On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of artists who got to know each other over the course of the pandemic, and who got together in the same room for this chat—which is still kind of a rarity these days: Sarah Tudzin and Alex Lahey.

Sarah Tudzin is best known as the mastermind behind Illuminati Hotties, the band she started as sort of an extension of her production and engineering work, which includes contributions to albums and songs by Boygenius, the Armed, and Eliza McLamb. As Illuminati Hotties, she creates pointed, sometimes funny, always catchy songs that she once described as “tenderpunk,” which is kind of perfect. Check out a little bit of “freequent letdown” from Illuminati Hotties’ 2020 release Free I.H., an album/mixtape that comes with an interesting backstory you can find online. New music is supposedly forthcoming pretty soon, so keep your ears open for that.

Alex Lahey was born and raised an ocean away from Tudzin, in Australia, but she’s been spending a lot more time in Los Angeles recently, as you’ll hear in this chat. Lahey has been releasing great records since 2016, and her latest set of punky, animated break-up anthems, called The Answer Is Always Yes, is actually being re-released in an expanded edition with some bonus tracks next week. Check out the ultra-catchy “On the Way Down” right here.

These two chat about the philosophy behind Lahey’s album title, The Answer is Always Yes, as well as thinking about whether a creative career beyond music makes sense. They talk about the relatively unpopularity of guitar music at the moment, and speculate whether either of their songs might someday get crazy big. (For the record, I don’t think it’s much of a stretch at all.) Enjoy.

Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Alex Lahey and Sarah Tudzin for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all of the goodness at Talkhouse.com. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!