Edmonton’s Avitas on their upcoming release

Avitas are an Edmonton-based four piece. After playing tons of gigs around the city, they’re prepping to release their debut single, “Call Me What You Want, But Don’t Call Me,” which is to be off their upcoming EP set to release sometime this August. 

The band said the single “was actually written last year, it was one of the first songs we actually did together.” The current band is Jordan Reynar on guitar and vocals, Dale Donaldson on guitar, Gabi Keays on bass, and Julian O’Connell on drums. Keays and Donaldson are the newest additions to the group. 

“The EP is all songs that came from the band [O’Connell] and [Reynar] were in beforehand,” Reynar explained. All the songs except their upcoming single, which Reynar said the band felt the strongest about. “We decided [“Call Me What You Want, But Don’t Call Me”] would be a good first stepping stone to get people listening to our stuff, and to get the EP rolling as well,” the band agreed. 

O’Connell said that the upcoming single is “more oriented to what [they’ve] been pushing from the start,” which is rock. The band feels that since Keays and Donaldson have joined the project, the rock sound has been more at the forefront. 

They actually had the single titled “Scooby-Doo Chase Theme Song,” Reynar says

“You can hear all of our different parts mesh nicely, we had a lot of creative freedom. [The new single] was like our baby,” Keays said. Donaldson said that “even the previously written songs from the other band that are going to be on the EP sound very different from when [he] first learned them.” He added that he feels Avitas ties in a lot of unique sounds. 

Reynar, the band’s lyricist, takes inspiration from media and what’s going on around him, but mainly film. Reynar said he wrote the new single’s intro guitar riff while watching The Dukes of Hazzard. He said he sent it out to the band for their opinions, to which Keays responded: “SCOOBY-DOO CHASE THEME SONG.” Reynar said they actually had the single titled “Scooby-Doo Chase Theme Song” for a while before they decided it’s safer to change it.

For the new single, the band described it as a break-up song. Keays described it as a feeling of “fuck you, you did that, but I don’t really care, I’m gonna go do my own thing. Just letting go and having fun.” 

While the EP is currently unnamed, it is expected to be released this upcoming August. The single is set to release on July 10, which Keays noted is “national dab day.” They’re playing a release show the next day at the Starlite Room. Reynar said “it’s beach themed, wear your beach best.”