INTERVIEW: Sunsleep’s Devin Barrus discusses the band’s name, LP plans

A band that my girlfriend introduced to me that I came to love myself is Sunsleep. With a bold interpretation of post-hardcore, one of the noteworthy parts of the act is the impressive vocals from Devin Barrus. The band has toured with the likes of Picturesque, Dayseeker, and Slaves. Today, we talked to the bright young singer about some hot topics:

The New Fury: You’ve been a band for a while now, are there any plans for an LP?
Devin Barrus: Yes! We’ve been a band for 4 years, we’ve discussed it a few times. We planned on doing one this year, but because of everything going on, we’ll push that back and put it off for the time being and release some singles!

New Fury: How much of a struggle is it to endure the pandemic as a growing band?
Devin: I think it’s difficult not just for the smaller bands, but established ones as well. We’ve had a pretty eased-into career, not a ton of touring, but it’s effected all of us. We’ve been wanting to tour but it’s all come to a halt. It kinda blows, but gives us time
to sink into our creative spot and work on music away from that. After we came off the Picturesque tour, we’ve been wanting to work on new music more, so that’s a positive.

New Fury: You have an impressive falsetto and strong range – who were your vocal inspirations?
Devin: I think early on I was super into Anthony Green, Aaron Gillespie, Steven Christian, but the falsetto was something I tried to avoid. Ilike to use my chest voice. My vocal coach helped me figure out I have a great falsetto, so I started using a lot more of that and found my own identity in it. There’s a lot of singers now that use that technique, like Halsey and Lynn Gunn, it’s just something I experimented with to get comfortable with.

New Fury: What’s the backstory behind Sunsleep’s name?
Devin: They actually named the band before i was involved, but Miles, our guitar player, was listening to Underoath (we’re all big fans) and
they have that song “When the Sun Sleeps” off their first release, he was super into that track and decided to name the band after it.

New Fury: What are your current dream bands to tour with?
Devin: Oh man, The Weeknd for sure! The Neighborhood, Pvris, The 1975 are at the top of my list. Everyone in the band would agree with that. We’re fans of the guys in Slaves and Dayseeker too, we did a little acoustic run, so that’d be great.

Thanks goes out to Devin for taking the time to speak with us, as well as Cosa Nostra for the opportunity! You can check out Sunsleep’s newest single, “New Sensations”, below!