Mothers started as an outlet for singer Kristine Leschper while she finished her art school degree, but quickly grew into a full four-piece band to better reflect her musical interests and vision (she recruited musicians from other local bands, and they now collaborate as a unit). ‘When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired’ was recorded within a month of the full band formation at Chase Park Transduction in Athens (R.E.M, Animal Collective, Olivia Tremor Control) last winter. It’s an introduction to the foundations of the young band, a snapshot of a particular period of their genesis that maps both where they began and where they are heading. It’s the sound of a band being born, in the truest sense: songs that were conceived in Leschper’s solitude and nurtured with added direction from multi-instrumentalist Matthew Anderegg. Across it, she meditates on the human condition: what anyone’s place is in the universe; what is our value; mortality; and what it means to have relationships in consideration of all these things.

“No Crying in Baseball,” a home recorded B-side they wrote together in the months following the completion of When You Walk a Long Distance You Are Tired. “It Hurts Until It Doesn’t,” which looks at the dichotomy of an artist’s ego and sense of self-doubt, falls somewhere in between – the first song she wrote that she saw in the context of something bigger than her performing solo, it takes many twists and turns before arriving, like so many of their songs, at a different sonic place than where it began.

Mothers play this year at SXSW 2016. Their forthcoming full-length When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired will be out on February 26th via Grand Jury Records/Grand Jury Recordings.