Stasia Irons and Catherine Harris-White (THEESatisfaction) have just returned from a tour that has consumed the better part of March. During the past weekend, they were in Texas. The week before that, they were in New York City. The week before that, they were in Europe. On their first full day back in Seattle, they selected the Row House, a cafe in South Lake Union, to meet and talk with me about their new album, awE naturalE. This wood-warm, cabinlike cafe is tucked in a patch of nearly completed or completed futuristic buildings—many of which are part of the growing headquarters of a giant internet retailer. Vulcan has built this new city on money a billionaire made from software programs. The Row House—with its resolute woodiness (wooden tables, wooden chairs, wooden porch, wooden beams, and even a tree trunk near the counter), its folk music, its calming smells of fresh foods and good coffee—is an illusion of reality in this spectacle of capitalist wealth that has become too real.

Why did you choose this cozy cafe in South Lake Union? It is, by the way, not inappropriate. Your music is also futuristic but warm. Your vision of the future is never cold.

SI: We had nothing to do with it. Jonathan [Moore, our manager] picked the place.

CHW: I have never been here before. It's like we are going fishing or something.

Okay, it was an accident. But South Lake Union is a kind of utopia—it was willed into being; none of it happened naturally. Someone had a vision (and a lot of money) and transformed it into something you can live, work, fuck, and get drunk in—his utopia. I hear another utopia in your music. What kind of utopia is it? What is this world you are imagining?

CHW: It's true we work closely together. We invent together, we dance together, and we learn together. But I don't know what a perfect world would look like. We are always working within the realms of this one, the world we live in.

SI: That's all we know is the real world. If we did not have this world, our sound would be very different. Being in Seattle, being a young couple, being done with college, being in the music industry, being signed to Sub Pop, going through family things—that's the world we now live in.

How did THEESatisfaction begin?

CHW: We first started by dancing for ourselves, then we started dancing and making music for other people.

SI: We first shared it with our families, then our friends. We'd have little parties, we called them listening parties. This was when we were in college, at UW. This is when Charles [Chocolate Chuck] and other friends would bring their laptops and we'd all make music. It would be like 17 people. And that's when we first started sharing our music.

Let's talk about awE naturalE. It's big shift in sound from the previous records.

SI: When we started, we didn't know anything about computer music programs and that kind of thing. But as we got more and more involved and figured out how to do things, we wanted people to hear that progress in our sound. We worked with Ish and Tendai [Shabazz Palaces]. They were part of that progress.

CHW: Yeah, the album is really a snapshot of the past couple of years.

Working with Erik Blood, how was that?

CHW: He is sweet.

SI: He is a genius. He let us do what we wanted. I could not ask for anything more.

CHW: Once we produced the beats, we brought them to him, and he was very open to our sound. He also played bass on the record.

You were recently in Europe. What was the reception to your music?

SI: A lot of people were surprised there's hiphop from Seattle.

CHW: Yeah, we got a lot of that. It's still very much about grunge. That's what people think of when they think of Seattle.

SI: Whenever people asked about Seattle hiphop, we'd mention OC Notes, Chocolate Chuck, and other crews. We let them know there was a scene out here.

CHW: Everyone knows Nirvana and Soundgarden. That's a big part of our history. It's what put us out in the world. So it makes sense they know about grunge and not so much about [Seattle] hiphop.

What do you love about Seattle?

CHW: Clean air. I have terrible allergies, so I like the clean air.

SI: For me, it's the restaurants. I love the pho in this city. We tried pho in other cities, and it's not the same.

CHW: For real.

What do you hate?

CHW: I'm too used to Seattle, been here for so long; I can't hate anything about it.

SI: I hate the way people drive in this place. People are too kind.

CHW: Yeah, you are right. It's like Portlandia: "You go." "No, you go." "No, you go."

SI: The drivers in this city. I really hate the drivers

The future of THEESatisfaction?

SI: We do not know where it is going to go. But it's going to go. recommended

This story has been updated since its original publication.