Interview with Shallowater — About their sophomore album God’s Gonna Give You A Million Dollars

Shallowater’s story begins in Lubbock, Texas, where bassist Tristan Kelly and guitarist–vocalist Blake Skipper first crossed paths at the Gypsy House in 2018. They weren’t yet musicians in any formal sense—Kelly had never played before—but a series of joking comments at South by Southwest about how they “looked like they were in a band” planted the seed. Skipper taught Kelly the basics for a year before life pulled them in different directions, only for Kelly to return during the pandemic and meet drummer Ryan Faulkenberry. Once the three finally found themselves in the same room, the chemistry was instant. By 2021, they had a name—borrowed from a roadside sign they saw while appearing in a Hayden Pedigo music video—and a band: Shallowater.

Now based in Houston, the trio have built a sound they call “West Texas dirtgaze,” a slowcore-rooted blend streaked with post-rock atmosphere, alternative country twang, and the emotional torque of emo and post-hardcore. It’s a style that invites inevitable shorthand: imagine the soft-spoken introspection of Red House Painters or Acetone filtered through expansive, high-plains guitar work and the dusty melancholia of Neil Young. One could easily reach for familiar comparisons or ask whether Shallowater are recombining borrowed pieces—Didn’t Lift to Experience gesture toward this territory? Isn’t Wednesday circling something similar?—but doing so only brushes the surface of what makes their work resonate.

Because the referential gravity is real, but Shallowater move beyond it. Their debut There Is a Well (2023) already hinted at a band stretching past its lineage, leading to tours with Horse Jumper of Love and They Are Gutting a Body of Water, plus a notable cosign from Ethel Cain. With their 2025 follow-up, God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars, they push further still. Produced by Asheville mainstay Alex Farrar—whose work with Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, Indigo De Souza, Waxahatchee, and Hotline TNT looms as an unavoidable point of context—and featuring American primitivist guitarist Hayden Pedigo on “All My Love,” the album wears its ecosystem openly. Yet it never feels derivative. Instead, the record transforms those touchpoints into something distinctly Shallowater: slow-burning songs stretched for space, Skipper’s whisper-soft vocals threading through wide, windswept arrangements, and a persistent sense that the band’s West Texas origins echo through every chord.

We spoke with the band all things based around the album, community and the coming..

Hey! Who are we speaking to today, and where are you writing to us from?

Hi! This is Tristan, I play bass in Shallowater. I’m writing from my childhood home in Lubbock, Texas. I’m staying here for a few days for Thanksgiving.

God’s Gonna Give You A Million Dollars feels like such a natural and powerful evolution from There Is A Well. Can you talk about the creative process between the two albums and how your sound developed in that time?

Our second album was already being written by the time There Is A Well was released. We were so incredibly stoked to have a record out but none of us were very stoked on playing the songs on it. We took a long look at what we did enjoy about the record and focused on only those aspects. We wanted to challenge ourselves by writing longer songs, committing to only two open tunings and just being more intentional with every moment of each piece. Also the success of the first record gave us the confidence we needed to push ourselves harder than we had before.

As a band who seems to build entire worlds within your music, what kind of world do you hope listeners find themselves in when they enter God’s Gonna Give You A Million Dollars?
All three of us are from West Texas and even if we tried I don’t think we could hide it. We want to show the Texas we know. A place that is 80 percent sky and 20 percent land. Mesquite trees that look like black lighting striking up from the earth frozen in time. Gas stations lit by sickly colored fluorescent bulbs. It’s boring and it’s huge.

The album feels steeped in the texture and landscape of West Texas — dust, distance, and open sky seem to live inside these songs. How did growing up in that part of the world shape the way you write and hear music?

It took a while to find music that made sense to me but when I did it really clicked. Post rock, slowcore and genres like that always take me home. I didn’t really relate to country songs that romanticized West Texas but bands like Codeine, Tortoise, Red House Painters and Papa M just made sense to me. I think listening to that music and growing up in such a vast open space taught me patience in writing. It becomes intuitive to have longer songs and to have pauses and slower tempos. We learned early on that we didn’t want to shy away from being who we were and we take pride in being a Texas band and we made a concerted effort to put it on display while using the tools we picked up from listening to those bands I had mentioned.

How has living in Houston shaped the band compared to your time in West Texas? Does the change in environment seep into the music at all?
I think it does. It makes us think about home a lot more and to see it as a whole rather than a daily experience. Misremembering feelings and events and creating a myth that we can put down in a song. Also in Houston there is a real scene and community of musicians we could compare ourselves to. It made us work harder. We knew if we wanted to stack up to some of the local bands we needed to work hard and we needed to do something only we could do.

West Texas has its own unique creative community — How does that sense of place and community influence the way you collaborate, create, and share music?

Blake, our singer and guitarist, and I met years prior to us being in a band together at a house show venue. We would go every week and see local bands. Fifty to a hundred people would be there on any given night and it changed our lives forever. The scene was very cyclical though due to Lubbock being a college town and the lifespan of a band was about four years. So nothing felt very serious and that’s what inspired me the most. It made me feel like I could just pick up music and do anything I wanted with it.

Do you feel a connection with other Texas artists, even across different cities and genres? Who are some peers or contemporaries you feel are part of the same creative ecosystem right now?

We absolutely feel a connection with other Texas artists. Hayden Pedigo would be the first one that comes to mind. We actually named our band while we were on set for a music video he was filming in Shallowater Texas back in 2022. Teethe, At First, At First and Palefire also come to mind as far as Texas bands go. I would say the bands that I feel a kindred spirit with are not all necessarily from Texas though. Chat Pile, Flooding, Agriculture, Horse Jumper of Love and Caroline all feel like home to me. I really relate to what they all do and they inspire me infinitely.

What does the next chapter look like for Shallowater — are there plans for touring, more recording, or other creative projects on the horizon?

We want to tour as much as possible next year. There are so many places we want to play and we want everyone who wants to see us to be able to at least once next year. Besides touring we have a few ideas for some recording projects we’re gonna try to pull off and we’re beginning to solidify what exactly we want to do for our third studio album