Divine Fits Explain Origins, How Secret First Show Wasn't a Secret

When Divine Fits decided to perform their first gig ever in Austin, Texas on July 31, they wanted it to be done as discretely as possible. They didn't tell their friends and they even went under a moniker, Hot Skull, in hopes of just jumping on to someone else's bill that night at the Continental Club. But, in a time where word travels as quickly as a simple tweet, by the time the supergroup of sorts -- made up of Spoon's Britt Daniel, Wolf Parade/Handsome Furs' Dan Boeckner and New Bomb Turks' Sam Brown -- took the stage, they were playing to a full house.

"It was our very first show of all time and we knew it would be watched and written about so we thought we'd be ahead of them," Daniel tells Spinner, on the idea of wanting to secretly get their first show over without too many attentive eyes and ears. "But the word got out. I think they built the bill around us and everybody kind of knew."

Boeckner adds that the opening band was also partially responsible because they had announced it during their set.

"We got close, though!" he says with a grin. And, for those wondering why they went with "Hot Skull"? It's because hat was an actual name they considered for the band before settling on Divine Fits.

"Hot Skull was one of the funnier ones," Daniel explains. "I wonder what [Merge Records] would do if we decided to change it all to Hot Skull now... Mac McCaughan would probably fly out and talk that one over with us."

Divine Fits was born out of Daniel and Boeckner's friendship, being mutual fans of each other's work.

"I had been thinking a little bit about what I was going to do next and I had always loved what Dan did onstage and on record," says Daniel.

Boeckner jumps in, having remembered the first time Daniel actually proposed the idea of a new band.

"I think you had brought it up once before when we were in Portland," Boeckner tells Daniel. "We were all sitting in some outdoor patio, having some drinks, and I remember you brought a Wipers CD and said 'we have to start a band.'"

"Yeah, for some reason I thought that he would like The Wipers a lot," Daniel remembers. "Dan had a good six to seven months of touring ahead of him so I said, 'Let's get together in October' and it felt long, but it eventually came; he flew to L.A. and we got into the studio."

As Daniel was killing time in those six months, he entered the studio to lay down some ideas of his own. It was then, when he was describing his dream drummer to the producer he was working with, that he was pointed in the direction of Brown, who was in Columbus at the time.

Although apprehensive at first, once the three got into the raw rehearsal space and began jamming, they knew they had struck something special.

"I didn't know what Sam Brown was all about," Boeckner jokes. "But I was pleasantly surprised and we just started working on tunes. I knew this band was going to be great."

The band's debut album, A Thing Called Divine Fits, will be out on August 28 and it's apparent that the band is still basking in the newness of it all.

"It feels different," says Boeckner. "It feels exciting."