We All Just Want To Find Our People

Photo by Josue Orozco (@josueorozcophoto)

Finding your people is rarely something that happens the way you expect. For subtitles., that connection came through a screen, thousands of miles apart, when drummer Alexandre Di Pasqual and vocalist Jake Obermiller found each other on Instagram and began trading demos, discovering that the music they created together felt different from anything they had done before.

At the time, neither of them knew that those first conversations would turn into their dream project. Alex had returned to France after studying music in the United States and was writing on his own, creating instrumental ideas and working with other artists, when Jake reached out after hearing his drum covers. “I was mainly doing studio stuff, but I was kind of writing an album by myself and just working on instrumental stuff,” Alex explained.

For Jake, subtitles. became the project where everything started to fall into place. Before the duo began working together, he had spent years experimenting with different styles, moving between genres like DJing, rap, and indie pop while trying to figure out what felt the most natural. “It was good, but it wasn’t what I loved,” Jake stated.

The early stages of subtitles. were built around figuring out how two musicians separated by an ocean could create together. The process started with sending ideas back and forth, learning each other’s workflow and understanding how their ideas translated between them. subtitles. quickly grew into something much bigger, with the duo creating nearly 20 demos within their first six months of knowing each other.

It didn't take long for one of those demos to begin shaping the direction of the project. The first song that subtitles. created that truly captured their signature sound was “Funny.” “I wrote ‘Funny’ because when I went back home, I was by myself,” Alex explained. “I was writing music, working for artists and bands from France, but I was kind of writing an album by myself. And when Jake hit me up, I was like, ‘Oh, I think I have a good demo to try out.’ And I sent him the very first demo of our song ‘Funny.’”

From there, the direction of subtitles. started becoming clearer. The duo continued building on that foundation, writing songs that balanced emotional storytelling with the energy and intensity they wanted the project to carry. Shortly after, they wrote “Down Bad” and “December” in the same night, continuing to discover what the band could become. “I would say ‘Down Bad’ was like the moment that I was like, this is definitely something that could be special,” Jake said. “This is like a real thing.”

“‘Funny’ was definitely like, ‘Oh, this is the sound,’” Jake explained. “‘Down Bad’ was still kind of leaning into the storytelling, emotional side of things and relying on that more. But once we got to ‘Funny’ and ‘Wasted Time’ and just having more grit and energy to it, I think that was a moment where we learned even more about what the project could be.”

When asked which song best represents subtitles., Jake points back to “Funny.” “Sonically, ‘Funny’ is a good representation just because it has the transition from the pop-punk stuff throughout the main thing into the more emo breakdown, alternative rock kind of style,” Jake expresses. “While having the storytelling element of meeting this girl and things break off and then you try and do your own thing and she’s mad that you’re trying to do your own thing.”

As someone who describes himself as a “lyrics guy,” Jake sees those stories as one of the most important parts of subtitles.. One of his favorite moments on the album comes during the breakdown of “Funny,” where the writing process felt almost effortless. “When I was writing it, I was getting goosebumps a lot,” Jake revealed. “I was like, ‘Ooh, this is cool. This is writing itself. I’m not doing anything here. This is just happening.’”

Of course, writing the album was only part of the process. Even though the songs were created in separation, subtitles. were already thinking about how those tracks would exist beyond the recorded versions. The duo recorded all eight songs on the album in just two weeks together in the studio, but even during that process, they anticipated how certain moments could translate into a live setting. 

subtitles. played their first show at The Virgil in Hollywood while they were still recording the album, performing with demo tracks before having a fully developed live setup.  “While recording, we already knew a few spots in the songs where we would change it for the live performance,” Alex explained. “So it was still exciting.” Since then, they have played eight shows, with their upcoming August tour bringing them through 11 cities across the West Coast.

However, performing together consistently presented an entirely different set of challenges. For a traditional band, preparing for a tour often means weeks spent together in a rehearsal space. For subtitles., that process looks a little different. The two rely on communication, preparation, and trust in each other to bring the songs to life. “It’s tough too, because he’s in France, so we don’t really get like the couple weeks before to go to rehearsal and do like synchronized band stuff where he flips the stick and I do a jump kick at the same time,” Jake stated. “We don’t have time to do that kind of stuff, so we gotta work around that.”

Instead of focusing on creating a perfectly rehearsed performance, the duo has embraced the unpredictable nature of building something from a distance. Their goal has been to create a live experience that feels genuine. “We have a very serious tone with our music, but we just want to be known as people that have good, serious music that are also like a good hang outside of the show,” Alex said. “We’re just a couple of chill guys.”

That balance between emotional vulnerability and approachability is also what they hope defines the community around subtitles.. The album tackles difficult topics, including addiction, recovery, depression, and the moments where people struggle to find their way through those experiences.

“Clean” explores addiction and recovery, while “Reasons To Stay” focuses on suicide awareness and depression. For Jake, the connection comes from knowing that the people listening are often finding pieces of their own stories within those songs.

“Anybody who’s struggled with that kind of stuff and can resonate with the music, I think that’s our crowd,” Jake explained. “Which we’re finding is more and more people every day, which is awesome, but it’s also unfortunate because I’m not singing about good days. It’s typically struggles.”

That focus on honest storytelling is something Jake hopes continues the legacy of the emo bands that inspired him. He points to artists like Hawthorne Heights and American Football as examples of bands that built lasting connections by making listeners feel understood. “I think that we need to bring that back,” Jake said. “The storytelling, the stuff that people really connect to. Whether it has 15,000 plays two years in or 50 million, I want the people to know the story and feel the story.”

That idea of finding connection runs through the entire album, including its opening track, “Midwest Home.”

“When you grow up in the cornfields for the first five or ten years of your life, you might think there’s only five hundred people,” the song begins. “You get older and you come to realize how vast the world is and how many different people exist. You start to realize how small of a piece you are. Now I’m happy to have experienced this all, but whether it’s five hundred or five million, I just wanna find my people.”

For subtitles., that search is still ongoing. With plans for a deluxe release featuring acoustic songs and a second album already in progress, the duo is continuing to build on the foundation they created from opposite sides of the world.

Interview by Bek Allegretti