Stolen Jars make complex and delicate pop songs that stem from the interaction between Cody Fitzgerald and Molly Grund's earnest voices with the distinctive acoustics and rhythms that back them. The songs on their new album, Kept, sound inviting and organic, weaving together like a nest that the listener can find a home in; the intricate guitar chords acting as twigs and texture. You can imagine their vinyl record nestled on a shelf among albums by artists like Lucky Dragons, Dirty Projectors and Benoit Pioulard from the way they experiment with everything from melody to structure and instrumentation. It's the perfect soundtrack for a rainy day indoors.

Hometown: Montclair, NJ

Current City: New York, NY

How did the two of you initially meet? How and when did you expand the live band?

Molly Grund: Well, Cody and I both went to the same high school, but we actually didn’t meet one another until the first Stolen Jars practice I think. He had been working on the first album and basically had it finished when he decided to translate it into a live act, and asked Elena, me and two of our other friends Sam and Jonah to be a part of it.

Cody Fitzgerald: Yeah I actually saw Molly sing at a funny acapella show before I met her and thought she had a crazy good voice, so I knew I wanted her voice to be a part of my music eventually. As for the live band, when I recorded the first album the song’s I wrote had 50 to 100 tracks each so it was inevitable that we would need more people to play them live. Over the course of a bunch of years and with the help of quite a few people we figured out how to translate these songs for a live setting and make them ultra energetic. Our current band members Matt, Connor, Tristan, and Elena make the music completely their own and are (I know this is classic to say but it is true) some of the best people I've ever met.

How did you arrive on a name for the band?

Cody: Well, when I was first making this music, I wasn’t quite sure where to begin. I found myself going back to all the different artists I had listened to over the years—Elvis Costello, Against Me!, Arcade Fire, Dirty Projectors—and trying to collect the different sounds that had made me love those songs. The first songs I wrote felt like these collections of sounds were manifesting themselves in new ways, as if they were held in small jars opening one at a time, each letting out a new riff. And that’s where the name came from! Haha, does that make any sense at all?

How does your collaboration work?

Molly: Cody completes all the instrumentals before we start thinking about vocals usually. So he will compose all the layers (of which there are very many), and kind of throughout this process he keeps me in the loop and sends me what is in progress and I will help make editorial decisions. And then once we both feel good about the instrumental, well it kind of depends where we both are how we begin to embark on vocals. 

Cody: Yeah, often times we’re not in the same place so we will send vocal melody ideas back and forth until we find time to "join together" and record, haha. Once we settle on the vocal melody I write the lyrics for it and we sit in a room recording vocals until Molly's already perfect first take is up to her standards.

Was there any specific inspiration or themes for Kept?

Molly: I’m not sure if there were conscious decisions we made about a theme before the songs were written, but I guess to me all the songs are kind of dealing with an idea of nostalgia and also about childhood and home and leaving that and cherishing that, too. 

Cody: That’s totally right. The songs all came out of the same time, so they all ended up being songs about relationships and remembering, about searching for a way to maintain the past in the present moment.

What do you hope to evoke in the listener with your music?

Molly: I kind of hope that they feel safe and warm in some way. Well that’s just how it feels to me. But I hope this feeling of a familiar place or space is evoked. Maybe. 

Cody: The thing I would hope is that they are excited about and surprised by what they are listening to and that they are in some unconscious way already attached to it. 

What would you say is the perfect setting to listen to your album? You can get as specific as you want... 

Cody: At Ballston Beach in Truro, MA at 11 pm with the leftover taste of ice cream from Sweet Escape in your mouth.

Molly: Hahaha. There’s specific streets in our hometown that have very strong ties to particular songs on this album for me. Like, the beginning of Folded Out is at the bottom of my driveway. I think without giving out addresses I would say that I have listened to these songs a lot between the hours of midnight and 3 while driving aimlessly around, like just picking random streets to turn down. So that’s how I like listening to it weirdly. 

What are the benefits to home recording versus in the studio (other than price)?

Cody: For me the advantage of it is that is the speed with which I can get ideas out. I can record a guitar, hear a drum part in my head, and then just move the mic around and hit some drums. I can make impulsive decisions like that instantaneously. 

Molly: Less performance anxiety! Or, performance anxiety without the added stress of only having two hours to have performance anxiety. 

A Stolen Jars song has been featured in an iPad commercial and you've had a song in the trailer of the Rewrite. What's a song you've personally discovered via a commercial? Where else do you discover music?

Molly: I’m trying to think of a commercial or trailer right now and can’t think of any that aren’t that embarrassing… most of the songs I can think of that I have Shazam-med from a commercial or something are guilty pleasure songs. But for other music, I use Facebook kind of a lot. There are a lot of people whose taste I trust who share a lot of Youtube links to songs. And I like looking at artist pages, too, and seeing what songs they are sharing! Yeah, so I do that a lot, or I guess I go to the usual sites like Stereogum or Pitchfork. 

Can you recall any specific moments of your life where a song has basically acted as a soundtrack? Or where a specific song is so woven in with a particular memory?

Cody: Yes! That is one of my favorite things about music. It’s honestly part of the reason I write songs. There aren't that many things that can immediately induce intense memories when you re-encounter them. For instance, I can almost always remember the first time I heard a song, or the most important moment in time that that song was playing. Something that's been doing that to me recently is Sunday Candy by Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment. It transports me back to packing up at the end of college.

Molly: All the time! That happens to me also with long audiobooks, where I’ll associate an action with the section of the book and next time I put it down suddenly feel very displaced and as though I should still be doing that action, or be walking along the same path I was last time I listened to it. Hm I’m not sure what the last song that happened to me with was. For a while it was A Game of You by Radiator Hospital. Mood by Porches. 

How did you initially begin playing the guitar?

Cody: To be honest, I was forced to take piano lessons by my parents at a young age, which I hated for some reason. I switched to guitar because I thought it would be better, and at the time it was, but I regret the loss of those super sweet piano skills! I’ve been having to redevelop them recently. Still, after taking guitar lessons for a long time, I ended up learning the most when I taught myself how to play songs by Dirty Projectors, The Strokes, and math rock bands from my hometown. 

What's the music scene like in Montclair?

Cody: I was so lucky to grow up in Montclair. I don't think I would have gotten so into music if I didn't live there. There were just so many groups setting up local shows, so many math rock bands, so many post rock bands, there were ska bands playing in basements, there was the local smoke-filled venue, Underground 8. Some of the best and most inspiring musicians I know are people I played with in high school. I still listen to and play with a bunch of them today. Go check out Shakai Mondai, Pinegrove, Gulfer, S P O R T S, Forth Wanderers, Werebears, Gifts, and so many more, those are some of the people I am talking about.

What are your goals as a band?

Molly: Keep making music that makes us feel something and is challenging and rewarding! And stop being so awkward on stage.