Killed by Kiwis is a Minneapolis-based rock band consisting of six friends who met in high school and worked at the same restaurant. The members include Griffin Baumann on guitar, Simon Midtbo on bass and vocals, Quinn Siebers on drums, Annie Thoma on lead vocals, Frankie Carlson on guitar, and Eli Haugland on synthesizers. They recently headlined the Wake’s annual fundraising concert, aWake After Dark. The group sat down with us to discuss their formation, the songwriting process, releasing music before ever performing live, and Jager bombs.

How did you guys start as a band?

Quinn Siebers So it initially started as a three-piece with Simon, Griffin, and I. This was back in high school when we all went to the same school and worked at the same restaurant. And we were kind of just playing around with music, trying to find our sound, and it kind of just came out as more like punk music. And one day, Griffin asked me, "Hey, what should our name be? We haven't found a name yet." Earlier that day, I was listening to Trampled by Turtles, so I kind of just made a similar one on the spot, Killed by Kiwis, and the placeholder name just became the name.

Frankie Carlson The rest of us joined that summer during COVID. So we would meet up in Quinn's garage, masked up as far away as we could, and just started messing around with different sounds. We kind of were just playing with, ‘What do we want to play, and how do we let our own personal influences and musical interests shine through in what we were doing?’ And it was a really fun process. We definitely became really [close]; we were friends before. We all worked in the same restaurant. Some of us have known each other for longer, but that summer, we just got close. We're like, ‘yeah, we want to do this. We want to make this band.’ This has been the best part of our lives for the past year and a half because stuck inside and all that. And that's when we started writing the songs that ended up going on our first album, “Unravel”.

With such a big group, how does your writing and recording process work?

Siebers: I'd say it's a semi-democratic process. Basically, I think someone always brings something at a minimum. There's always one riff or one set of chords that someone brings. There are a couple of songs that are newer that we’ve kind of just made up while playing. And then we kind of jam out and just make it right that day. But I think more frequently, someone brings an idea, and that idea can be as small as four chords or as big as I have the whole idea for what this song is going to be, and, ‘I have the sections built out, and I might have some ideas for what you want to do.’

Carlson: Songwriting is a muscle. You work it, and it gets a little easier over time. You get stronger at it. At two albums now, we think we're kind of finding our songwriting style. Something we've kind of brought up is these first two albums we love, we pull so much work on 'em. They took literally years to make, but it's now that we're the stuff we're working on, and the unreleased, unreleased music that we're kind of cooking up at the moment is what Killed By Kiwi's sound is going to be.

Eli Haugland: Another big reason we've found our sound recently is that we've actually started practicing every week. During the first two years, we would have practiced during the summer and during winter break sometimes if we weren't recording actively. And then, during the normal school semesters, because almost all of us were in school and in different states, it was almost impossible to travel for practice.

What has performing as a relatively new band been like?

Carlson: Our first performance, the first show we ever played, was at Tap Society, which is a restaurant that was in the building that Kings, the restaurant we all worked at, used to be. We played a show in the driveway of that and kind of like a Porch Fest. And set up sound ourselves and played with our friends. And that was the first time we had ever played. This was after where we released Unravel. We had put out music before we ever performed live, so it was definitely scary. And I think we definitely had a lot of excitement but also a lot of anxiety about it. ‘Cause we just didn't know how it was going to go. But most importantly, it was just a lot of fun.

Performing, I think I can speak for the group, is our favorite thing to do in the world now since that show. We've just kind of just been trying to play as consistently as we can while working around people being at school and whatnot. But we've definitely been trying to hit it harder now that most of us are in town in Minneapolis, and we've been able to grow so many wonderful connections and make so many friends through gigging we have

Thoma: I remember the first show that we played. I didn't think that many people were going to show up, but there were a lot of people. And I remember being in the alleyway calling my mom crying, and then the whole show, I stared at people's feet because I couldn't look at anyone. But yeah, now being on stage is just the best feeling in the world

Carlson: We have a little family tradition of, at this point, a Jager bomb before every show. And Annie would always abstain and just have a drink or two to loosen up, just to get in the zone. But recently, at our most recent show at the Turf Club, Annie did a Ye bomb with us for the first time.

Thoma: Then I got on stage, and I was like, ‘oh my God’ (laughs). This is going so well.