Formed in Los Angeles in 2002, Xiu Xiu make disconcertingly vulnerable music at the intersection of noise, pop and industrial. One of the characteristic elements of the band’s sound is the voice of founding member Jamie Stewart – an uneasily intimate vessel for his songs of violence, sex, depression and longing. On Xiu Xiu’s 12th album OH NO his voice is bolstered by 15 guest singers on a series of duets. The cast of collaborators – including Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier, punk legend Alice Bag, composer Owen Pallett and Stewart’s bandmate Angela Seo – serves to counteract the songs’ themes of devastation with the solace of human connection.

Concurrently, the band are also releasing music monthly as part of the ongoing Bandcamp subscription service XIU MUTHA FUCKIN XIU. Each drop includes a solo reworked track, stems for fans to remix and use in their own music, and a cover version – continuing the band’s reputation as prolific interpreters. Although Stewart and Seo’s music retains a hostile, discomforting edge, a newfound appreciation for community connects all this work.

Claire Biddles: OH NO seems to function as an alternative history of Xiu Xiu. It encompasses the different musical styles you've worked in, but the sense of community is almost therapeutic. Did making the album have a healing effect?

Jamie Stewart: Doing a record of duets was a way to attempt to create a symbol of appreciation for the kindness that people were showing me when I was having a particularly difficult time getting through life. Prior to this record having been made, I was fairly thoroughly fucked over by a number of friends of mine, not in related ways but just coincidentally. It caused my brain to explode in a way that made it difficult to function in life for a couple of months – but at that time, a lot of people who I had not expected to reach out, reached out. It reoriented me to the fact that not every single person in the world sucks. Duets were a symbol of that appreciation. By the time that the record was being made, I had got my feet back on the ground, so it's more of a testament to having been healed than necessarily a process of healing. And being healed by the generosity of other people, which is not really how my life has ever existed.

You've collaborated with a great many artists in the past – including some of the people on the record – but this wholly communal feel is new.

Collaborating is a big part of the process of Xiu Xiu and always has been, but this time the intent was very much to make it a communal thing rather than necessarily a collaborative thing. Both of those things were existing in parallel rather than one or the other.

What was the recording process like – were any of the duets recorded in person?

We started recording in December 2019, and worked on the album through 2020, so a couple of them happened before the pandemic began. Sharon Van Etten and Alice Bag came over to my little studio and did it in person, and my bandmate Angela Seo lives in the same house as me, so she did hers here too. Then the lockdown happened, so everything after that was done over email. I sang a sketch melody, sent the lyrics and asked [the collaborators] to react in whatever way they wanted.

Duets rely so much on the way voices fit together, and the chemistry that they share. What was it like establishing that remotely?

I think it actually turned out better than it would have otherwise. One of the reasons that I really love collaborating with people is to be surprised by what they do. Every time we've collaborated with someone, we have given them little or no direction, we just say: react to this in the way that is the most you. We want to work with another person because they’re fantastic, not because we want to force them into our idea of what we believe that they are. When you're with a person and you're interpreting something that they have laid out for you, you feel obligated to respect what they have sent you. But if they're not there, you feel freer to move the pieces around, or completely reorient them. Because of that, there were way more delightful surprises than I think there would have been if I was ten feet away, which is exactly what we wanted.

Was there anybody who particularly surprised you with their input?

Two responses in particular were quite different than what I sent. Deb Demure [of Drab Majesty] who sings on “I Cannot Resist” sent 20 tracks of vocals and half of them were just strange vocal sounds. I knew that they were vocal sounds – but I think if you listen to that particular song, you wouldn't really be able to pick them out. That added to the texture and tension of that song tremendously. It became a very, very different song because of what they did. For “The Grifters”, Haley Fohr from Circuit Des Yeux just went much, much further with the vocal than what I had sent her. Considering who she is as a singer, although I was surprised, I would not expect anything less than that.

It seems like it's important for Xiu Xiu to pay tribute to artists that you love by covering their songs. What was it like to have other people interpreting your compositions?

I think that the way that we approach covers is not really the way that other people approached the songs on the record. I think they were putting themselves into it, whereas covers for us are an homage. Doing covers is a big part of our band; bending one knee to the people that we've learned from, and have gotten emotional satisfaction from as music fans.

The album includes a cover of “One Hundred Years” by The Cure. You perform the song with Chelsea Wolfe – does it mean something to both of you?

She and I are music friends, but we're not close friends. I don't know what that song means to her, but her singing that song means something to me. I was a big fan of hers for a long time before we met, and I feel like there's some parallels between her listening habits and mine, but I really don't know this, this is entirely my assumption. It came from wanting to do one of the most intense goth songs that there is, with someone who I believe has been as influenced and affected by goth music as I have.

There’s this interesting duality at play: you’re looking for the other person's input, but you're also projecting something onto them at the same time.

Oh, for sure. Some people on the record I had never met before, some people are friends through music, and then some people I'm longtime very close friends with. For some people, there were years of intimacy between us, so doing it meant one thing. Some people, I know their professional way of life, or I've never met them before but I'm a fan of theirs, so it means something else. Each of the three categories was a very different experience.

What was it like having Angela as a duet partner on “Fuzz Gong Fight” after all her years playing in the band?

She and I are best friends, from before she was even in the band, so I know her better than anybody else. One thing that I know about her that she would never admit to anybody else – she told me once not to tell anyone, but she never reads any press – is that she secretly really wants to be a singer, but she is incredibly selfconscious about her singing voice. Despite knowing this, I think she has a wonderful voice. It's fragile, but also incredibly open. I know that she's selfconscious about it, and I can hear that when she's singing, but because of that it feels totally real and vulnerable. Also because I'm super close to her I'm rooting for her, and the impact for me is quite deep.

Her performance has some commonalities to yours in its vulnerabilities, but it has this underlying threat to it, like a creeped-out parallel of your voice.

I think if you hung out with both of us for about 30 seconds, that dynamic would become immediately apparent in our personalities too.

What is your favourite duet?

My number one favourite is “Tramp" by Carla Thomas and Otis Redding. I've been a lifelong Otis Redding fan since I was in junior high, when my dad got me into him. It's kind of a novelty song, a character song, and Carla Thomas is making fun of Otis Redding for being a hick, making fun of his clothes and his hair. It's just a bunch of back and forth one-liners, which is funny because they're both very serious and emotional soul singers. It's a goofy song, but the playing is great, and the singing is great. My sister is also a big Otis Redding fan, and almost every Christmas at some point we both get drunk and sing the two parts to each other. It's deep in my heart.

I also wanted to ask you about the parallel work that you're doing on Bandcamp with the subscription. Obviously some of that is out of financial necessity at the moment as bands are unable to tour. What is it like working on full-length projects and a monthly drop at the same time?

It actually hasn’t been that different. I think in an attempt to have it be worth people’s time, we've tried to put as much effort into doing any of the covers that are on the Bandcamp that we would to a song on a record. Having an additional layer of work has been fascinating, and mostly positive. It’s required me to improve my recording chops, and the deadlines have improved the industriousness of the band. I feel much more capable in our studio now than a year ago, and through having it for a while, it's getting increasingly well appointed. The studio used to be a doctor’s office, and now I guess it is a different kind of doctor’s office.

How do you pick the Bandcamp covers? Are they reflective of your current obsessions, or songs you’ve always wanted to do?

It’s a bit of both. The one we did last month was “Kansas” by The Wolfgang Press, who I have been a fan of forever, but hadn’t really thought of covering, Angela and I were driving around listening to it, and I was like, what should we cover? And she was like, ‘What are you listening to right now dumbass?’ So it's partially longstanding heroes, and partially just trying to reflect the listening moment.

Speaking of longstanding heroes, I saw that you posted on Instagram about how much you enjoyed reading Red Hand Files, the Nick Cave email newsletter. That's something that I've really taken comfort from in the past year as well.

It’s refreshing just to be reminded that, even though I'm half done with my life, a musical figure can remain important. It's funny, I mean I'm a grown up, but I feel like in a very teenage way, a rock star is really making me feel way better about the world and my own life. It’s just nice to be reminded of how great music is.

There is a palpable fandom to Xiu Xiu that’s reflected across the records, the covers and the way you talk about the duets. Your work seems to be as much about paying homage to the music that you love as self-expression.

The universality and depth of what music can be for people, it doesn't exist in any other human expression to the degree that it does in music. I love movies, I love reading, I love going to museums – those things affect you emotionally to a degree, and intellectually certainly, but music does those things in a deeper way. It also affects you physically, and can affect you socially. It's a form and a way of being in the world that I feel so lucky to get to be a part of and because of that, I just want to perpetually say thank you to the universe. And thank you to the people who have made music that's made it possible for us to do what we're doing, and who have saved our hearts over and over again. I can think of no other way to describe this – but the sanctity and privilege of being able to be involved so regularly and deeply in music is something that I can never take for granted.

Xiu Xiu’s OH NO is released by Polyvinyl on 26 March. Read Claire Biddles’s review in The Wire 446