Keyan Pourzand and drummer Dillon Lee were reluctant to take center stage even after they started julie. They were shy music obsessives studying at El Toro High School in Lake Forest, Orange County, united by a love of Sonic Youth and The Breeders, as well as an urge to make something of their own. "I knew I wanted to sing," Pourzand says over a video call, his head popping up between his bandmates as they gather around the laptop, "but I didn't have the guts." Enter Alexandria Elizabeth, a cool friend of a friend who loved Daydream Nation as much as they did. One DM to Elizabeth and the trio was complete.
Right from the start, julie's wall of sound aesthetic was a smokescreen; something to shroud the rock trio's self-doubt and emotional turmoil from prying eyes. "flutter," julie's debut single released in 2020, sprints through gothic melodrama and brooding teenage angst. "I'm draped in lead and heavy as a slug / Drag the body under the rug," guitarist Pourzand sings through clanging riffs and a thicket of noise that sounds like a helicopter taking flight. The song, released just a month into the pandemic, caught a wave and has been streamed over 30 million times, far surpassing the band's expectations.
"flutter" was only ever intended to be a flare in the night sky, something the band threw up to see who was paying attention. Its massive success left the band in a quandary. Pourzand and Elizabeth had both enrolled at the Southern California Institute for Architecture with Lee joining them in the move to Los Angeles. When the band first started, julie would travel from Orange County to L.A., watching local bands Momma and Cryogeyser and shopping at Amoeba Records. They assumed the move would be a slipstream into sharing stages and filling those shelves with their own music, but soon realized that studying to be architects and being in a band don't mix.
"For a long time, maybe a year and a half, we felt like we could do both," Pourzand says. "Like, 'This is fine. I just need to stay up longer and drink more coffee and have more energy drinks and we can make it happen.'" In December of 2022, wired from a mixture of caffeine and an Atlantic Records deal negotiated by the same A&R that took both Turnstile and 100 gecs into the mainstream, Pourzand and Elizabeth attended their final classes before dropping out.