Surtsey Has Become One of St. Louis' Best Bands, With a Sound All Its Own

Joe Bassa, lead singer of the alt-country band Surtsey, named the group after an island off the coast of Iceland, where Bassa was born. Surtsey — the place — is an uninhabited volcanic island with a unique ecosystem due to a lack of human impact. Surtsey — the band — exists within its own unique musical ecosystem, but it’s one created by vital human interaction.

Surtsey also happens to be one of St. Louis’ best bands, whose new EP, Nothing Doing , is filled with harmony-rich songs, sumptuous melodies, crying steel guitar, poetic lyricism and Bassa’s captivating tenor vocals. The record’s mix of indie rock and Americana calls to mind bands like Wilco and My Morning Jacket with the emo-revival sensibility of Pinegrove, but Surtsey delivers a dreamy songfulness that is all its own.

Bassa was born in 1988 to American military parents, both stationed at Iceland’s Keflavík air station. Bassa’s hair, a tousled mullet that manages to be both party-in-the-back and party-in-the-front, is colored Icelandic blond, but that’s just his dye choice du jour.

I meet Bassa at a craft brewery in the Grove neighborhood even though he is taking a break from booze, a hiatus he imagines is only temporary. He strolls in wearing a red flannel shirt open over a Gillian Welch T-shirt along with yellow work boots, which makes him look part country rocker, part fun-loving drywaller. His rural charm is authentic: After leaving Iceland at age six, Bassa was raised in his mother’s native Bootheel, graduating from Perryville High School in 2007. But just barely. “I was really bad with attendance in high school,” Basso says. “I worked at a record store, and my boss would call in for me a lot. I was totally checked out.” It was at this time that Basso swapped out playing baseball for playing music, as his grandpa gave him an old Gibson guitar that had, according to Basso, such “terrible action” that “it hurt to play.” As a fan, he listened all night to Dashboard Confessional, the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, Townes Van Zandt and Nickel Creek, a combination of influences that helps explain the Surtsey sound he would begin to develop a few years later.

After high school, Basso moved to St. Louis and enrolled at St. Louis Community College Meramec, but that didn’t take either. Making music with some of his old Perryville buddies — drummer Aaron Essner and bassist Drew Koeppel — was still his priority, even though he had to drive from St. Louis to Cape Girardeau to practice. Around 2010, the trio became Surtsey, and soon after, the 19- and 20-year-olds hit the road, playing gigs around the country wherever they could get them and sleeping on the couches of whoever would let them.

“I would email like 500 places a day, and hopefully three would say yes,” Basso recalls of booking gigs. “And we’d take the best offer out of those. We never lost money. We’d get there and I guess we’d be looking so bad that people would at least feed us.” Basso looks back fondly on the hardscrabble life of young rockers on the road — driving thousands of miles, smoking tons of pot, handing out their CDs in local malls, playing music every night in dive bars they were too young to legally enter, landing a tour of Hot Topic in-store gigs and partying late into the night in strangers’ homes. Did Basso ever fall in love while out on the road? “Oh, probably.” Did things ever get weird after shows? “Oh, yeah, man. All the time. I mean, people are weird in general, and you’re coming into someone’s home usually after a bunch of alcohol.”

After a couple of summers of touring, Basso returned to St. Louis and formed a Surtsey spinoff band called Jailbox with Essner and guitarist/producer Andy Tanz. Again featuring Basso’s willowy vocals, Jailbox is a more atmospheric, experimental form of indie rock embroidered with swirling layers of instrumentals and psychedelic elements, as heard on 2010’s terrific One for Each of Us.

Outside of music, Basso has had a few side steps, including a stint in Los Angeles, where he moved in with his sister, actress Bridgette Bassa, and worked as a bar trivia host in the mid-2010s, while Koeppel studied bass at Musicians Institute. Basso admits that he “had no plan” during this phase, describing himself as “not very responsible.” This assessment is consistent with a personality that Basso acknowledges can be highly self-critical. “I’m super sensitive when it comes to stuff. I always have been my whole life,” he says. “I’m working on that.” What has been unwavering throughout is Basso’s intuition for creating and expressing himself through music, particularly as a songwriter. “I am aiming for universal experiences, just existing and adjusting to curveballs in life because it happens to everyone,” he says. At one point, he pulls out his phone and opens his Notes app, revealing a mile-long list of ideas for lyrics, phrases and song titles to someday complement the melodic hooks he has a gift for writing. Lyrically, a listen to Surtsey and Jailbox songs reveals a writer who threads the needle between literal-level narratives and more elusive language. “I try to have that hit the surface, but I want to provoke deeper thoughts and double meanings, and maybe you’re not exactly certain what it means,” he explains.

Now 35 — never married, no kids — Basso sounds more excited than ever about where Surtsey is musically, which he attributes in large part to the chemistry within the band. “You hear a song in such a special way when you’re trying to capture it,” he says. “And when you find somebody who gets it just right, it comes through the friendship because there is vulnerability and trust. We are all really fans of each other.”

That chemistry now includes fourth member Zach Naeger on pedal steel, adding a twang and a lilt to Surtsey that have helped make the new EP the band’s strongest set of songs yet. Nothing Doing was released on April 8 — Eclipse Day, a connection Basso says gives the record something of a mystic start. And with a slate of shows coming up this year and the quartet playing and writing better than ever, Surtsey, like the volcanic island the band is named after, seems poised for an explosive breakout.

Surtsey plays Venice Cafe (1903 Pestalozzi Street) with Yard Eagle on June 21. See thevenicecafe.com for details.