Featured Artist Friday: IDK

In this week’s Featured Artist Friday we take a look at IDK, a psych/prog rock band from Joliet. IDK’s four members are lead vocalist and guitarist Devin Brezak, guitarist Andy Weteska, bassist Alex Ziech, and drummer Brad Earl.

“One thing I really enjoy about the band is the fact that we're all really good friends,” said Brezak. “We're pretty goofy dudes, so writing, practicing, and performing together comes naturally since we're basically just hanging out and having fun while working on music.”

The band takes pride in their philosophy of staying open to any idea and not restricting themselves to any one specific style of sound. IDK draws from a wide spectrum of influences that include classic progressive rock, math rock, and experimental music to create a warm, psychedelic and modern sound.

Earl and Brezak take the lead on writing most of the band’s songs because they have played music together for a number of years and have similar ideas when it comes to creative concepts. Ziech and Weteska’s positive and easy going attitudes allow the band mesh well together and continue to improve as musicians.

“Each of us have distinctly different personalities,” said Brezak. “But as we've grown together, we've learned how to leave the petty B.S that usually comes with being in a band behind us and focus on the friendship and music. With so many different influences coming into the band, we enjoy the fact that we don't feel limited to a specific genre, but we definitely have a general idea as to what sound we're trying to achieve together.”

While Earl and Brezak are responsible for writing many of the outlines for the band’s songs, each member of the band is given the opportunity to put their own spin on the song idea to complete the process of writing a song. Writing songs comes to the group naturally because of the chemistry the group’s four members have.

IDK released their first studio recording titled “Daydreamer” this past May. Their album is available for download on their bandcamp and available for streaming on SoundCloud.

“We just officially added a new guitarist to our group and are now focusing on tightening up the catalogue for our first full length album,” said Brezak. “We're also fiddling around with the idea of a single and a music video in the near future. Looking forward, we hope to release an EP of original folk rock and a live album with DVD release. We are open to touring in the next year.”

IDK will be playing a Halloween show on October 28th at the Drunken Donut in their hometown of Joliet. Other bands slated to perform are No Horse, Skindance, and This Is The Way The World Ends.

Next week’s featured artist will be Chicago singer Brandon James. Brandon recently recorded four songs for our Whiskey Point Sessions video series. If you haven’t already, check out Abzu performing three songs on our Whiskey Point Sessions over on our YouTube Channel.