You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
This episode contains explicit language.
Ryan Olson is a member of the band Polisa.
Though he doesn't perform with them live,
he put the band together, produces the songs, and co-writes them.
I interviewed Ryan in his bedroom studio in Minneapolis.
Coming up, he breaks down the song Smug from their 2013 album Ashulamit.
He also talks about two pieces of equipment that have helped shape the sound of Polisa,
and how he was introduced to one of them by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver,
and to the other by DJ Shadow.
My name's Ryan Olson, and I produce Polisa.
The rest of the band is Chris Bearden on bass,
and then two drummers, a band of Askew and Drew Kristofferson.
Vocals is Chaney Lena.
I had a project called Gangs that I recruited, like,
25 people I knew to play soft rock, basically, and Chaney was one of them.
We played shows together with other bands or whatever, knew each other.
In that way, but she asked me to do something,