Seattle three-piece Helms Alee has announced a new album Keep This Be The 

Way available April 29th via Sargent House. Across the span of their first 

five studio albums, the trio zeroed in on different aspects of their sound 

- a blend of lilting siren songs, crushing Northwest thunder and sludge, 

angular econo-rock, and heady guitar pop while retaining their no-frills, 

meat-and-potatoes approach in the studio. But with this Helms Alee expanded 

have their palette by delving into the production possibilities afforded by 

recording the album themselves, creating their most dynamic and 

technicolored work to date. This new approach is immediately evident on 

first single and album opener “See Sights Smell Smells,” where reverse 

cymbal crashes, fragmented piano, layered drums, woozy drones, saxophone 

freak-outs, and trippy vocal treatments transport the listener to an 

altered state of exhilarated anticipation. The song is accompanied by a 

video created by Allen Watke whose video art consists primarily of analog 

equipment with an emphasis on VHS dubbing, glitching & manipulation. 

When the pandemic hit, guitarist/vocalist Ben Verellen, bassist/vocalist 

Dana James, and drummer/vocalist Hozoji Matheson-Margullis found refuge in 

their music and bunkered down in a makeshift studio in Verellen’s amplifier 

shop. Through the remainder of 2020 and into early 2021, the band wrote an 

album as a distraction from the surrounding turbulence, recording songs 

with the assistance of Ron Harrell as they were writing them, composing the 

material with the added benefit of hearing them come together from the 

engineer’s chair. Keep This Be the Way still very much sounds like a Helms 

Alee record, but it’s their first album that diverts from the faithful 

recreation of their live sound and delves into a vibrant tapestry of 

surreal sounds and invented spaces.