Portuguese duo Ed Rocha Gonçalves and Catarina Salinas – aka Best Youth – are re-releasing their debut album Highway Moon on 26th May 2017 via Station 5.

Filled with reflections on love, sex, doubt and insecurities in the modern world, Highway Moon is a collection of dreamy, electro-fused creations. From the delicate ethereal melodies of single Renaissance and the sensual, laid-back vibes of ‘Black Eyes’, to the twinkling, synth-heavy melodies and driving beats of the likes of ‘Ride’, each track is a sweeping, effervescent indie-pop delight. With Salinas’ silky-smooth vocals flowing throughout and shades of nostalgic 80s pop, Highway Moon will capture the hearts of many.

In this interview spotlight, we chat with Ed and Catarina about influences, the new project, navigating the digital music world and much more.

Full Q&A along with links and the video for Renaissance below.

Let’s dive a little deeper into You, the artist and your music. What attracted you to this genre(s) or style(s)?

K – The nostalgic feel that it has, we met as teenagers and we write with all those years and experiences in mind, so it was a natural impulse, we didn’t plan it, we were basically caught in it.

E – We’ve been making music together for a while now and the premise has always been: “Let’s do whatever we feel like doing and hope it somehow resonates with other people” I grew up as a guitarist playing Rock in garage bands with my friends. Stuff with really big drums and loud distorted guitars (which I will always love). From there I’ve just been experimenting with different sounds and instruments and for Best Youth we’ve been trying to reach a place where we feel is a good mix of our own personalities and musical tastes, so basically we ended up here by chance, we’ve just been doing what feels natural.

How long have you been creating and sharing your music with the public?

K – As Best Youth, for 6 years now, we had other music projects growing up and we did put out a few things in the past, but nothing as serious as the band we are now.

Who or what influences your playing and/or writing? Also, what motivates you to keep going?

K – Obviously music but imagery as well, from cinema to a photograph, a painting, I tend to be very expressive when I sing and I a lot of that comes from specific sounds and/or images that spark a memory in me and make me react in a certain way and write about something in particular.

E – I think for me there are 2 sides: I love good songwriting and it’s something I try to strive for. I’m constantly picking up old pop classics and figuring out the in’s and out’s of what makes those songs so good. But besides that, I’m fascinated by sound in itself so I get a lot of inspiration from instruments, from synthesizers, from the way you can process and change a sound into something completely different. I think it’s one of those things where there’s so much to explore and to experiment that I can’t imagine ever not feeling motivated.

Were you trying to accomplish anything specific on this new project? Creatively or otherwise?

E – On this album we really tried to work on the instrumentation so it could suit Kate’s vocals in the best possible way, so our sound grew to accommodate more synths and textures and the production evolved to a place where both our vocals can stand out more. We tried to switch things up by composing it mainly from Piano and Synths, which I’m not that great at playing compared to the guitar.

K – As Ed said, vocals and textures were our main focus on this album, but we also wanted to incorporate a dance feel as well, so we tried to work some of the songwriting with that in mind, for instance with Renaissance and Mirrorball.

What was the last song you listened to?

K – Sam Evian “Dark Love”

E – Childish Gambino – “Redbone”

Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?

K – Definitely vinyl.

E – Being from the 80’s I love my physical formats, but you can’t argue with the practicality of Streaming nowadays. Hopefully the sound quality will catch up soon. Also, I recently bought a portable cassette deck with really lo-fi speakers and It’s really fun to fire it up sometimes.

How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?

K – Spotify, I´m a paying subscriber and it´s what I use on a daily basis, it´s a great tool to uncover and discover music.

E – I love bandcamp and everything it stands for, but on a day-to-day basis I use Spotify. Mainly because of catalog and because it’s where I started building my playlists. Also, they’re trying to be more useful to artists with statistics and information.

Other than the digital era overwhelming us with access to an abundance of music, what are one or two of the biggest challenges you face when trying to attract listeners to your music?

K – We think the hardest and main thing nowadays is identity. It´s not an easy thing to be original, it’s increasingly hard in this digital era, everything goes, everybody can share, there’s so much information, what to pick, what´s good… That´s definitely the challenge for us.

E – Yeah, cutting through all the noise is tough, it takes a lot of work. The thing is, once you manage to do it, if you’re lucky enough to be in a country where the media has a global following you’re in luck because you’ve basically spoken to all the world at the same time. If you’re from a foreign speaking country, well, you basically have to do it all over again.

Do you gig, tour or perform? Do you ever live stream? Where can music lovers see you live?

E -Of course, we love playing live! Back in Portugal we’ve been lucky to tour practically everywhere these past years, from artsy bars and small music venues to beautiful Grand Theaters and Festivals. Last year we played the Main Stage at Paredes de Coura festival, which was a dream come true. We basically haven’t stopped touring ever since we started playing.

We have a couple of live performance videos online, but haven’t really livestreamed much because It’s not that simple to make livestreams with decent sound quality.

We’re on tour right now and hopefully we’ll make it to some european cities we haven’t been to this year.

Where is the best place to connect with you online? Discover more of your music?

You can know more about us through our website wearebestyouth.com or follow us on instagram and facebook . You can also check us out on youtube, on spotify, bandcamp and itunes.

Any last thoughts? Shout outs? Words of wisdom?

Shout out to all the people going to music venues and checking out new bands and raving about them. You guys are the real deal!