Phantogram: 2025

This  FUV Live session is also available as a podcast, "FUV Live Sessions." We're elevating WFUV's long history of live sessions and interviews via a podcast that you can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

Phantogram's Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter first visited FUV in 2010, when they released their debut album, Eyelid Movies, impressing me with a live performance that included "Mouth Full of Diamonds." (That album, in my humble opinion, was one of the best albums of that year.)

The duo captures a captivating mix of synth-pop and rock with hip hop beats and spellbinding lyricism — and Barthel sings like a siren too. Her voice is so enchanting. Over the course of multiple EPs and three more albums over the last 15 years — Voices (2014), Three (2016) and Ceremony (2020) — Barthel and Carter experimented with their sound and approach to music. For their fifth full-length release, 2024's Memory of a Day, the pair went back to their roots for a sonic reflection of their collective experiences thus far.

In our conversation, Barthel and Carter explained how they looked at life as a calendar and how memory played into the heart of this new album. They also discussed why some things still are, and will always be, a mystery to them in their creative process. Phantogram also performed two songs from Memory of a Day: "Come Alive" and "All a Mystery."

[Recorded: 10/9/24; Engineered by Jim O'Hara with Erin Merriman, Renee Majekford, and Julia Maling. Produced by Meghan Offtermatt. Videographers: Stephanie Lane, Lyla Toomey, Olivia Wahlert, Adithi Vimalanathan and Bella Lipayon.]