Hueston Woods is a place (allegedly, I’ve never actually been there), but it is also the name of a Cincinnati-based band consisting of Mary Klein, Lucas Vanderpool, Cooper Cunningham, and Adam Flem.
Originally conceived as a shoegaze project, over the past two years their sound has become a striking fusion of each member’s style and personality. Their live performances are fierce, at times even rambunctious. With the incredible energy they create during a show, you might forget that there are only four of them!
Last year in October, the group released a self-titled album with an overall wide, spacious feel, somewhat in contrast to their live sound. This is not to criticize the album- I actually quite enjoy the stylization, and the consistency of the sound design makes for a very fluid listening experience. I also don’t want to make it seem like this album is some timid, meek little thing. There is still grit to it, there is still a nice energy, and there are many, many points throughout the nine tracks that will truly rock your world.
I point out the style of the album mainly to emphasize the difference in their latest single, “Greta Gerwig”. This newest release has a much tighter, grittier mix, leaning into a more punk sound while still highlighting the distinct vocals of lead singer Mary Klein.
This is one of several new tracks featured on the band’s upcoming EP, “You Don’t Have to Die For It”, which will be released on Friday, June 20, 2025 (tomorrow if you’re reading this right when it’s published)!
In hopes of learning more about this new EP- and also because I think they’re really cool- I set out to interview Hueston Woods. We ended up crossing paths a few weeks ago at a show that was part of a tour with fellow Cincinnati band Phanta (a show that also featured Bobcat Press alumnus Feed). We talked about the band’s background, their future, made time for some obligatory shoutouts, and engaged in other miscellaneous silliness (as per usual).
Be sure to follow Hueston Woods on Instagram, and more importantly, listen to their music wherever you get your music! But, with all that being said, enjoy this interview with…
HUESTON WOODS
[ Originally recorded May 30, 2025 ]
Pictured (L to R): Lucas (drums), Mary (vocals/guitar), Adam (bass), Cooper (guitar). Photo by Emily Klein.
The Band
To start, can everyone introduce yourself, what you do in the band, and a fun fact?
Mary: I'm Mary, I sing and play guitar. I also drum in a band called Shineola.
Lucas: I'm Lucas, I play drums in the band. My fun fact is that I have gotten really into Battlefront 2 recently with the resurgence and all of that.
Adam: My name is Adam. I play bass. I've been playing the saxophone recently, specifically when I work from home.
Cooper: My name is Cooper, I play guitar, and I'm the youngest in the band.
How did you guys meet or how did this project start?
Mary: I've known Adam for like four years and about two years ago I wanted to start another band and Adam really wanted to be in a band, so we started a project. Then I met Cooper because I was having an open mic party at my apartment and Cooper was just, like, outside and we were like, “Come inside” and just invited Cooper up. Cooper and Adam did a Deftones duet and it was beautiful and [now] Cooper is our guitarist. And then I DM-ed Lucas on Instagram and said, “Uh, sorry, I don't really know you, but do you wanna drum in my band?”
Lucas: “Drum in my shoegaze band”. I had never listened to shoegaze before and this was pitched to me as a shoegaze band and so I asked my coworker who was really into shoegaze, like, “What should I listen to?”. Then I listened to a bunch of stuff and I came to their first practice and I was like, “This is not a shoegaze band…”
Adam: Not at all. No, it isn’t.
Lucas: But it was epic.
Mary: But that was the intent at the beginning, and I think elements of it still carry through.
Adam: I think it was just a word that was tossed around. I don't think it was the thing we built around, it was more like, “I’m thinking about starting a project Mary, something like… Shoegaze! Post-punk!”. Kind of like words in a basket, you know?
I was curious about that, because some of your songs are a lot heavier and some of them are a little more low key.
Mary: I'm trying to lean into more of a punk shoegaze sound, just kind of more noisy and more distorted stuff.
Lucas: For sure.
And then about the band name, how did that come about?
Adam: You saw it driving home, right?
Mary: Yeah, my sister went to Miami University and right when me and Adam decided we wanted to form a band I was driving back from there and I saw the sign for Hueston Woods and I just couldn't shake it. I was like, “Yeah, that has to be the band name”.
For each of you, what are some musical influences or styles that you bring to this project?
Cooper: Recently I've been really into this album, it's a self-titled from this band called Bedlocked, they’re from Texas. Their stuff is very airy and spacious, but it's also very melodic, which is something that I've kind of internalized over the last few songs we recorded for the EP. Before that, it was more just an amalgamation of all of the stuff I listened to growing up. There's a lot of, like, Car Seat Headrest influence.
Mary: Say midwest emo.
Cooper: Some midwest emo influence, you can hear a bit of that on “Diane Arbus”.
Adam: As a bassist, I really like the heavier aspects as well as the more atmospheric aspects. I take a lot of inspiration from post punk bassists like Fugazi's Repeater. A lot of that sort of thing, the more trebly baselines, but I also really enjoy more atmospheric baselines that kind of hang back in the mix. I would say my greatest influence is Loathe, probably. There's a metal band called Loathe [and] I really enjoy their electronic aspects as well as their heavy aspects. I bring that to some of our songs. I also fuck with James Jamerson a lot- he was a Motown bassist- as well as Peter Hook of Joy Division and New Order.
Mary: I'm really influenced by 90s bands a lot, just the guitar and the sort of grungy aspects of, like, The Breeders, Pavement, Guided by Voices. Probably my favorite type of music is just really noisy, distorted shoegaze, like the first My Bloody Valentine album is probably one of my favorite albums ever. Jesus and Mary Chain. That's the kind of energy I'm trying to bring in our upcoming releases and for the future as well. Lately I've been listening to a lot of… almost psychedelic-ish lofi music, like the new Cindy Lee album.
Lucas: Ok, I was going through my liked songs on Spotify, like, my main influence is the stuff I listened to in high school. I was in band class in middle school, but I didn't actually kind of care about music until I was like 12. And then I went down the white boy hip hop pipeline, like Eminem type shit.
Of course.
Lucas: Of course. Then I got to high school and I got really into Arctic Monkeys and that's all I listened to for like two years straight. Then… got really into rap…
(laughing) You’re really just scrolling through your liked songs?
Mary: He’s going through chronologically.
Lucas: Ok, then once I got into college, did the whole freshman year where you listen to The Beatles, you listen to Pink Floyd, you listen all that fucking shit, and then… got really into Mac DeMarco, of course. I'm a white boy, what can I say? More recently I've been into, like, bluegrass. My roommate plays a lot of bluegrass, he loves that shit, so I've been listening to that. But more in the sphere of influence for this band, I really like Title Fight and Bomb Bunny from Dayton, their original drummer. She's epic, I've never seen anyone drum like her.
Cooper: Kyra Stahl, shoutout Kyra Stahl.
Mary: Shoutout Kyra Stahl!
Lucas: Yeah, she's the goat for my influences for Hueston Woods. Um, [I’ve] gotten really into, like, Whirr, that's big shoegaze, and then like classic Duster, all that shit.
Mary: World’s longest answer.
Cooper: You’re giving this dude a lotta content, let's move on.
I do appreciate you giving me your whole life history, actually.
Lucas: I'm also into jam bands! I've been infected with the Grateful Dead mind virus this summer, I'm sorry to say…
Mary: This is gonna be hell to transcribe and I'm so sorry and you're so strong.
Lucas: But yeah… I like music and stuff.
I also wanted to ask about non-musical influences, like I know you just released a song called “Greta Gerwig”.
Mary: Oh my gosh I would love to talk about this. So, I think that my original plan for the EP was I wanted to make an EP where all the song titles were named after different artists or directors. It didn't really turn out that way, just ‘cause [for] some of those songs the title just didn't fit for it to be a famous person. But, the way that I write songs, the lyrics are never really about one thing. They may be focused around a certain topic, but that topic has, like, so many things that relate to it.
Like “Greta Gerwig”, on the surface it's literally about how I'm sad that Greta Gerwig directs huge budget movies now like Narnia and the Barbie movie when her earlier work- like, she co-wrote Frances Ha and obviously made Ladybird- was so heartfelt and just felt so honest. So it's literally about, like, “Why'd you have to change, Greta Gerwig?”. It's about how I wish she would make a movie like that again. But obviously it's about so many other things too, and I just kind of want to leave it open to interpretation.
Lucas: Yeah, for real. Mary the lyrics person, she be writing that shit. She a poet.
Mary: I think the writer that has influenced my writing just in general- because I do creative writing outside of this band, too- is probably Darcey Steinke. In terms of songwriters, I'm really into Cameron Winter right now.
Adam: And I love Albert Camus.
Mary: (laughing) Oh!
Shoutout him, I guess.
Adam: Shoutout Mr. Camus.
What's your favorite book from him?
Adam: Well, I would probably say The Stranger right now, but I'm currently reading The Outsider and The Plague.
At the same time?
Adam: Yes, simultaneously, but I started The Outsider first.
How would you guys pitch this band to somebody?
Cooper: What I would say is that we honestly have two different personalities when it comes to playing live and recording music. I think when we record music, it's definitely a lot more centered and professional, and there's a bit of a timeline to it. When we play live, it's not that there isn't organization, there's obviously organization, but I would say it's a bit more sporadic. So I would pitch Hueston Woods as a dynamic sound, but there's lots of love.
Mary: Yeah!
Lucas: I would say, if you want to listen to a Grateful Dead cover band, listen to us.
Mary: No…
Cooper: That’s not what I would say.
Lucas: No, because you'll be like, “Wow, this isn't a Grateful Dead cover band, but I fuck with this”.
Adam: I feel like we’ve had some Grateful Dead fans that have also liked our music. I think there’s commensurability there.
Lucas: If you love Jerry Garcia, you will fuck with Mary Klein.
Adam: I mean, probably.
Mary: Actually I've like never listened to the Grateful Dead.
Lucas: It goes like *guitar noises*.
The New EP
On the new single you guys released, the mixing was a lot tighter than on the album. I was wondering if you could talk about that in the context of your upcoming EP?
Cooper: Thank you! Thank you!
Adam: That’s something you'll notice on the whole EP I think..
Mary: Lucas mixes all of our music.
Lucas: Yeah, I record and mix all of the music. And that [difference] is because I mixed the album after taking two mixing classes and [now] I'm about to go into my final semester of college for music production… So this one's gonna sound good, I swear.
I'm excited! With the difference between them, you can tell you've grown a lot as a producer.
Lucas: Ohh yeah, yeah. I mean, the main difference in the recording aspect is, like, we recorded the whole album at my house. I own a couple 57s and a couple overheads and that was literally it.
Mary: We recorded a couple songs at our friend Nino’s house.
Lucas: That is true, yes.
Mary: Yeah, and he recorded those, but that was just the live ones. Either way all the songs were recorded in a house, but the EP that we're coming out with on June 20th was recorded at CCM Studios.
Lucas: Yeah, because we go to UC (University of Cincinnati).
Mary: Lucas lied about using the studio for a class, and then we recorded an EP in it.
Lucas: Yeah, I just- I mean, who needs it more than me? Let’s be honest.
Cooper: Nobody needs it like I do.
Lucas: Nobody needs it like I do.
Mary: (laughing) Nobody needs it like he does.
Can you guys talk a little bit more about the new EP or the work that went into it?
Cooper: What I will say about the EP- and I've said this to them before- I love our album a lot, I love the songs that we put into that album, but I wish that we had the ability to- and this is no diss to Lucas- the ability to record and put out something that really encapsulates the music.
Lucas: Yeah.
Adam: Yeah.
Cooper: Think about, like, Will Toledo's Twin Fantasy, the first version. I'm also not comparing us to them, I'm just saying he had a lot of ideas, he just didn't have the ability to execute them. And I think we are moving further along in that process, where on our EP I would say every song encapsulates the song more as a recorded session than any of our album did- besides “Polychrome”.
Mary: Just to kind of echo that, I think that sonically the EP is a lot more accurate to the kind of sounds that we want to make going forward. It's more concise aesthetically too. My friend Lili Alimohammadi did the art for the cover, so… shoutout! Oh! Oh my gosh, also my friend Lili who also did the cover, they wrote a poem for the opening track! The opening track, it's not me, it's them reading that poem.
Pictured: Album cover. Photo via Hueston Woods IG.
Lucas: I would say this is probably the best thing that I've mixed and put out. We also got Nathan Allen, he mastered it, he's like the GOAT, in my mind. I'm in another band called Billy Fortune and he mixes all that- he's crazy good.
Cooper: Ohh that's who that is? I'm just now realizing that.
Lucas: Yeah! He's great. He, like, records and mixes everything on tape and it's insane how good he is. Shoutout him, if you want stuff mastered, hit him up. It's @nathanm.allen on Instagram, but he's trying to get off Instagram, so I guess find someone that has his number and then they can text him. But yeah, it's been really cool mixing this EP because Mary is- I'm, like, very CCM-pilled and academic-pilled when it comes to mixing, so Mary gets me out of my comfort zone and pushes me to try different shit.
Mary: Because I don't know any of the words for things, I just know what sounds good. So the way that we mix it is Lucas is mixing it and I'm kind of sitting to the side being like, “Turn that knob…”
Lucas: I remember on the album I wanted to record a vocal just like the regular way and Mary was like, “Can we do it through my amp?” and I was like, “Ok, whatever”.
Mary: It ended up sounding bad, but it was a good experience!
Lucas: It was a good experience ‘cause it was one of those initial things that got me to try different stuff. Especially with, like, “Gore Blog” on the EP, we recorded that on my 4-track cassette recorder, which was really fun. I'm really excited to keep doing more of that, [and] it's been really cool to mess around with just layers and layers of guitar, it's been really fun.
The Shoutouts
Are there any other local bands you guys would want to shout out or that you think are doing really cool things?
Cooper: [In] Cincinnati, Ohio, I would love to shoutout No Conscription League- amazing people and their personality matches their music. Don Aman makes lovely music. Elias is one of my best friends, I love him to death, he started Don Aman. TV Art, Zolmon’s Wolfgang. Zolmon's Wolfgang makes, like, classic rock music.
Adam: They’re more bluesy…
Cooper: I would say two of the members of Zolmon’s are probably the two most talented ability-wise in Cincinnati. Will S. and Will J., fucking incredible. TV Art: Will Fortune, Blake, Elliott, Nate, they're all great musicians, they inspired me a lot. They were the first house show I ever went to and they made me want to be in a band.
Lucas: Pout. I fuck with Pout heavy. Pout’s awesome. Phanta is awesome.
Mary: Yeah, we're on tour with them! (Editor’s Note: Tour now ended) Check out Phanta, they’re releasing music soon.
Mary: I was gonna say Badman! Shoutout Badman. Badman is probably my favorite band in Cincinnati right now, one of my favorite punk bands, and also, like, my besties. Shoutout to our friend Clobby in Michigan, they just released a solo EP that's very good.
Lucas: Shout out Gonies. I really like the Gonies, they're Cincinnati.
Cooper: Also my girlfriend plays in a band called Slippers in Cincinnati! They're mainly a cover band, which Cincinnati has a lot of.
Lucas: But they’re making shit!
Cooper: We had a show in Mary's backyard with Slippers, it was just us two, and their originals were the best songs they played that night. And I loved it! I love seeing them flourish. It's also my roommate, and Adam plays bass for them sometimes, and Will J. from Zolmon’s Wolfgang plays guitar for them sometimes.
Mary: Getting the Cincinnati lore.
Cooper: Shoutout Slippers, love Slippers. Shoutout Katie Gilliam.
Who did the design for your shirts?
Mary: I drew the cat. Our new merch designs where it's like a bunch of little drawings was also by Lili Alimohammadi.
Cooper: I screen print them though!
Mary: Cooper prints all of our merch.
Lucas: Yeah, Cooper is the fashion department.
The Hard-Hitting Questions
If you guys had to be an instrument for the rest of your lives, what would you be?
Cooper: I would love to be a flute for the rest of my life. I played flute from middle school to high school and I loved it, I just hated the part where I had to be held to an expectation of how good I was. I just recently bought a flute-
Mary: You're gonna become a flute though. That's what the question is asking.
Cooper: Yeah. Yeah! I would. It's very melodic, it's very soft. Clairo’s… what was her second album called? Not Bambi, but Bambi is on the album- anyways, Clairo is really good at utilizing a flute within her music and I want to be that.
Lucas: Next Hueston Woods album is gonna have flute on it, you heard it here first.
Mary: Adam left, so…
Cooper: He would be a saxophone.
Mary: Adam would be a saxophone. I would be a harp. I don't need to elaborate.
Lucas: I'm going to be a banjo, because they're fun to listen to [and] because my roommate plays it all the time and it annoys the fuck out of me. But they're fun when you're playing it. One time he was gone and I sat down and I picked it up and I was literally just playing like the same four notes over and over again and I was just like, “Wow, I see why he does this all the time. This is so much fun”.
I don't think I'd want to be any instrument, but I definitely wouldn't want to be a drum set. I feel like that would hurt a lot…
Lucas: Yeah that would really hurt.
Maybe a triangle.
* Adam returns *
Mary: Wait, let's see if he says the same thing. Hey Adam, if you had to be a musical instrument for the rest of your life, which one would you be?
Adam: Saxophone.
* Everyone cheers *
Mouse or squirrel?
Lucas: Ohh fuck you.
Cooper: What state are we in?
Lucas: Yes, where are we in the world?
We’ll say Columbus, Ohio.
Cooper: If we're in Ohio, a mouse.
Adam: Columbus has exceeded on an interdimensional level, I must say.
Lucas: I'd go squirrel. Ohh, but if you were a mouse, you could, like, hide in people's houses and in their stuff.
Cooper: I'd be a mouse in Columbus, I'd be a squirrel in Muncie, Indiana.
Lucas: Well, we're in Columbus.
Adam: Well, in Columbus there is a metaphysical level that has been superseded by the populace by virtue of how corporate it is-
Lucas: So, is that mouse or squirrel?
Adam: But as well as how many souls have been lost here as well as how many souls have been lost in the corporate interchange that exists within the city.
Lucas: Yeah, you know, the big Skyline War of ‘52.
Cooper: In Hueston Woods, mouse or squirrel?
Lucas: Mouse.
Cooper: I would say mouse too.
Mary: We’re a mouse band.
Adam: Cat.
Lucas: That’s not an option bro, you can't be a cat!
Cooper: We're literally Jerry. We're not Tom, we're Jerry.
Lucas: We're Jerry, bro.
Cooper: Mouse, final answer.
Do you guys think you could catch a rabbit?
Mary: Like with my hands?
Yeah, just with your hands and on your feet.
Mary: I used to try and do that when I was a kid!
Lucas: I don't know if I could catch a bunny. I mean, I can run pretty fast, but like…
It's tough.
Cooper: If I'm in my softball shoes and not my show shoes, then yeah.
Mary: (laughing) “My softball shoes”
Cooper: These are my show shoes.
Lucas: Yeah, you're not running in those.
Adam: Man, you couldn’t catch a turtle in those things!
Cooper: The answer is no. Hueston Woods could not catch a rabbit.
Would you rather have a rock that looks like a hamster or a hamster that looks like a rock?
Lucas: Hamster that looks like a rock, that would be sick as fuck.
Mary: A rock that looks like a hamster. I don't like hamsters.
That’s fair.
Lucas: I had guinea pigs when I was a kid. They stink, but they're really cute and they make cute noises. Shoutout Brownie and Caramel, they died.
Oh, wow, okay. Definitely shoutout, then.
Lucas: It’s ok, I was like eight.
Closing Thoughts
What are you guys' short or long term goals for this project?
Mary: I'm just kind of seeing where it goes. I might try and send our music out to a few labels, because I said today, I'm not touring again unless a label is paying us to do it.
Lucas: This shit expensive.
Mary: It’s hard to say, because I just graduated college and [I’m] not sure how much longer I want to stay in Cincinnati. That just kind of depends on how it goes, if we get signed to a label. So, we'll see, I guess.
Lucas: Yeah, I feel like this with every project I'm a part of, but it's just like, if it blows up, that's awesome, if it doesn't, I'll stick with it as long as I can. Like as long as it's feasible for me. Obviously I would love to be with this band ‘til I fucking die, but if shit just kind of kind of dies off and like we move and separate, it is what it is. But I would really rather that not happen!
I would love if we could be signed to, like, Run for Cover or Anti. Whatever wave of emo was when Modern Baseball was big, a lot of those bands were signed to those labels, and that would be huge to be on one of those one day. That'd be crazy. But even literally any label would do.
Mary: “Any label would do” is crazy. Made us sound desperate as hell...
Lucas: Any label that gives us a van and a budget. If you give me a van and $10,000, I can make that shit work.
Is there anything else important you want to say on the record?
Mary: We talked a lot. We yapped a lot.
Lucas: We yap a lot in the car too. What's like your go to thing whenever you're in the car with someone and you've been driving and it goes silent for a bit and you always resort to, like, one topic. What's your guys' topic? For me it's either talk shit about something or rehash the same conversation I've had with someone like a million times about something we don't like.
Mary: Complain about my love life.
Cooper: What was the question?
Mary: What do you yap about in the car?
Cooper: Usually in the car I like to talk about my music taste. I like to put my music taste on to everybody else in the car. I think music is probably the biggest topic or just like what's going on in our personal lives, ‘cause Hueston is obviously very music based. When we get to a place or we get to a show, it's very like, “Oh, what’ve you been doing? We need to set up, we need to tear down, we need to play, right now!”. But then afterwards, in the car ride, it's more personal.
Lucas: Yeah, we be getting freaky.
Mary: No, we don't…
Cooper: We also talk shit, I love talking shit.
Lucas: Dude, that’s what I said!! Me and Cooper be getting freaky- me and Cooper Cunningham get freaky in the backseat of the Hueston Woods-mobile.
(laughing) Is this on the record or off the record?
Lucas: I, Lucas Vanderpool, proclaim!! Lucas Owen Edward Vanderpool.
Do you guys have any closing thoughts?
Lucas: Closing thoughts… Thank you for interviewing us, this has been awesome.
Cooper: Yeah, sorry we're like this.
Mary: I know it's gonna be hell to transcribe…
Cooper: Shoutout Twenty One Pilots, listen to Regional at Best, that's their best album.
Lucas: Great local band, they're pretty underground.
Cooper: Regional at Best by Twenty One Pilots is their best album. Every single album they've released since then has gotten worse. I will list their best albums.
Mary: Ok guys we have got to stop this recording…
Lucas: Thank you for having us.
Cooper: Sorry about that. Thank you.
Mary: Thank you!
And that is the Hueston Woods interview… As always, very big thanks to Hueston Woods for taking the time to talk with me! And for making such good music, and for this EP that is coming out Friday. Also a big shoutout to Sophia Reza, who did all of the nice illustrations you saw throughout the article!
Apologies for the mild inactivity on my end Bobcat Nation, I know I am usually a machine that turns sunlight into music journalism, but I have been focusing my efforts on… something else. Vague, I know, but all will be revealed in due time (hopefully more due than time, but I guess we’ll see).
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Anyways, that’s all from me!!! I appreciate every one of you readers very dearly, see you next time!
