Our latest cover story goes to a band based in Los Angeles, Cannons. With Ryan Clapham on the guitar, Paul Davis on the bass and lead vocalist, Michelle Joy; these three are taking America by storm with their incredible music. Releasing their debut album back in 2017 and having their song 'Fire For You' featured on the Netflix show 'Never Have I Ever'. 'Fire for You' reached number one on the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart.

Cannons are back this year to talk to us about their latest single 'Loving You', the music video and what to expect from their fourth upcoming album.

Hello, Cannons! Thank you for joining us at ReVamp Magazine and being our latest cover stars. How has the start of 2023 been for you?

Michelle: It has been a dream come true for us. We’ve been working on finishing a new album which has been really exciting. Of course, playing Coachella has been incredible, the most surreal experience, and getting back up on stage has been really fun because we’ve had a little break for a while after doing four tours pretty close to each other last year. We were hungry to get back on stage and where better to play than Coachella!

Your sound is breathtaking! Every song I’ve listened to I can’t skip and your music videos are insanely good. Where do you get your inspiration from?

Michelle: Everyone of us gets our inspiration from different things. For me I just about get inspired by everything like if I listen to music while I’m running, I’ll be making little notes of lyric ideas and things like that throughout my day nonstop.

Paul: Movies are defiantly a big influence for me and video game music even if I hear something cool and also getting new gear is always a good inspiration and can always bring out some new ideas. 

Ryan: I have to agree! Anything that makes me feel something. I know that’s a weird statement but music always makes you feel like our music always brings a nostalgic vibe to people or a feel like driving of some sort. So, most of my influences come from the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, and the same with movies as well, just dreamy, whimsical kinds of tones.

Michelle and I were discussing the other night subconsciously we’ve just picked up on all these things and I think collectively, when we all get together that’s what we kind of bring to our music and music videos.

Michelle: And we’ve always had this thing with music it has been an escape for us. I kind of realized it when the whole world shut down and we were in tight of the pandemic, we really wanted to make music escape from all the stress that was going on all around us. We wanted to create a nice space or sound that you can drive to and feel good, even if you're going through a sad experience. Like the music still makes you feel good even if it’s coming from a sad place. There’s this mix of emotions and that it feels very real and somethings are not working out but like it’s ok, it’s going to be, and you can feel the energy in the music. It’s basically happy and sad mixed together, dance your tears out kind of vibe.

You’ve just dropped your single ‘Loving You’. How different is this from your other singles?

Paul: I don’t know that it’s different from the way we release music. 

Michelle: Usually we write in the same way. It’s kind of an organic thing of what we’re feeling and whatever happens in the room kind of jumps out and then we share it and then we gauge how people are feeling and if people are loving it. I don’t think it’s too different I’m not sure, I feel it’s very hooky and dancey, it’s very fun. All of our music has different vibes to it and is very true to themselves. I see them as like our babies but different in their own special way.

Ryan: I also feel like the songs from this upcoming album we always try to experiment with different tones or different instruments. With the last record we put out, I never imagined us having lap steel on a song but we did. It’s safe to say not necessary with Loving You but maybe the songs on the upcoming album, just the tone might be a little experimental by playing with other things but keeping true to what we think our sound is right now which I don’t really know what it is but we’re having fun doing it.

The music video is absolutely beautiful. All your videos are! What was it like filming it and seeing the final result?

Ryan: So much fun!

Michelle: Yeah it was really fun and I felt like it was a smooth experience, it didn’t take too long to film. Anastasia did a really great job and finished it pretty quickly, so we got to see the first cut in a couple of days and we were all super excited about it. Once we got to the final cut we were all blown away and were like this is great, we didn’t have any notes or anything. We felt like with the video we were able to express the feeling that we got over the past year of touring and meeting our fans and this diverse crowd coming together to our shows to kind of let loose and just forget about their problems in our hour and twenty minutes with us. We want people to just feel free and dance however they feel like dancing and sing and reenact with different people in the stages of life.

The audience in the last show, there were five-year-old girls, the age range is insane at our shows even the different races, genders and sexes, everything with the crowd coming together and just all singing the same words, dancing and feeling good. We wanted to express how happy that makes us feel and that magical environment that is with the video. 

Ryan: Anastasia killed it by making the smoke touch these people and making the music feel themselves and springing them into our world or on our stage and just feeling comfortable of who you are at our shows. 

The dancers were amazing!

Ryan: The dancers killed it, they were so fun! It was something we always wanted to do, have people you wouldn’t really think we’re going to dance like that but they did. It was cool to see the comments because someone mentioned it was good we didn’t get a bunch of really young actors to dance to the choreography, that was really cool.

Michelle: My brother was like I’m happy you used an interracial couple and I was like of course, I have to because being mixed race we want to represent parts of us in our music videos, or people that we meet, and see our fans, and make a space where everybody feels comfortable. I like to do that with our own videos!

You’ve mentioned you're working on an album, can we expect the album to come out this year?

Michelle: So we can’t give you a date yet… but it’s almost finished. We are near the end of it, it’s really beautiful and exciting. We’ve dabbled into some new sounds and it brings different energies you can hear come out from artists that we are inspired by and it’s just this whole mixture of really exciting music from us that I think sounds really fresh. Every song sounds different from the next in such a cool way to me!

Ryan: It was really fun listening to the songs that are done in one sitting. I think it’s some of our best work yet!

Paul: Yeah, I agree!

Michelle: I was in my car doing this *waves hands in the air left to right*. 

Ryan: There are a lot of songs that just hit really good in the car... like Night Rider, in my car it was bad ass! [laughs]

Michelle: There’s one that makes me wanna drive too fast and that’s probably dangerous. [laughs]

You’ve also just done Coachella! Would you ever come to the United Kingdom and do Glastonbury?

Michelle: YEAH! We would love to that would be amazing. We will cross our fingers and tell the universe cause that’s what we want to do next.

Lastly, any upcoming projects you can tell us about?

Paul: Yes! We are playing on Jimmy Kimmel on the 25th April. 

Michelle: We just got that news after our last Coachella set. So we’re playing Jimmy Kimmel, finishing the album, and working on a couple of things that we can’t announce yet but stay tuned!

Want to see more of Cannons? You can follow them on Instagram here.