WORDS MAISIE JANE DANIELS - SPECIAL THANKS EDGE ENTERTAINMENT
Straight out of Huntington Beach, California, indie pop rock powerhouse Your Favorite Color has arrived with their much-anticipated debut studio album, For You. The 11-track LP is a vibrant tapestry of love, heartbreak, and self-discovery—crafted with raw energy and an unapologetic edge that feels both timeless and refreshingly new.
From the first time plugging into For You, its nostalgic indie soundscape transported me back to my teenage years. Those moments when music felt like a lifeline—when I’d lay back on my bed, headphones on, lost in a sea of emotions, imagining I was the main character in a coming-of-age movie. There’s a familiar magic here, echoing the spirit of '90s and early 2000s alt-rock, but with a bold, modern twist that’s undeniably their own.
At F Word, we had the pleasure of delving into the world of Your Favorite Color—exploring how a group of surfers turned bandmates forged an unshakable brotherhood, navigate creative differences, and channel pure belief and determination to manifest not only a standout debut but a global tour spanning the US and Europe.
This is just the beginning for Your Favorite Color, and we can’t wait to see where their journey takes them next.
Maisie Daniels: Hello from London! How are you?
Matt: Hey, we’re doing great!
MD: Is it morning for you in LA?
Matt: Yes, it is! It’s not too early, though. [laughs]
MD: If it looks like I’m in candlelight, it’s because it’s 6 p.m. in London, and it's already very dark.
Matt: Moody, I like it!
MD: It’s getting dark at 4 p.m. ...
Matt: That’s so early.
MD: Tell me about it! What’s the California music scene like for indie bands?
Nicky: LA, NY, London—they’re always going to have a lot of bands coming through, so there’s that scene where you can see most people. But, in our area specifically, which is Orange County, it’s known for its surf and skateboarding culture. It’s where punk and pop-punk (the California version of it) came from. So you have a lot of bands like that, but for the kind of music that we make, it’s pretty small. We have a lot of house party shows, and there are a couple of venues, but you really have to go up to LA to get a mix of bands.
I feel like we try to get around a bit to get into scenes, and there are little pockets that have really sick shows, but I think we never felt like it was perfect for what we were trying to do.
MD: Do you see the indie scene evolving in any way?
Matt: Good question. I feel like there are three or four main venues around where we live that we’ve just been playing and testing over the years. There’s a venue called Chain Reaction, Wayfarer, The Observatory in Santa Ana, and the House of Blues (near Disneyland). All of those venues get such good circulation of what Nicky was saying, from people who are touring all over the U.S. or Europe. But then you also get more local bands, and as far as local bands go, it does seem mostly in a pop-punk type vibe.
As far as a scene—is there a strong scene? There’s always the LA scene, just tons of very creative artists of all kinds trying to grind out there, and here it’s the melting pot of everyone around. But there isn’t a super strong scene that we have necessarily jumped into around here. We do feel like the black sheep of the pack, trying to trailblaze a little bit.
MD: It’s nice to know what’s going on over there. Let’s talk about you! Can you tell us the story of how Your Favorite Color formed? It’s obvious you have a close bond!
Matt: We are really close. We started the band and released our first bit of music on Spotify in 2018. So for about six years, we’ve been called “Your Favorite Color,” but we’ve all been friends since high school—we all met through the surfing scene. I was on the surf team at Huntington Beach High School, right near the beach in California. Nicky was at Marina, and Cameron (our bassist) was also surfing—he was at Edison for a bit, which is another high school right by the beach. We all just surfed together, and then we realised that we also had a passion for music, and we all had a bit of talent to play, too. I’m the singer of the band, Cameron is a very well-versed musician (he plays mostly guitar), and Nicky grew up playing classical keys. We all started getting together, one at a time, and over time we just formed the band. The band started out with Nicky, David, and me way back then. Cameron joined recently after we put out our album, and it’s just been so great, as even Cameron we’ve known since the beginning. So we all feel very brotherly in this group.
MD: I love it; you’re like the modern-day indie Beach Boys. [laughs]
Matt: I’d say that’s where we came from, for sure. I don’t know if our music is the same as that. [laughs]
MD: [laughs] It’s a very different sound! I was watching a documentary on The Beach Boys recently about how they all formed from surfing culture and the brotherly love they had, which reminded me of your story!
Matt: That’s so cool, and they’re fantastic. We are inspired by those guys.
MD: Your new album, FOR YOU, is out—and I love it! It’s got me feeling very nostalgic as I’ve laid back on my bed and listened back-to-back. It feels like an 11-track gift for your fans! Did this feel as much like a gift for yourselves as it does for the fans?
Matt: Yeah, absolutely. This batch of music was such a staple for us as a band to finally create a full-length album. Like I said, we put out our first bit of music in 2018 and released music all the way up until now, but we did take most of it down because we felt like that was just us on the spiritual music journey of finding out who we identify as, as a band, and what sound is “Your Favorite Color”? Right before we recorded this album, we discovered that sound, and we met a producer (Stefan) who was really able to take our vision and enhance it in a way we didn’t know was possible. So for us, to create this collection of music and find our identity was amazing. It feels like the true start to our band, which is why we did a clean sweep of our old music. This is the start.
Everything until now was us learning, and of course, we will always be learning. But this was definitely a huge joy and confidence booster to feel like this is who we are. It’s definitely a gift for us, and like you said, it’s a gift we’d like to give to anyone who wants to listen. We called it For You because it’s for you. The album name is an extension of our band name, Your Favorite Color. Just the name on its own inherently acknowledges the existence of somebody else. Who is Your Favorite Color for? Well, it’s For You. It’s all about the music and what music does in general—not even just our band—but music, in general, is this very transactional conversation and way to connect with people. This is our version, our album of that.
MD: I love that. Did you feel that through creating For You you all connected further as bandmates and friends?
Matt: Most definitely. The dream continues to get more real for us, and as the dream continues together more real, we fall deeper intertwined with one another. This identity that we have to be rock stars and to absolutely make a dream manifest and come true. We did just start out as a group of friends getting together and just expressing ourselves. We didn’t know where we would take it. I think we all believed that it was something special, and we never gave up on it, and next thing we know, we’ve got an album and we’re touring the world and Europe, going to all the places we’ve never been to before. It really does feel like a dream come true, and it makes us all believe in each other more, and it becomes more embedded into what Your Favorite Color is, for sure.
MD: That’s beautiful! I’m excited to delve into the tour shortly, but what was the creative process behind creating this album?
Matt: Long story short, I had a little home studio in my room. Usually, Nikki, David, or Matt (aka Foz, as his name is also Matt, to help us not get confused all the time) would come over to my room, and we would start playing. Nicky would start playing some riffs on the piano, and David would start playing some riffs on the guitar. I’m usually in the captain’s seat in the studio, and as soon as any of us hear something that sparks inspiration in us, everyone stops, we record that thing, and we just keep stacking and layering to a point where it makes me want to sing. Even if we don’t have the lyrics yet, we will get a pretty rough demo put together—a skeleton, a structure. Alright, we’ve got a verse, pre-chorus, chorus, we’re going to break into a bridge here… and then usually, when we get it to the best of our ability, we will take it to our producer out in Tustin. We will bring our stuff out to him, and then we will spend the day seeing if he can make it any better. And if we can add any more ideas to really give it that extra edge, to put it over the edge, and make it an undeniable song. That was the process for every single song on the album. We already had a pre-written demo; we were really happy with it. We brought it into Stefan (producer), and he just enhanced the hell out of it. He put on the wizard sauce and made it sound robust and great and all that!
MD: It sounds like the album stitched together pretty organically! Was there a particular song that came together effortlessly?
Matt: As far as effortless songs, I’d say the song For You came together really effortlessly because that song was written when we took a trip out to Joshua Tree. We were trying to get some inspiration. That’s the only time we’ve ever gone out to vibe-out and be isolated as a band. We all just set up our live equipment in the main living room, and we were just jamming. David picked up a new guitar and started playing it. He just came up with the riff on that song, and the band started jumping on, and it came together super organically. That was the very first song that sparked us into the sound that we call “For You” and the staple sound I keep referencing.
MD: I love that song, and the video.
Matt: Thank you!
MD: Let’s flip the coin: what song was the hardest to create, and what made it so challenging?
Matt: Right off the bat, I Know Better. That song was the toughest; that song was getting circulated for years. It probably had three different versions of itself, but we kept wanting to revisit it because we thought the chorus had something special to it. Eventually, we got it sounding to a place where we were like, "Okay, we really like this song," but when it came to the fruition of recording it on a level that Back to the Bottom, Boy Toy, or For You were recorded, the song sonically was providing some trouble because it’s a very busy, compact song. When it comes to studio mixing, a good analogy to think of is that all of these instruments trying to exist in a sonic plane together is like thinking of it like real estate or designing a room. If you’re laying out furniture in a room and you have a really big bed, and a really big TV, and you put them all in the middle of the room, and they’re all trying to be front and center, it’s not going to be a pretty room. That’s what I Know Better was trying to do. There were too many things trying to be the spotlight, and it was really hard to carve out space for everything. Ultimately, we pulled it off, and I’m proud of the song, but that one was really tough to figure out. It’s good to give things space to breathe. There’s a reason acoustic songs are so great, and it’s because there’s plenty of room for the acoustic guitar and the voice, and maybe a little drum in the background or things like that. We probably went through twenty different versions of mixing that song, and other ones we went through three.
MD: There’s always a problem child! But it must be rewarding to overcome those challenges.
Matt: Absolutely!
MD: Do you find you have creative differences, and if so, how do you overcome them?
David: Oh my god, we have creative differences all the time!
Matt: I rip David’s head off all the time!
David: I think even the past couple of days— we’re writing a lot of music right now—and things get passionate. We are passionate about our music, but when writing this album, when we were actually in the studio, we were all well aligned. I think the process of actually writing the music itself, especially when there’s five or four dudes that have a lot of different opinions and creative styles, you’re bound to get into an argument once or twice. But it’s all in love and in favour of the music. Eventually, we do find that point where everyone is happy and the song is great, and everyone loves the song. It’s then that we take it to the studio.
Nicky: Matt has a really good saying, and it goes not just for music stuff, which is “at least try it once,” and I think that helps.
Matt: To elaborate on that, I think when you’re in a band and somebody brings an idea, out of respect for the idea and in order to avoid feeling negative or taking the wind out of someone’s inspiration sails, it’s always good to try your best to trust them. Because there are so many times when David has brought really weird guitar lines at me, and very weird timings that my brain can’t understand, and I’m like “dude, people aren’t going to get this.” Even the other day, Nicky and I were writing a song, and he played the most wacky riff on the keyboard, and my first instinct is “ah, screw that,” but when you just turn off that part of your mind and see where this leads, and trust it fully, and say I’m going to give my best shot to this (if it needs it), that’s when you find some of the most weird, magical things ever because they’re almost like accidents and let the universe take you there. So yes, we have disagreements, but we definitely try to respect each other instead of shutting it down.
MD: You’ve just come off an epic tour! Paris, Oslo, Stockholm, Milan, Cologne, Berlin, Brussels, and of course, the UK, to name a few. How different is it to play Europe versus America?
Matt: It’s too hard for us to say right now because we could talk about obvious differences, but as far as playing in front of thousands of people, we haven’t really done that here yet. We are still really getting started, and I believe we will be there sooner than later, but playing for the crowds in Europe was absolutely crazy. I think a lot of people talk about Europe as being very passionate about music in general, and we definitely felt that. We felt people interrupting our set, chanting things (in the most beautiful way possible!). What a beautiful gift to be chanted at in our first show in Portugal.To answer your question though, it seems like people have tons of energy, and they are so amazing to play for. We just want to be back as soon as we can to play for people from the UK and Europe, but I hope the US can find the energy that Europe brings. If they don’t off the bat, we want to inspire them to do that!
MD: Your energy is magnetic when you’re performing live, and you can see the crowd feed off that. Has there been a crash coming off tour?
Matt: Not for me personally. I feel like we’ve all been waiting for a very long time to play for audiences like that, and we’ve all been wondering for a very long time, “How is this band going to do on tour?” We went out there, and honestly, pat on the back to everyone in this band and the crew—we absolutely crushed it, and every show went on without a hitch. The crowds were insane, and we didn’t die on tour [laughs]. We also got to see what it was like to truly feel like rock stars. So I think we came back with the most inspiration, and we all just have a new head on for what is possible and a newfound confidence. Coming back, we just went right back into writing again, and we’re writing some of the best stuff we’ve ever written, and I’m already so excited for what’s coming next!
MD: Yes to that! If the album was a colour, what would it be?
Cameron: Black
Matt: I almost want to answer this by saying “your favorite color” [laughs]
Nicky: Black or white
David: Red
MD: This is F Word magazine—what’s your favourite “F” word?
Matt: Probably “Forget”
Nicky: That was dark [laughs]. I want to say “Friends”
Matt: [Laughs] That’s better than mine...
Cameron: I’d say “Friday”
David: It’s definitely “Fuck”
MD: There’s always got to be a fuck in there! I’m glad someone said it!
