Formula Indie Sessions _ Interview with Pavement Saints
Pavement Saints is a Jangling Indie Pop band that spans over the West Midlands, it was founded by duo and friends Callum Graham and Jake Williams who both recently had guitars gifted to them in the early 2020s and are heavily inspired by the C86 sound of music and want to infuse that Twee C86 sound with Modern Indie Pop/Rock.
In February 2025 the duo released their first single “Claremont Road”after Callum was working on a bunch of demos and written a base of the lyrics and Jake came along in the groupchat and asked to be involved and just by natural occurance the band was born. The song has over 1,500 streams on Spotify and played on various radio stations around the world.
They took a short break while school and many personal responsibilities took the helm but in later 2025 they started working on their new single Speedway / Spin Doctor which is planned to be released in April 2026 and are currently in contact and searching with various record labels for the release of this throwback to 80s Jangle Pop.
What is your earliest memory connected to music?
I would say my earliest memory was when I was very young about 6 and it was a tradition in my family (Callum) that every single year on new years day we would have a party and my grandad was “DJ Les” and it would play alot of this era of music but often remixed into some kind of dance variant and I always wanted to get up and use the DJ deck so much. And as I discovered more about music, I just realised I wanted to get more into either drumming or guitar. But I remember at the end of each new years day party they’d play a bunch of odd bagpipes.
How did your passion for creating music begin?
I remember it was around the start of lockdown in 2020, and I feel this was a time when homemade music really started to grow as a scene, especially with sounds spreading on TikTok and other social media platforms. I felt like it was the right time to try out a variety of different sounds and beats to see what really resonated with me. It was around the same time I discovered The Smiths and Close Lobsters, which sent me down this whole indie rabbit hole that I have grown to love. I initially started on GarageBand before purchasing my first guitar about three years ago, and I now work in both FL Studio and BandLab, and of course with my beauty of a guitar.
What’s the story behind your current music project?
I was working on a random beat which I nicknamed Claremont Road long before I released it, and it was mainly a nostalgic piece about an old place I used to live in my town which resonated with a lot of my childhood memories. I felt the architecture and the sort of cluster the house had really made it feel like it was built for jangle pop. It was a Rickenbacker with a bit of reverb and a few other tweaks to make it sound a bit more modern. It was originally made in BandLab, and the drums are a simple loop kit from the 80s which I think suited the simplicity of the times it was meant to represent. I feel like drum kits are a matter of do not fix something that is not broken, as the original ones are still a goldmine to me.
I had no plans of releasing it until I posted it in the group chat that me and Jake shared. He got the idea to sing over it with the vocal demo sheet that I uploaded, and I really thought that, due to our shared interest in this sort of C86 type of music, it would be a good idea to start a music project together.
We initially wanted to follow the sort of tradition in this scene where artists would often be named after a song that another artist in the community had made, but realistically we mish mashed some words from a variety of songs and ended up making Pavement Saints.
We are excited to be releasing our new single Speedway/Spin Doctor later next month as well, with both of us making a vocal appearance.
How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard your music before?
It honestly varies from track to track but overall we are an attempted revival of that Jangle Twee sound that defined many bands like Brighter, The Field Mice, Close Lobsters and more. It kinda feels like a British version of a surfer vibe and full of pretentious British men whinging, which I feel like we are quite good at doing, we are a full range of C86 Twee to Dream Pop and Jangle Pop.
What is one thing you’ve learned that completely changed the way you make music?
I think it is mainly my method and craft about writing lyrics and vocals in general that has changed overtime as that often has been a factor me and Jake have struggled with often with getting into that flow to create something with many meanings or to flow it well with beats. We mostly now freestyle what we associate with the beat or sound based on title and work mutually on lyrics together from line to line and try to make it as shared of a process as possible. I also discovered how important analogs were quite early on in the creation process as I feel early on I just felt BOOM if I had a guitar that had a jangly reputation then it’d produce the sound perfectly.
What tools, instruments, or software are essential in your creative process?
Of course, the Rickenbacker guitar or Telecaster is essential if you want to make this sound, when it comes to drums we use alot of 80s drum kits like Tama or Yamaha which sits behind the reverbed Jangly guitars and lotssss of plugins and analogs for creating the perfect Reverb, sometimes Jazz Chorus AMP. A synth (piano) which will be used in an upcoming EP for much later this year, an EQ3, Chorus Ensembles and some Jangly Packs. When it comes to software, it can vary on track, but mostly FL Studio.
Which indie artist or song are you loving right now?
I am especially loving bands like Goodly Thousands, The Electric Pop Group and a bunch of bands who were ran by Matinee Records they have a very twee sound to them and have such impressive skill. A good one I reccomend to you lot is Walking Home by Goodly Thousands. Or slightly outside of that sound I REALLY would love you all to check out Velocity Girl and their song “Sorry Again”
How have your personal experiences influenced your music and artistic vision?
I think a good personal experience that influenced my vision was honestly listening through the whole C86 compilation and also taking in the full art of that era from the sepia tone cameras, I realised it was something I just always wanted to achieve and especially seeing how the sound has evolved throughout the years from various labels like Sarah Records, Mantinee, NME and I was on a hunt ever since to achieve that sound and hyper fixating on many bands from that era
What emotions or messages do you hope listeners take from your work?
I hope mostly they don’t feel condescended to, like I must admit lots of the older Indie tracks can be quite guilty of doing. I mostly hope they get to explore the sound greater as a whole and potentially resonate with some of the emotional messaging or seeing how that connects to their life in any single way. But I mostly deep-down hope for them it becomes something greater as there are some other great bands out there that deserve the recognition.
What’s the most important lesson music has taught you so far?
I think patience and to genuinely do it because you love it and not fixate on deadlines or a perfectionist image of how it must be completed and very rigid, as to be quite frank it just causes many arguments and distancing between members and before getting into music I never really fully understood how bands fall out with each other so often, but it really is an easy thing to figure out the moment all your creative processes and time have to be shared on a project like this.
I think the main thing you need to remember is why you started in the first place, at its core what you wanted and stop adding additional weight to it. Quite like how when investigating something you take away as many layers as possible to figure out what requires the least amount of leaps or assumptions for it to make sense. Keep each other involved.
What is a dream venue or festival you would love to perform at?
A great dream to have played at a festival like Primavera Sound, Reading or Leeds, Isle of Wight film festival, Green Man Festival. There are so many Indie Pop festivals or venues that would just be an honour to eventually be played at but would also love to be played in West Midlands pubs or bars or local venues as the high street in the areas particularly where I, (Callum) live are really struggling and some sort of promotion to bring more audiences in would be a great opportunity for our areas.
If you could collaborate with any artist, past or present, who would it be and why?
If I could personally collab with any artist I would love it to be Half Man Half Biscuit in many ways as I feel they have kept up the sound brilliantly and are still active as a band to this day and also is probably Jakes favourite Indie band and I think they have quite a masterful way of writing lyrics and themes they write about do resonate with us in many ways. There are so many notable mentions and for me personal it’d be someone like The Shop Assistants or McCarthy.
Where can our listeners follow and support your music? (Website,Spotify, IG, links)
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0Fh2CcFPEf2B4P3jUELjFa
Bandcamp: https://pavementsaints.bandcamp.com/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/pavementsaints
Looking toward the future, what’s your dream for the next chapter of your musical journey?
Our main aim at the moment is to get a full EP or album release within the next two years and hopefully getting in some compilations and or getting a record label and proper distributor behind us as a band and making more regular appearances, It is a big aim to meet more in person and potentially hold more venues and finding opportunities in the national Indie scene if possible. It is mainly about getting more attention to us in general at this point. But we already have many beats and demos ready to send off to labels and of course working on our first EP release where progress has advanced very far.
What do you hope listeners will discover about you along the way?
I do hope they get to know us and keep in communication and keep up to date on the musical progress we make and any musical drops, just genuinely to form a closer band as we are a very small band and are incredibly grateful for anybody who takes time out of their day to listen to us or communicate with us. I hope they get to learn us more personally like our hobbies nad type of humor or little musical charms we have that make us stand out. Aswell as sharing us to more people in the global Indie scene.
