Artist Profile: Indigo Waves

Indigo Waves, the dream-pop duo born out of the college-aged friendship of Austin Oestreich and Matt Mink, has been carving out a unique brand of sonic experimentations since its inception, operating in the liminal space that exists between Oestreich’s acoustic songwriting habits and Mink’s fascination with obscure sound design. Now, as they leave behind their 2025 project, Mirror, and begin work on their newest album, it is that exact balance that will continue to define their ongoing pursuit of a new sonic frontier.

In many ways, it seems as though the pair was fated to work together from the very start. 

As a child, Mink ducked the opportunity to take piano lessons, feeling a complete lack of desire to learn to play other people’s songs. However, when he got his first guitar in middle school, his interest was piqued, and, soon after, he got his first synthesizer. This began a life-long obsession with both music gear and sound design, and, by the time he got to college, he had become an adept creator of sonic atmospheres.

Oestreich, meanwhile, came from a much more songwriter-oriented background. As a child, he had an almost obsessive fascination with The Beatles to the point that he had physical copies of almost every single one of their records and movies. He learned guitar playing classic rock songs in a friend’s basement, but, by the time he got to college, he had already shifted toward a more acoustic-driven process.

Therefore, when Oestreich and Mink met by chance on one of their first days on campus, they very quickly realized that they had similar, and complementary, affinities.

“Most of my songwriting process is literally just me and an acoustic guitar. I feel like all the gear can sometimes be a little overwhelming when I'm trying to write,” said Oestreich, “So that makes me and Matt a great team because he's obsessed with the tones, and I'm just obsessed with the songwriting. It makes a really good dynamic, and I feel like it forces us to kind of push ourselves and test ourselves.”

They very quickly began to spend large swathes of time together, and, from that time, their debut, self-titled project was born. Taking on an atmosphere distinctly defined by the bedroom pop of the 2010s, especially artists like Hippo Campus and Mac DeMarco, the project represented the first attempts that the pair made to truly hammer out their sound.

As much as the project bears its influences on its sleeve in some ways, it also quickly becomes apparent, even upon first listen, that there is a unique imprint brought about through Mink’s production and Oestreich’s interminably oblique songwriting. 

“The cool thing about music and how complex humans are is that you can have any goal and then, as you try and reach it, you end up somewhere completely different…” said Oestreich, “ We were very afraid of sounding too much like someone or taking too much inspiration from someone, and, what we've found as we've recorded, is that it's totally okay to take inspiration from people. Obviously, you want to have your own ideas, but, even if we tried to sound exactly like a different artist, just through our voices, the equipment we use, the recording process that we kind of follow as musicians, it will never sound like someone else, at least in our experience.” 

Their second project, Mirror, showcases exactly this process of evolution and experimentation. Departing from some of the more lo-fi influenced sounds of their first album, Mirror takes on a much more new wave, house, and dance-influenced milieu, leaning much more on both Mink’s sonic constructions and Oestreich’s hook-writing capabilities than their first album did.

It represented not only a new artistic phase for the duo but also a new phase of life. They had exited college and entered the workforce and, in the process, had needed to carve out new methods of songwriting and collaboration.

Their newest project, however, has presented a distinct challenge. While they lived in close proximity for the creation of their first two albums, this new one was written almost entirely separately, with Mink developing the sounds and productions largely on his own and Oestreich writing in a more isolated context than he has in a long time.

When they come together to record the project, it will be the first time that they have played many of the songs together in that context, and both are excited for the unique wrinkles it will bring out in their process of creation and improvisation.

“It'll be very interesting because I'll have tones that are really dialed in already and really unique; I've been really trying to explore unconventional sounds,” said Mink, “I think there's going to be an element of that experimental sound design, but also mixed with like, this element of Austin… wanting to do more organic feeling [songwriting]. It's gonna be a weird combination when it comes through, just from all the prep work that's gone into it beforehand before we even started on the album.”