Synth-pop band Poliça on the Dusk lineup

So what is Poliça? A Minneapolis synth-pop band that got together in 2011, an after-effect of a project with frontwoman Channy Leaneagh and her Gayngs cohort Ryan Olson. The pair picked up members along the way including Christopherson and fellow drummer Ben Ivascu, and bass player Chris Bierden, started tracking demos and before they knew it stumbled into an active touring and recording routine. They have since released three full-length albums and an EP.

“It was sort of like varying musical personalities that were hand-picked by Ryan and Channy to kind of bring together into an interesting formula, as a band,” Christopherson said. “We knew each other’s projects and knew each other’s music better than we knew each other as people ... . Over the last six years we’ve all been very close, and that’s just settled into a really nice family to be in.”

Here’s the rest of our conversation with Christopherson, who we caught up with via phone while he was home in Minneapolis.

Are you working on any new records or singles right now?

“We have a record that we finished earlier this year that’s a collaboration with a chamber ensemble from Berlin called Stargaze, and we’re getting ready to announce that record later this year and that will come out later this winter. Over the summer we had released one single, like a one-sided 12-inch single, with them as sort of a precursor to that record, and then earlier in the year we released a couple tracks digitally.”

What inspires your music?

“I would say it’s kind of a mix of a lot of things. … Ryan, our producer, our songs kind of start out with him and Channy, writing just fundamentals of a song with electronics and vocals. He’s constantly working with other projects and with Poliça so they sort of influence each other. … Since we did our last record, Ryan’s been listening to a lot more kind of deep groove electronic stuff from all over the world, and that’s kind of seeping its way into the new stuff we’re writing.”

How did the collaboration for your new album come about?

“It started out as a concert that was being commissioned by Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra here in the Twin Cities where they pair neoclassical acts with established indie artists. So they asked us if we would do a collaborative set with Stargaze and we agreed to it. We thought it would be a really cool exercise, something we’ve never done before. Then we happened to be in Berlin on tour, so we met up with them and kind of struck up a relationship well in advance and realized that we kind of wanted to work with them on a deeper level. And so we ended up booking a couple different weeklong sessions and pretty much just writing a whole set of music together from the beginning. We wanted to avoid it just being a Poliça set with string players kind of playing our normal music, so we decided to write a whole set with them. After we had about an hour of material, we realized we should really record this. They all flew over to the States to Minneapolis and we did the premiere of it, I want to say it was in November of last year in St. Paul, and then immediately drove straight to the recording studio for a few days and tracked the whole thing.”

How did your show at the Dusk Music Festival come about?

“It’s just an area that we really like to be in. … When we got asked if we wanted to go to Tucson, everyone was immediately excited.”

What is favorite song to perform live?

“Of our material, I really like playing the song ‘Amongster.’ It’s kind of one of our oldest songs; it was off our first record. It has a build, an intensity to it that just goes over really well live and an ending that you just kind of can’t really experience it in the same way that you can in a concert on record. I like playing songs like that that you get something out of a live show that you just can’t get putting the record out.”