Birmingham formed dream-pop four-piece JAWS have just returned with brand new EP, 'If It Wasn’t For My Friends, Things Could Be Different' - their first new music in four years.

We checked in with frontman Conor Schofield to discuss how preparations are going for their upcoming tour and more.

Read the full interview below.

Your new EP has just dropped and it marks your first material in four years – how does it feel to be releasing music again?

A bit weird, to be honest! I feel like a lot has changed industry wise so it is weird in that sense – but also excited because a few of the songs are actually quite old so it was interesting to put them together and get to where we are now.

‘Be Slowly’ – your debut album – is almost ten years old now, does it become more difficult working out which direction to go with new releases?

We’re always questioning our relevance and asking ‘do people still care?’, so I think we have to just keep making music that we like and not think about it too much. I’m happy we established ourselves before TikTok and haven’t had to worry about being on there or making content that fits with the algorithm.

In terms of your upcoming tour, how are you preparing for life on the road again?

It is pretty similar to before. I live in London and the guys still live in the West Midlands so we’ll meet up a few times before and nail down the new songs. I’m pretty sure we could play a show tonight without notice because we’ve been playing most of the songs for about a decade. We try not to put too much pressure on ourselves and just enjoy it. If there’s mistakes then that’s the beauty of live music, isn’t it?

Do you find that there’s a pressure for artists to sound ‘perfect’ now and put on a flawless performance instead?

Definitely! A lot of the newer and younger artists are getting pushed into having MIDI backing tracks where everything sounds the same as on Spotify. It kind of ruins the vibe – we’ve always been a band that just played the show and wouldn’t get upset if we played the wrong note or something went wrong.

What else can we expect from JAWS across the rest of the year and beyond?

I’m not too sure at the point, to be honest. There are some songs we recorded for the EP that didn’t make it so we might do something with them, then maybe an album if we can finish off a few more. We’ll just have to see what happens!