One of the first full colour screen-prints ever produced by American artist Ed Ruscha, was Hollywood, where the iconic sign’s white letters mimic the graduating hues of the LA sunset behind it. For Ruscha though, the sign also doubled as a smog barometer: “If I could read it, the weather was OK,” he once quipped. It seems fitting then, that one of the brightest bands emitting the most light from the city’s music scene is Untitled (Halo). The band’s name is a nod to Aurora, another of Ruscha’s works, which features a glowing ring of light in the dead of night.

Formed by three suburban LA natives – Ariana Mamnoon, Jack Dione, and Jay Are – whose teenage years were spent attending gigs and chasing music along endless bus routes and golden hour streets, their sound is a deep bass pulse wrapped in glitchy layers of dreaminess. But for the band, it’s the visual cues that are just as important to their output. In their songs, you can hear the hushed textures of a Richard Linklater film, the neon-soaked fever dream of a Gregg Araki movie, and the cinematic skies and ember-toned fades of Ruscha’s paintings. Their songs are like screenshots of the chaos and desire you only feel when you’re young, that you know will dissolve at any moment.

Shana Chandra: When I first listened to your music, it made me feel super nostalgic for my teenage years. Then I read that you’re Linklater fans and it all clicked, I feel like you carry that same spirit of youth.
Ariana Mamnoon: Dazed and Confused is my favourite movie – I watch it religiously. I think for Jay, Jack and I, it feels really natural [capturing that youthfulness].
Jay Are: I don’t necessarily think about ‘youthfulness’, it’s more trying to capture the moment that we have together when we’re recording songs, and I feel like a lot of the time, movies and films play this unconscious role. I watch movies on Jack’s Criterion account and saw Suburbia recently. A more underrated Linklater movie, it’s everyone hanging out at the convenience store, and even though that movie’s based in Texas, it’s such a wide net of youth. I remember [doing the same thing], just going to the mall and hanging out and not necessarily buying anything, just being there because you’re young and it’s the only thing you can do. When you’re just walking from coffee shop to bookstore, to record store, to thrift store.
AM: We write a lot about youth, turmoil and getting through things, but I don’t think that any of us are ever directly thinking, ‘we need to write about this.’ When we did Towncryer, our first EP, that’s just how it evolved. Our personalities emit this same resonance, and it
feels natural. But that’s why it’s special.
Jack Dione: My favourite part of our music is that, for the most part, a lot of our lyrics are written on the spot. So until the instrumental is made, no one really knows what they’re going to be singing about or what emotions they’re going to express. The feeling of all of us sitting in a room hearing each other’s vocals for the first time is something that will never get lost on me.
 

SC: When I watched the video clip for That’s Honey, it rides the line between teenage boredom and that exhilaration that only happens when you hang out with your friends. It feels very LA, too.
AM: It’s all about your friends here. We’re from LA, so we’re lucky we like it, but I think anyone who moves here hates it because it’s so hard to fit into this city if you don’t have a good group of friends. The That’s Honey video is about two friends, and I cast two people who were already best friends, just documenting their relationship. It’s a beautiful video, but it’s also meant to be kind of sad.

SC: In a way, friendships are sad because we’re always moving out of people’s lives. We just don’t hang out as much with each other compared to when we were younger.
JA: I completely feel that. I think you do naturally grow apart, but it’s nice to have that longevity in a friendship where you can tap back in whenever you feel the need to. It’s more sincere, rather than texting everyone every day with small talk.
AM: When we’re thinking about youth culture versus how you grow up, when you’re young, you go and play in dirt with your friends, and then as you get older, these things disintegrate a little bit. Everything I like is embedded in nostalgic childhood, I try to weave that into adulthood.
JD: I think the lack of beauty in adult friendships has to do with the low vibrational places we all hang out in. One of my favourite nights ever was when my friend and I just went out writing graffiti and hopped on the trains by the LA river. Then we drank tall boys in Elysian Park overlooking downtown and we were the only people there.

“Everything I like is embedded in nostalgic childhood, I try to weave that into adulthood.”

SC: I really like the juxtaposition of your band name. There’s the clerical, mundane ‘Untitled’ followed by the ethereal ‘halo’ in brackets. How did this combo come about?
AM: Gosh, we could not pick a band name.
JA: We were on a band name generator and it came up with ‘100-inch seam’.
AM: No, ‘100-inch hollow.’
JA: It sounded like a hardcore emo band from 2006.
AM: I was sold, I was like, “That’s going to be the band name!”
JA: I was like, “No.” [laughs] We already had three songs by then.
AM: We needed a band name before [the single] El Prado Freestyle was coming out. Me and Jay figured out how to put it out on DistroKid as a joke. We were at the bar El Prado, and I said, “I like the name Halo, Halo’s so pretty,” and our friend Ricky said, “Why don’t you call it Untitled.”
JA: You kept saying Halo, and I bought up the Ed Ruscha painting that’s just a halo. That’s where we stole our iconography from. I mean, I don’t really think it’s a big deal to [steal] that because I feel all of Ed Ruscha’s work represents Los Angeles. Even the typography is really inspiring, and his colours.
AM: It’s cute to see how people use our name in [different] ways. “We’re going to the Halo Show,” or ‘Untitled’, or ‘UH’.
JD: ‘Entitled (Halo)’ is still the funniest tweet about us so far.

SC: I read somewhere you guys started as more of an experiment, and I’m wondering what the aim of that experiment was.
JA: When I met Ari, it was Covid, or three months prior to Covid. I was working the door at shows and I was supposed to meet up with Ari to train her to do this. Covid hit and I think we met up during lockdown for coffee. I had been sitting on so much work since I was in college, work that I probably will never release.
AM: I wanted to do something artistic post-college, so I asked Jay to come over because I knew he made cool beats. He played the El Prado beat and I literally did it as a freestyle. Then I looked at Jay and said, “Holy shit, this is kind of special, let’s involve our friend Jack whose amazing and talented and like-minded.” It’s kind of kismet. We have this special bond as collaborators. So, it began as an experiment that has now turned into our main passion project.
JD: I’m just happy to be here.

“‘Entitled (Halo)’ is still the funniest tweet about us so far.”

SC: What is it about the dynamics of the band that works so well?
AM: All three of us grew up in suburban LA, going to shows, being on the periphery of these things. I think we’ve all subconsciously wanted to be on the inside of that. It’s so funny, you meet so many people in your life that you think you can artistically collaborate with, but it’s rare that you can actually meet people you can make good stuff with. I collaborate with so many people, but with Halo, it’s this super-special thing.
JA: I feel the same way. [When I was young] I would make an event of going to shows that were far away. I lived up near the centre of Los Angeles, so you would have to take three to four buses to even get to the thing. But I value and cherish those experiences because they acclimated me to what it was actually like, and even though people can ‘cool guy’ you, you’re still a part of something. That’s how I feel about this project, it’s about being part of something that’s genuine and not a template. Any time we approach music we always think about how we can manipulate it to make it a little different, so it doesn’t sound the same as everything else that’s being pushed onto us constantly.

Follow Untitled (Halo) on Instagram.