like, we’re not emo at all.

MATTY: Listen, I can kinda see it.

ANITA
What! How?

MATTY: It’s so vulnerable and earnest lyrically that I can see why it gets lumped in with that, but I don’t I don’t think it’s an emo band. I would never jump to that. Tweemo is funny. Nolan, we met years ago. I think one of the first times I can remember was playing a house show in Mississauga that you also played. That day was kind of like, “oh, there’s a whole other world of Toronto music here that people aren’t really engaged with if they don’t know about the scene.” If you know, you know type stuff

Then when we played together at that festival in Toronto earlier this year, I felt the same way. Canadian music, I think maybe because of the grant system, can be a little conservative sounding at times, stylistically. But then there’s a big history and undercurrent of freaky, weird sounding Canadian pop as well. Where do you think you fit into the continuum of Canadian music? Do you feel like you’ve been embraced by it?

NOLAN: A little bit. Yes. It’s kind of a thing that I’m just noticing after the fact, more so. We played the city of Toronto’s New Year’s Eve show at the harbour front and I didn’t really think anything of it. Later I was talking to my friend Andre and he said, “Growing up I always saw bands like Broken Social Scene play there” and it was really trippy. I was like, oh my god. I feel like a lot of bands can probably go strictly underground and be fine, but we are trying to be appealing to just, like, normal listeners. I do think that that is a plausible aspect of music. Commercially and artistically, yes, we are trying to do both.

MATTY: Yeah. I think you’re blending the elements that can draw in pop music fans and freaky music fans alike. You’re going on tour in March. You’re away for most of the month. Is this the first big tour that you guys have done?

ANITA: I think so, yeah.

SOPHIA: Twenty one days. I think the longest we’ve done so far is six days.

MATTY:
So it’s a big jump for you.

NOLAN:
Yeah, never more than a week so this is a lot. I wonder how we’re going to do.

SOPHIA: It’s like a reality TV show.

NOLAN: It’s okay. I think we’re gonna be cozy. We have John driving.

JOSEPH: We have a driver so it will be chill, he’s our friend. Yeah.

NOLAN: And I don’t think there’s any dumb drives.

ANITA: Yeah, no ridiculous long spans.

NOLAN: I don’t think there’s any dumb drives, we have someone driving and we’re in a van that’s not gonna break down.

MATTY: Huge. Huge. What are you most excited for?

JOSEPH: I’m excited for Texas.

NOLAN: We’re all excited for Texas.

ANITA: South by Southwest.

SOPHIA: We’re gonna be there for a while, so it’s also just gonna be nice to not drive.

JOSEPH: I’ve never been and I think it’ll be really cool, and I like that whole… not that I like… you know.

ANITA: That goes without saying.

JOSEPH: I like the cowboy culture. You know?

MATTY: I do think that there’s something about places that are more conservative that breed a better underground community because you kind of have to, you know? So shows in Texas are always great. Calgary is weirdly good, too for that reason. Adversity breeds a good community, I think.

ANITA: It’s true. Kinda messed up, but it is true.

JOSEPH: Yeah. I’m sure we’ll see lots of good bands that we all like at SXSW, which will be fun too.

MATTY: Who are other Canadian bands that you guys think fit into your world that more people should know about?

NOLAN: Again, I don’t know if there’s anyone that’s doing exact what we are but there are a bunch of bands we like here. Whenever people ask me who who to play with in Toronto, I usually say Gift Idea is an incredible trio. I say Uncaught (in Promise) is an amazing band.

ANITA: I was definitely really inspired by Eliza Niemi a lot. Her songwriting is super like… I really look up to it.

NOLAN:
All of our friends’ bands

ANITA: Yeah, all of our friends make good music. I feel like leading up to ours, I guess we were pushed a lot of Cancon growing up.

NOLAN: I do think Tragically Hip is good. I’m not joking. I do think they’re really good.

ANITA: You mentioned Broken Social Scene. I didn’t listen to them a ton, but the songs that I did hear, and the fact that there was a lot going on (had an impact).

NOLAN: They’re quite undoubtedly good. Sloan, Super Friends. There’s so many.

ANITA: Caribou/Manitoba

NOLAN: Yeah. I could keep going.

MATTY: Cool. Well, that’s all of the questions that I have. I’m really excited to see what you guys do next. Love the record. Thank you for not being a shoegaze band in 2026.

NOLAN: No problem.

MATTY: Is there anything that you want to talk about that I haven’t asked or that you haven’t been asked in interviews so far?

ANITA: I feel like we’re just looking forward to the new stuff. I guess it’s probably already announced, but the Heavenly show. We’re gonna play with Heavenly, speaking of Sarah Records. I listened to those compilations a lot, and Heavenly is on a lot of them. They asked us to open and I’m just really excited for that.

Order Something We All Got by Cootie Catcher HERE