Depending on which part of its story you choose to focus on, The New Trust is either extremely straightforward or tantalizingly complex. In one corner, the co-ed band from Santa Rosa—located about 55 miles north of San Francisco—plays unpretentious, fired-up indie-rock songs that bring to mind the mid-'90s heyday (think Boilermaker, Knapsack, early Promise Ring, etc.), are catchy as all get-out, and rarely reach the three-minute mark. In the other is a European tour the band booked only a year after it formed, lyrics that quote Jermaine Stewart's "We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off" while dissing religion and championing a DIY lifestyle, and a guitarist who originally thought her six-string would be used to sing her future kids to sleep.

"My goal was someday I would at least be good enough to play 'Puff The Magic Dragon' to our children," says Sara Sanger, who happens to be the wife of singer-bassist Josh Staples, who also handles The Velvet Teen's low end. To some, their married-and-in-a-band arrangement is another oddity, but it's hard to get anyone in the band to see it that way—in fact, Sanger would probably still be completely focused on her photography if it wasn't for Staples' encouragement. "Josh was so serious, and such an optimist—he doesn't do anything unless he knows that it's going to happen. I didn't realize that for a long time. I just thought, 'Oh, this is just something he's doing for his wife to make me feel better.'"

Now a resident of Philadelphia! Des Ark came out with their first full-length, an album entitled Loose Lips Sink Ships on Bifocal Media/Bakery Outlet Records and recorded by current Witch member/Dinosaur Jr. alum J Mascis. Several US, and European tours behind them. Des Ark has become a venue to express deeply intertwined internal and external politics, whether that be as a full band, duo, or solo project. Des Ark roils with expressions of the intersections of the personal and public

3 guys start a band. They live really close to each other.