When I walk into Night + Market on Sunset Blvd., the members of PHASES are already passing around orders of pad thai, larb, papaya salad, boxing chicken and a bottle of prosecco (because, why not). 

“Sorry, we already ordered,” singer Z Berg apologizes. “Grab whatever you want!” I oblige and load up my plate family style as the four-piece continues munching and sipping away.

“You know what’s crazy?” Michael Runion asks. “The first night we ever played music together, we recorded a song called ‘Square One’ and we put it on Myspace! That was the first time our music was ever introduced into the world. That was when we were JJAMZ.” The band in discussion was the first serious musical incarnation the quartet had formed with Maroon 5’s James Valentine. After losing that “J,” Berg, Runion, Rilo Kiley’s Jason Boesel and Phantom Planet’s Alex Greenwald took some time doing their own thing and contemplating the fate of their band.

Z was ready to leave town and head to Nashville to pursue a career in folk music when Greenwald showed her some music he had been working on in his home studio. This new, interesting direction caught the ear of all three members and they decided to give it one more shot. “It’s interesting, the beginning of how this new version of this band started was definitely fraught with a bit of tumult,” Berg admits. “But once we started the process, nothing I’ve ever done in my life has been more natural.”

That process first resulted in six fun, danceable, heartfelt songs that didn’t sound like anything the four members had created in the past, together or otherwise. “Jason had the idea to give [the songs] to Mike Elizondo, who is a producer and works for Warner Bros. Records,” Runion explains. “So Jason’s like, ‘Worst case scenario he’s like ‘Great songs,’ best case scenario he’s like ‘I want to sign you and produce this record.’” Z hand-delivered the tracks to the producer’s studio and Jason’s “best case scenario” panned out; he offered to sign the band and record the album immediately.

“I didn’t believe her when she told me,” Greenwald confesses. “I was in New York working on Mark Ronson’s record, and we had all finished the day and were having our first alcoholic drink when Z called and was like, ‘I played the songs for Mike Elizondo, he wants to sign us right now. I was like, ‘Fuck you, come on Z, what’s the truth.’”

“Alex sounded so weird when I told him!” Z adds with a laugh. “I called the guys each individually. It was really funny.”

“It was like the real life equivalent of the record exec walking past Zack Morris’s garage while Zack Attack was playing and going, ‘Hey! I really like what you guys are doing. I want to sign you and put your record out,’” Michael chimes in, and he and Z bust into a rendition of “Friends Forever.”

“We should probably cover that, you guys,” Z declares. “Or it should be our walk-on. That would be so weird!” But despite their jovial demeanors (according to Z, they’ve been friends for “70,000 years”), every member of PHASES take this project more seriously than any of their past endeavors.

“This was a lot more premeditated with the intention to make something real and serious,” Z says. “No matter how fun it is, there’s the idea of it being a real band and a real vision and creating a world that deserved its own real name (as opposed to being called ‘JAMZ’).”

This newfound direction and splitting writing and recording time between Alex’s home studio and Can-Am Studios (fka Death Row’s Headquarters (RIP ‘pac)) resulted in narrowing down over 30 songs to one concise album. “We wrote so many songs for this record that there is a lot more sort of breadth of what the songs are about than anything I’ve ever written before,” Z divulges, “so there’s a little bit of something for everybody while having the cohesive landscape of this one world that we attempted to create... I’m happy to be able to listen to these songs and sing and remember how we wrote them and where I was. It’s cool.”

The band also felt completely in sync when it came time to create their yet-to-be-named debut album’s track list, finding even the act of cutting songs effortless. “The process of removing one’s ego from artistry is not an easy one,” Z admits. “It takes awhile for a lot of people, and I feel like we all really got to a place where we were all there. And to have everyone in the band feel that way at the same time, I don’t think that happens.”

“A lot of people can’t do that, or they don’t want to,” Jason adds. “Some people just do their own thing forever, but luckily the four of us could make that transformation and become a unit versus four strong individuals butting heads, which I think is an absolute necessity to make this record.”

For friends that have known each other for over a decade and worked together for at least half of that, this project could have gone a myriad of different ways (including never happening at all) but as Z realized while sipping her glass of prosecco in a thai restaurant on LA’s Sunset Strip, these four people are “stuck with each other forever,” and their bond and subsequent creative output only grows stronger with time.