The Novel Ideas

IN THE FALL OF 2012, THE NOVEL IDEAS were playing around with a song they’d never performed live. The four friends sat in a room in their house in Brighton, Massachusetts, contemplating the song’s mechanics. They sang together, trying out different harmonies and arrangements until, finally, it clicked. Vocalist Daniel Radin recalls, “When we finally got the four-part harmony down, it was this moment where we realized like ‘oh, this isn’t just an element of our music—it’s a feature.”