Meet The Mouth-Breathers | Genre-Blending Alternative/Rock Band

We had the good fortune of connecting with The Mouth-Breathers and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi The, is there something you can share with us that those outside of the industry might not be aware of?
I think people outside of the music industry don’t see the struggles that come with creating music. Aside from laying your heart on the table through lyrics and music writing, there are so many factors that come into play for success. You have to become an entrepreneur to make it, especially as an independent artist. Building your brand, content, touching all the aspects of the industry you didn’t know existed like syncs, publicity, marketing, and making connections with people to make an impact. People don’t see all of that. On the surface we look like musicians just jamming, writing, performing, and releasing music, but it’s not that easy.

And it’s expensive! We’ve had to learn to mix and master our music ourselves and build our home studio, buying equipment piece by piece to avoid spending hundreds of dollars on every release. After working hard on being able to afford to produce good music, we can finally touch on the other part of the industry — getting seen above the others.

It’s tricky — but we still love it. (At risk of sounding cheesy lol) Music is able to translate languages, break down barriers, and heal hearts and minds. You’re lucky if you can be a part of it. And if you’re going to work hard anyways, might as well work towards something you love.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
We’re a hard rock band creating new and diver styles of music. There’s been a distinguishable evolution of our sound and we’ve honed in on developing a full sound with only 3 band members. What makes us different than others is we don’t limit ourselves to trends and let all of our influences enter our music. We have diverse backgrounds from jazz, classical, hard rock, and latin music to emo, metal. We play what we feel and don’t try to necessarily fit in.

We’re extremely excited about re-releasing our first self-titled album with developed pieces and on better recording equipment/software — possibly adding new ideas that I know a lot of our fans are excited to hear! These are some of our fan favorites that people have been eager to stream.

Many don’t know that myself (Anikka) and Dorian (drummer) are siblings. We were both passionate about music at a young age, and have had a lot of time together to develop our playing and writing skills. We started out playing local shows, building connections and creating a circle of artists with mutual goals. From those people we’ve been recommended to new venues that enjoy having us and calling us back to do more shows. From there, we are introduced to new promoters and audiences that have never seen us before.

Band leader, Anikka Alvarez, studied Music Business at Cal Poly Pomona and graduated last year with her Bachelors. Since then, she has built connections in the industry and learned about marketing our music to help get us to the next level. She is now managing high-profile artists and is aiming to bring her knowledge back to the band for us all to work hard on reaching the public.

It definitely was not an easy start. Writing and performing was easy — Our first step was to find the right members, people who all have chemistry and agree on mutual decisions in the band. Finding people with aligned goals was the next issue, some think music is just a hobby and others think your not doing enough. Figuring out what our goals are, having consistent band meetings, and organizing a plan for social media, marketing, roll-outs, and overall elevating our business. We’ve got a great solid line-up now but we still face challenges with current industry standards and changes. Now, the task is creating content that stands our for the growing social media competition in such a saturated market.

We’ve learned being consistent is key — with EVERYTHING. Practicing, playing shows, posting on social media, consistently looking out for new ways to promote our music. As long as we’re not staying still, we’re moving forward. We’ve also learned how important it is to make not just connections but friends in the scene. Other artists, fans, and even family can do a lot to help you grow and share your story.

We want to leave a legacy. Not in an idol kind of way but want to have made an impact and helped others the whole way through. Whether through our music resonating with people by creating refreshing sounds, heartfelt lyrics, and engaging live experiences or by literally supporting the people around us. We want to be known for the ways we helped another artist get into the music scene by having them open on a show, how Anikka created a platform called BlindSound Entertainment and started producing festivals and writing blogs for local musicians, and just how we share the love and experiences with everyone in the industry.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We’d bring them to the art walk in Downtown Pomona and show them the many wonderful venues and art galleries filled with talented creators. Every second Saturday of the month, there is a huge art walk spanning multiple blocks in Pomona on second street with some of the best music and artists in Los Angeles. It’s really an event for everyone that the city and Pomona Arts Colony has near perfected. It a lively day full of vendors, and bands playing in venues such as The Haven, The Glasshouse, The Klownski, Artist in the Alley gallery, Alley Gallery, the DA gallery, and several more.

Artist in the Alley gallery has been an extremely supportive venue for bands looking to gain a following. They have an established crowd with vendors, artists, drinks, and the owner provides all creators a platform to share their art.

Other fun places to go are the iconic venues such as The Whisky A-Go-Go, the Roxy, the Rainbow or any other venue on the sunset strip. There are even small venues on the strip that will some times lead you to finding hidden gems of artists.

Connecting with artists in the scene and musicians after their sets create a supportive community and a world of shared interests.

Our city has great history and has birthed some of the greatest, so keep an eye out for that one artist you think has the potential and don’t be afraid to support them all the way.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
We want to shoutout our dad and founder of Facehead Records for supporting the band from the beginning. He was our roadie, to manager, to audio engineer, to producer, to label. Having been in a band before, he’s already experienced some of the difficulties and has therefore mentored us and other musicians on how to handle band situations, business situations, and more than that. He started learning to mix and master music when he realized how determined my brother (Dorian) and I (Anikka) were at creating and sharing our music, allowing us to release good quality music and developing his craft as we develop ours. He’s gone on to help other bands in the scene record, mix, and release their music and even help out as a sound engineer at local venues. Look out for his label in local artists’ credits and his label as it grows to help future artists.

Website: https://themouthbreathers.wixsite.com/my-site

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themouthbreathersofficial/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anikka-alvarez-58b864255/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/themouthbreathersofficial/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@themouthbreathersofficial

Other: LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/themouthbreathers Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2xgFzqZqpJhTcELSeS6Dmo?si=zH5PGdInQ2uMIvk5wgQGGQ Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/the-mouth-breathers/1451847830 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@themouthbreathers Threads: https://www.threads.net/@themouthbreathersofficial

Image Credits
Yolie @ Yo Mama Photography