Princeton is a four-piece indie band of guys who grew up together in Santa Monica: twins brothers Jesse Kivel (vocals, guitar) and Matt Kivel (vocals, bass), Ben Usen (keyboard) and David Kitz (drums). They’re currently taking their show—think Belle & Sebastian-esque pop—on the road with Ra Ra Riot. Tonight should be a night off, but they wanted to put in some overtime at Brooklyn’s Union Hall. We sat down with them after a game of indoor Bocce ball, in between bites of French fries and sips of PBR. Read on for their thoughts on everything from the state of music in Los Angeles to how Jesse became a good dancer (a fact which is verified during a drum machine and Nord-backed number called “Shout It Out”) to what makes Portland so cool.

EM: How many times you guys been in New York?

Ben: Three times.

Matt: We were born in New York. We’ve been here a million times. Exactly a million.

EM: So that’s, what, like five thousand times per day?

Matt: Yeah, we keep coming back. We just stood on the border. [Jesse jumps back and forth over an imaginary border.]

Ben: That’s how Jesse got so good at dancing.

EM: How did you guys connect with David?

David: We all went to the same high school. And actually the same middle school as well. Even Hebrew school. They’re a couple years older, so they were in the same grade as my older sister. So I always knew them very indirectly. I saw the twins play. Then randomly, on the first date that I was having with my current girlfriend, she does the licensing for bands and film and TV and she represents Princeton. They were having their first meeting with her when I was having my first date with her. They were finishing the meeting when I was picking her up, so we kind of linked up and the rest is history.

Jesse: I remember in high school, I went to this terrible battle of the bands and David was drumming with this hardcore band. It was horrible, but David was so good. He was like insanely good. So when we got him, I was like, I remember this kid who was really good at drums. We had another drummer at the time, and we wanted to see if David was as good as that drummer. He wasn’t. No, no, he was really good.

EM: Then you took all the hardcore stuff and put them into the Princeton songs.

David: All the double bass.

Matt: Well, he’s a versatile drummer. He can do a lot of different things.

David: I’m no longer into the hardcore. I was like 15.

Jesse: The best drummers come from hardcore bands because the technical stuff is so hard. Eventually those drummers grow out of hardcore, then they become really good rock drummers. Like David.

David: Thanks, guys. I’m really excited to be in the band.

EM: That’s sweet. So, one of my questions is: Do you think there’s a distinctive L.A. sound?

Matt: I think it depends on what you’re referring to. I think that there’s, at the moment, there’s a lack of an L.A. sound over all. There are tiny pockets that are cultivating certain sounds like the bands coming out of The Smell have really sort of put their own unique stamp on like, it’s like, post-rock sort of. It’s noisy and malleable. And all these bands, they don’t necessarily sound similar, but I feel like there’s a shared sort of thinking that goes behind the music. But if you listen to each of them, there’s not too much in common with like Mika Miko and No Age, Abe Vigoda, and HEALTH. Those bands are just loud, that’s the only thing in common. But the music’s very different.

As for pop bands, I think there is a sound to the L.A. bands that, for instance, tend to get a lot of radio airplay on like KCRW and play at the Hotel Café and things like that. I think it’s a very polished, technically sound sort of way of writing songs and usually has to do with emotional singer-songwriter kind of material. And that’s also an L.A. sound.

But I think as for what we’re doing, I don’t think it really falls into either one of those, like, really different categories. I don’t think we fit the L.A. sound, but there definitely are a couple of L.A. sounds.

Ben: I think what the bands in L.A. do have in common really has nothing to do with being musical. I think, especially after coming to cities like New York and playing shows where there are so many bands where everyone seems really serious, L.A. bands, it seems like they just want to have a good time on stage, and have fun, and get the crowd involved and stuff. That’s the one thing I’ve been able to link all the bands together. For the most part, bands are just up there having a good time. That’s in other cities too, like Portland and stuff. But New York – that’s the main difference. It seems like bands are really serious here and like really cool.

EM: What are your musical influences?

Matt: Bands who have been major influences for us are The Kinks — Ray Davies is easily one of my favorite songwriters and I think that sometimes shows in our music. Leonard Cohen has been a huge influence for me. John Cale, Serge Gainsbourg, especially the way his records are produced and orchestrated, has affected us a lot, the way he gets things to sound. Arthur Russell — we love Arthur Russell and listen to a lot of his music.

And then noisier bands have been a really big influence on me, and not necessarily for Princeton but just in my development as a fan of music and a songwriter. [Jesse and I] have side project that does more shoegaze stuff and My Bloody Valentine is like a huge band for me, and Sonic Youth and stuff like that. You might not hear it all the time in Princeton’s music, but I think sometimes you will. But not on our EP now.

EM: Do you have a name for your side project?

Matt: Yeah, we’re called the Sleeping Bags. We played at Pehrspace a few weeks ago.

EM: Do any of the rest of you have personal side projects?

Matt: Ben’s the manager of Sleeping Bags and he’s going to try out on bass, we’re not sure yet.

Ben: I might be the bassist-slash-manager. My nickname might be Plum.

David: I’m in a band called Think Alike and a band called Open Spaces. Neither of which are too active now, but Think Alike is currently doing a four or five song demo.

Jesse: And I have a side project called Gold Room, which is a disco side project.

EM: No way. What do you do with that?

Jesse: I DJ — I’m starting to DJ — and I make disco music. I have about three tracks right now that are influenced by great disco of the ‘70s.

EM: Who does that include?

Jesse: It includes Cerrone, Patrick Cowley from the ‘80s, I like Arthur Russell’s disco, Giorgio Moroder, Alec Costandinos. There are others, Donna Summer.

EM: You have sort of a literary influence in your music. What are your favorite books?

Matt: The one that I enjoy the most is John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces. It’s a novel. It’s basically like a modern day Don Quixote figure living in New Orleans in the ‘50s and ‘60s. He’s really out of step with the world. He’s really fat and he goes on all these crazy sort of misguided missions that are based on his personal philosophy and ideology about the way the world works. He’s an outcast and I just enjoy strange characters like him. I love that book.

EM: Is literature and stuff like that still going to continue to be an influence in the music you make or was that just for the Bloomsbury EP?

Ben: That was just for the EP. That was the concept. It’s possible we might revisit some literary references in other albums or EPs to come, but for now, we’re recording our album and there’s no concept behind it, there’s nothing really literary about it. Bloomsbury was just an EP that was its own.

Matt: It’s not really even a literary EP. We made these sort of semi-character portraits. Some of the songs aren’t even portraits, they’re like mini-vignettes, like stories about small episodes in these people’s lives. To me, it’s more biographical, rather than literary.

EM: Do you have a favorite city to play in?

Matt: I think Portland was the most fun to perform in.

Ben: That’s true. We went on this West Coast tour, this really D.I.Y. West Coast tour, and we played two shows. One was at a really shitty place, and that doesn’t define our Portland experience, but the night before we played a house party and there’s this whole basement scene in Portland, where all the houses have these really tiny basements, but they have shows there. And people packed into these really tiny basements, they’re just packed full of hipsters, just like ready to dance to anything they could. It was really fun. It was really great.

EM: That sounds similar to how the D.C. punk scene started, in basements, then moved above ground.

Ben: Yeah. Right. And I think this one started because all the cool venues in Portland are 21 and over, just like L.A. So that’s why all the under 21 kids…

EM: They have their own scene.

Ben: Right. They have their own scene. And that’s where they go. It was a really young crowd, it was like 15 to 21.

EM: How many people fit in the basement?

Ben: It was such a small basement, but it was packed full. There probably like 80 people there. We played in a little corner with a P.A. system, there was no stage made or anything. It was hard to see if you were stuck in the back. We played with two local bands. We just got in touch with a band that we found and liked called The Dirty Mittens, and it was at their house. We played with them and a band called Southern Belle. They were all young and both really good bands. I really was impressed. It’s really cool and next time we go to Portland, we really want to work on having two days there so we can do one basement show. We kind of want to move there.

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More at myspace.com/princetonmusic and princeton-band.com