We are thrilled to premiere the brand new track ‘White Zebra’ by Chicago’s finest synthpoppers DownVega, who we mentioned previously in our 80s themed February Goes Pop article.

We also managed to grab a few words with Jimmy Con from the band. We talked about DownVega’s various 80s influences ranging from Prince to Kim Wilde to John Carpenter, and Jimmy also told us how the new track came about and what the band have planned for the rest of the year.

But first here’s ‘White Zebra’.

[Lee] Your debut single ‘Give You My Love’ had a clear 80s influence, I also thought that Beccy Schneider’s vocal reminded me of Laura Branigan. Are there any specific 80s artists who really inspired you to start making music?

[Jimmy] We are very influenced by the 80s! The culture, synthesizers, everything really. GYML’s vocals drew a huge comparison to Leona Lewis who I think had a big run with a modern 80s feel when she was very popular in the late 2000s. We love Prince and the entire Minnesota sound, early 80s Madonna, Inxs, Steve Winwood, Phil Collins and many modern artists who have all drawn inspiration from those movements. Another thing we like to pull our production from are musical scores from the 80s. Jan Hammer, Hans Zimmer, John Carpenter, the list could go on and on for ever.

Well we love Carpenter and horror movie music in general so thumbs up from us. 80s wise I’m also partial to a bit of Kim Wilde so could we put that in the mix for a future cover track?

We would hate to “keep you hangin’ on” so we will say, potentially yes (with a wink).

Well that’s not a no so that’s good. Your new single ‘White Zebra’ has a different sound to your debut – I actually think it could be a credible Eurovision entry – were you aiming for a Eurodance sound?

‘White Zebra’ came about in an entirely different way than ‘Give You My Love’ or anything that we have written thus far. I was working on a solo project called “Datoix” that was kind of just exploring the depths of trance music, which I have always enjoyed. In that time frame is when Beccy and I began to work together musically and Sam hadn’t even come into the fray yet. I developed this big instrumental that was so “rah rah” big house or whatever that I literally didn’t know what to do with it until Beccy had shown me/sang me some lyrics she wrote a while back. I tossed the ‘White Zebra’ instrumental demo at her and she naturally just killed it. We built around that, made some edits and here we are. It was really done before we started hitting our stride as a band and before we had any idea this would be a trio.

We know it’s entirely different than what would be expected from an artist who debuted with something like ‘Give You My Love’, but we also feel that is the beauty of being a new artist. We can play with different sounds and there are no expectations. A lot of what we’re working on is going back to an indie-pop/dark feel so now was the time to release this. We also needed to showcase Beccy’s vocals since her range and power is incredible. ‘White Zebra’ gave us the best opportunity for this. When you get to the second pre-chorus, you can see why! We’d love to be in play for the contest because we probably won’t be coming out with anything like this in the future so let’s make it a winner!

I think if you saw our entry for Eurovision this year you might run for the hills actually. What are your plans for the rest of 2016? Can we expect more tracks and an album?

Thankfully with the collective efforts of ourselves and the incredible Marigold Label, we have been fortunate enough to have ‘Give You My Love’ licensed to several chain retail and lifestyle stores throughout the world. We did not expect to get such a quick building success thus far and we want to continue to build on it as recording artists.

Right now, we are working on de-constructing demos we created back in November we wrapped up to be able to perform with Allie X at Double Door. From de-construction, we are building on the foundation of each song demo to create a large group of album-worthy songs. The goal is an EP to be released in the fall. We will keep releasing singles to strike a chord with our very loyal group of fans we have right now. We want to move people. We want to do something lasting. This project started and thrives on throwing the cart before the horse and it has worked out so far. We’re having fun while we’re doing it and that’s what it’s all about.

You can download ‘White Zebra’ over at DownVega’s Bandcamp and you can stream it right here via Soundcloud: