Oklahoma DIY indie pop duo doubleVee urges 'Treat Her Strangely' on new album

In naming their second LP as the indie pop band doubleVee, Oklahoma City husband-and-wife duo Allan and Barb (Hendrickson) Vest selected one of their song lyrics that could conceivably double as relationship advice.

"We came up with a list of different titles, and at the end, I was like, 'What about "Treat Her Strangely," because it's in our (first) song?' It's never meant to be something negative. We just thought it could have different connotations, and it kind of makes people think," Barb said.

"It's more meant like treat her magically and with mystery and lift her up. It's not meant to be like, 'Hey, freak this chick out.'"

In the decade since they formed doubleVee in 2012, the Vests have turned making music with magic and mystery into their specialty, developing a distinctive visual flair to complement their singular sound.

"We handled the layout of the artwork ... and we're doing most all the stuff for the new record. It's just like this little baby you take care of," said Allan, formerly the frontman for the influential Oklahoma indie band Starlight Mints.

"And we're ready to write some more songs."

Couple's intriguing backgrounds influence their doubleVee music

The Vests, who married in 2015, boast intriguing backgrounds that influence their output as doubleVee: Barb spent 16 years in public radio, including writing, hosting and producing "Filmscapes," a nationally syndicated film music program that gave her the chance to interview her musical heroes, including Danny Elfman and Philip Glass.

She also edited a music webzine for several years and marketed and produced eight Rock ‘n Roll Garage Sale & Shows featuring local bands and merchants. Her love of music began in childhood with her family, and as a vocalist, she has performed for themed cover shows and backed up local bands' recordings.

"We're constantly creating," Barb said of life with her husband. "We play off of each other and make up little songs almost daily, just kind of running around the house."

For more than a decade, Allan was the main songwriter, lead singer and multi-instrumentalist for the Norman orchestral pop band Starlight Mints, which released four albums between 2000 and 2009. Between the Mints and his solo work, his music has appeared in the movies "Barnyard" and "The Art of Getting By" as well as the television shows "Malcolm in the Middle," "Californication," "One Tree Hill" and "Gossip Girl." The BBC miniseries "Demons" used the Mints' "Eyes of the Night," off their 2006 album "Drowaton," as its theme song.

"We were a band for like 14 years ... and we toured and toured and toured," Allan recalled. "So, we had quite an adventure."

Plus, his instrumental scores have been showcased in a variety of projects, from Disney animated shorts and OKC cult-favorite filmmaker Mickey Reece's movies "The Seducers Club" and "Punch Cowboy" to projects by Canada-based writer-director Erahm Christopher and features directed by award-winning Oklahoma native Bradley Beesley. Allan has produced and arranged music for the bands Skating Polly, Student Film and Bishop Allen and composed the theme for the podcast "In Sickness and In Health."

"We're definitely the ying and yang to our brains, for sure. Barb will make sense of something that I can't make sense of; she puts the pieces together," Allan said.

"We're a good team, I think," his wife added. "We're getting better, too, I feel like. It's like we're getting faster at what we do."

New LP follows up ambitious 'Twilight Zone'-inspired debut

The couple spent five years crafting doubleVee's 2017 full-length debut, "The Moonlit Fables of Jack the Rider," an ambitious concept album with a "Twilight Zone" vibe. They followed up with the 2019 five-song collection "Songs for Birds and Bats," and the EP's closer, “Last Castaways,” was picked the next year for the soundtrack to the immersive video game "Beyond Blue."

"It's so funny, because the word 'sellout,' people used to use that term. They don't use that term anymore, because you have to sell out. You have to make money, and TV shows, video games and movies, that's how you make money," Allan said.

The pair conceived their newly released full-length follow-up, the enigmatically titled "Treat Her Strangely," during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"There were definitely some darker themes in some of these songs. ... But this one is kind of freeing, because it wasn't supposed to be a big theme. We'd just kind of finish a song and then went on to another," Barb said, adding that Salt Lake City-based artist Grant Fuhst has created the album artwork for all their albums, including the new release.

"The crazy thing is it's been about a year since we even finished this. There were just so many extenuating factors: figuring out the funding and waiting and watching my parents' health and the pandemic. We just weren't ready yet."

Duo takes DIY approach to their indie pop music

Since the Vests have always taken a do-it-yourself approach to doubleVee, working on their new album in their home studio while holed up during the pandemic came naturally.

"We've always kind of had that aesthetic anyway, just to do as much as we can ourselves. We're lucky to have our home studio that we've built up quite a bit over the 12 years that we've been together," Barb said. "We couldn't do what we do, really, if we had to go pay a studio to produce our music. We just are so exacting with it."

Allan produced and recorded "Treat Her Strangely" with his wife as co-producer. They tapped their friend Wes Sharon at 115 Recording in Norman to mix and master the album, with the couple helping with the mixing.

"A lot of people send off their stuff for mixing ... but we can't be that hands off. And we have a great system with Wes," Barb said.

Couple developing a live show for doubleVee

For the past 10 years, the Vests have developed doubleVee primarily as a studio band, and they've put a lot of work into making music videos with a distinctly cinematic sensibility to showcase their songs. For the captivating clip for "When Dawn Comes Tonight" — which boasts the lyric that became the new album's title — the couple headed to Texas to actually work in a real film studio.

"We worked with (director) Dan Brown down in Austin — he was a childhood friend of Allan's — and that was awesome because we'd never really shot in an actual studio space like that with the big green screens and all the great pro cameras," Barb said.

"But with our third one (for 'The Question's Closed'), we kind of ran out of budget and time. So, it's very DIY. We did everything on our Osmo Pocket camera. ... We put up a green screen in our dining room and just had at it."

Along with their videos, the couple is working on a live show to spotlight their doubleVee music.

"We've not been a live band this whole time at all, but we have started practicing with a band," Allan said. "Although we are finding out that our songs are not the easiest songs to play ... we have such a good catalog now to play a good short live show or long live show. And we're pretty excited about that."

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma indie duo doubleVee talks about their DIY approach to music