Seattle indie folk group The Head and the Heart was already half-formed when Tyler Williams, who was living in Virginia at the time, received an early demo of “Down in the Valley” from his friend and vocalist Jonathan Russell. He moved across the nation to join the band as drummer almost immediately.

After the runaway success of their self-released, self-titled debut, the band went from playing tiny dives to massive auditoriums overnight. But according to Williams, the band isn’t so concerned with monetary success, but rather with trying new things and making honest songs. We spoke with him about the band’s upcoming album Signs of Light, their strange relationship with pizza and the decision to include a copy of the record with every concert ticket purchase.

Do you think starting out where you did in Seattle helped you guys thrive?

Yeah, when we first put out that record [The Head and the Heart], it was self-released so we didn’t really have a label behind us. I don’t know why it just became this local thing — you had to have our record, but I can’t really explain it. [Local record stores] Sonic Boom and Easy Street definitely helped us sell 10,000 records on our own before we signed to Subpop.

When you joined the band, was the sound fully formed, or were you still figuring it out?

There was a lot of figuring it out, especially how to add drums tastefully to the songs that they were playing. And when we were first starting we didn’t have a bass player, so Chris came on board playing bass in January of 2010. That’s when it really started to feel like a full band rather than just a collection of songwriters.

Why was it difficult to add the drums into the songs?

They were all fully formed songs, because they’d been playing them for three or four months without any drums. I think that’s why that first record feels a little restrained, kind of intimate, because we were playing in a really small space, writing for a room the size of a bedroom. We were playing dive bars, so that was the space we were feeling sonically at that time, and that’s why that first record sounds the way it does.

How did finding success and getting signed so quickly affect how you thought of the band going forward?

I think it was never really our intention to sign so quickly or have things move very fast. We always wanted to be a band that grew organically over the course of many records, which I still think we’re doing. I guess success for us is not really material or the idea that we’re playing to a lot of fans now. Success for us is always trying to make the best music we can, the most honest music we can that comes from how we feel within. I guess that’s our gauge for success, and we’re having success making really great music on this newest record. To me, it feels like we’re hitting the watermark of quality we’ve been shooting for all along.

What was the recording process like for the new album?

It was probably the lengthiest recording process, because we took a year off touring to gather material to write and really live life again. We hadn’t really done a lot of personal travel or anything like that because the band was touring so much.

When we decided to get back together to write, we went to Stinson Beach in California, about an hour north of San Francisco. It was incredible. That was where the record really started to take shape and feel like a statement that we had to make. It felt like we hadn’t really played together in such a long time because we took so much time off. It really felt like we had a lot more to say to each other, and a lot more to say through our music. When we were sitting in the living room in Stinson overlooking the beach, everything that had been building for a year just came pouring out of us.

So the break really affected how you guys approached the new album?

For sure. I think that it really gave us the time and space to learn new inspirations and tricks with instruments. I played drums in a side project that was like a psych-rock band, so that definitely approached the drums for The Head and the Heart as well. Playing more straightforward rock drums was just where my head was at at the time.

Have you guys gotten much better at collaborating? It sounds like you weren’t as much a part of the process for the first album.

That’s not so much the case. We were very democratic on that first record too, but for those songs, the skeleton had been sort of formed already, if that makes sense. Whereas on the last two records, we’ve all been there from the first notes and first demos. I just feel that they’re more fully formed.

Was there anyone or anything, outside of the psych-rock band, that influenced you during this recording?

Definitely all the locations we were in, those different settings and different scenery and different vibes of places. That was huge, and that definitely inspired the art direction we took with the album packaging — it felt very California, very Laurel Canyon in a way. Working with a producer for the first time definitely changed how we viewed our songs as well. It was cool to have an authority figure we could look to and be like, is this good? So that was nice.

What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever played to support the band?

That would definitely be a pizza place in Boise, ID called Pie Hole. It was unintentional, but we’d had a really bad show just the hour before, and we met some people there. We were bummed out, but they were like, “Come to this pizza place, bring an acoustic guitar and a couple shakers, there are always a ton of people there lined up, on a Friday night at 1am.” So there are 40 people in this pizza shop, and they’re all loving it and dancing around. That to me was a weird fun moment.

We actually had a lot of pizza in the beginning of our career. We also played a pizza party in Lawrence, KS. I have no idea why pizza was so prevalent in the beginning of our band, but — well, we’re all big fans of pizza.

How did you decide to include a copy of your new album with every concert ticket purchase?

We were just thinking how we could get the album in the hands of our fans. You can’t really count on media or anything to spread the word about music anymore. You just have to do it however you can as a band, in a declining industry where people are just streaming singles. We just wanted to put the record in people’s hands so they could listen to it in full. If you’re coming to see us, we want you to hear these songs and have the lyrics memorized so you can sing along with us. That’s one of the best parts of these shows, just seeing people sing along.