Jamie Saylor and Kendal Abeln are living the dream: working happily in a continuously growing band that survived through both high school and college years nearly unscathed. Born out of high school gym class, the rock band Four Degrees Colder has audiences floating with their new gritty single “Buoyancy,” an anthemic reminder that nothing can break you, no matter how much it tries to drag you down.
Fronted by Saylor on vocals and bass with Abeln on drums, Four Degrees Colder is an indie pop-rock band from St. Louis who is dominating the midwest scene. Over the past year, the band has performed their biggest shows yet, gained thousands of followers on social media, and has tirelessly worked at crafting their upcoming debut album due in July titled Nothing To Do.
For fans of Two Door Cinema Club, PVRIS and The Killers, Four Degrees Colder might give you a familiar chill, but the band is getting warmer everyday toward becoming a staple rock duo.
“Buoyancy” is the world’s first taste of what’s to come from the band on their album dropping this summer, and it’s certainly a great place to start. The song plays with funky synths, punching guitars and addictive drums, with the occasional bowling ball strike hitting the ears at just the right time, creating a textured, captivating and high-energy single.
The overall message of the song is clear: even when life tries to drag you under, you can remain unbreakable, emotionally-strong and floating above water…A.K.A buoyancy. Saylor’s voice is gritty and real throughout “Buoyancy,” allowing the audience in on her story, getting lost in the relatable lyrics that lie over a rock-infused instrumental that reminds listeners that rock music is indeed alive and well.
“My buoyancy will comfort me / Knowing my words will ditch all their meaning / I feel lonely in this place / But I’ve got one thing,” Saylor sings.
Saylor uses metaphors throughout the track, comparing herself to an “incomplete puzzle kissing dust” and a “washed up seashell never to be touched,” cleverly painting a picture of the loneliness being felt. While “Buoyancy” is an upbeat and optimistic song — the only one on Nothing To Do, according to Saylor — that picks one up after they’ve fallen, it also plays deep into the buoyant theme.
When listening to “Buoyancy,” I felt like I was placed into the shoes of an ocean buoy, the colorful markers that line the seas, marking navigation or fishing spots. In the extensive open waters, these buoys toss and turn through the harsh waves, but they never sink. In fact, they are incredibly useful, strong and a much-needed splash of color in a vast of nothingness. Much like the words in Four Degrees Colder’s newest tune, we should all let our buoyancy comfort us; it’s okay to fall down, but we will always get back up.
Before the song’s release, Crave caught up with Four Degrees Colder’s Jamie Saylor to discuss “Buoyancy,” the new album details and Kendal’s car luck.
*The night before, Kendal’s car underwent issues, so she was unable to make the interview.*
CRAVE: Can you walk me through the songwriting process for “Buoyancy”? What are your favorite/standout lyrics and why?
SAYLOR: “Buoyancy” I think was the second song written for the album. It was one of the first ones. And, I mean, I probably started writing this song like two years ago, so it’s been in the works for a while. But I had the thought in my head that we needed to have a new sound for the album. I don’t know if you’d listened to our first EP at all, but that one is very synthy, very 80s sounding, but I wanted to kind of get away from that 80s sound and go a little bit more modern. So, we introduced a more modern sound. There’s guitars in it and stuff, and it’s a little more upbeat sounding and more rock-adjacent. That one was kind of the test of what this upcoming album was gonna sound like. So we didn’t really know what it was gonna become, but we’re happy with what it did become.
As for the lyrics, I feel like we get the most questions about it, because I’ll send stuff to my friends for them to look at, and I remember for “Buoyancy” they were all like, “What is this song about?” Nobody really understood it. I wrote “Buoyancy” because it’s about being resilient and not staying down when you’re knocked down, you know, going through the punches and rolling with whatever. So it’s kind of written in two points of view: it’s written from me saying “My buoyancy will comfort me,” like, I’m resilient. Then it talks about this girl on the boat dock and kind of like someone seeing this person from a third point of view, and that’s me seeing myself from that third point of view. Like in “She keeps her head hung low to keep living,” keeping my head down, focusing on what I’m doing, trying to just block all the noise out so that I can stay buoyant enough to get through what we’re going through. “What she’s searching for is only just three feet away,” it’s like I’m keeping my head down, I’m not paying attention to anything around me and that what I’m looking for, and what I’m after, is literally so close to me, and I can’t seem to notice.
CRAVE: It’s really interesting to hear what you intended with these lines because I try to listen to songs from many different viewpoints. Songs can just have so many different perspectives depending on who is listening.
SAYLOR: Yeah, with a lot of the songs on this upcoming album, I feel like the lyrics have double meanings. I kind of like being general with the lyrics that I write. I feel like the lyrics I write are kind of weird and don’t really make sense sometimes, but that gives people the ability to put their own meaning to the song and then you connect with the song more. I can say exactly what I’m talking about, but that’s a lot less interesting than if I talk about being buoyant and some random woman on a boat dock.
CRAVE: Is that part your favorite on the track? Or what are your favorite/standout lyrics?
SAYLOR: For “Buoyancy” specifically, honestly, I really like the whole song. I always tend to like songs as the song itself. Specific lyrics are kind of hard for me to point out, but I kind of like “What she’s searching for is only just three feet away,” because it’s kind of stupid in a way. It’s really a dumb lyric, but it says what I want to say so clearly because it’s so blunt. It’s like, what I want is literally right there, and I don’t even know what’s there because my head’s down, and I can’t take the moment to look up and be like, “Oh, it’s right there.”
CRAVE: I also love hearing about the ins and outs of production, and this song has so many cool, funky sounds like the bowling ball pins. Do you produce the songs yourself?
SAYLOR: Yeah, this one I basically did the entire thing. “Buoyancy” was weird because it was one of two songs that we demoed and were like, “Okay, this is the song.” But then we took it into the studio with the producer. There’s a guy who’s here in St. Louis, his name is Ryan Wasoba, and he works with a lot of local bands. But we took it to him, and we kind of recorded the drums and piano and some other things with him, and he helped elevate the song, and he wanted to put two bowling balls sound effects in there twice, and I was like, “No, there can only be one bowling ball sound effect on this record.” So he helped a little bit with that, but mostly all the weird little ear candy funky little noises you’re hearing were pretty much done by me.
CRAVE: You said this was the most optimistic song on your upcoming album Nothing To Do — what is the story you are trying to tell? Why was “Buoyancy” the one to introduce us to the album?
SAYLOR: So the story with the album I always am hesitant to spread out exactly what is happening. But, I will tell you the backstory. So, obviously, me and Kendal, we wear these goofy looking, crushed dummy suits, and it’s like, “Are we a crashed dummy?” What are we implying with these? The reason we were in those suits is because we used to work at a factory manufacturing pharmaceutical product, and the owner of this factory, his name is Florence Russell, he realized that with the advancement of AI, that instead of paying these people who need breaks, lunches, paid time off and all these horrible things that take away from productivity, he realized: “If I just replace these people with AI crash dummy robots, they don’t need breaks, don’t need to be paid, can work 24/7 — productivity and money is gonna skyrocket!”
So, Mr. Greedy Florence got rid of all the human workers; He fired me and Kendal. He made a crap ton of these little AI crash dummy robots that now replaced all the humans, except me and Kendal realized we just stay in this factory because Florence isn’t around to supervise anybody anymore. We could just live here for free. Why go get another job, working minimum wage, working our life away when we can just exist in this factory amongst the crash dummies? They don’t know that we’re people. They don’t know what people are. So that’s kind of the backstory of that. For “Buoyancy,” I remember I really liked the word “buoyant” and I was trying to write a song with that word, but that’s a really hard word to put in a song. So I was like, well, we can use buoyancy and then obviously you’re trapped in a horrible factory. AI is taking your jobs, everything sucks. You gotta stay a little upbeat. You gotta stay a little optimistic. You can’t get down in the dumps. So, “Buoyancy” is kind of the one moment in the record where you don’t want to give up and you don’t want to get discouraged. You know, keep your head down, work on what you’re doing, get what you’re doing done, but, remember to look up and enjoy life too.
CRAVE: I don’t know what sort of story I was expecting, but it wasn’t that. I love it, it’s too real.
SAYLOR: Sounds quite familiar, doesn’t it? We hope that we will get through this. We’ll be buoyant!
CRAVE: Exactly, we will be so buoyant. I was doing some research, and saw Four Degrees Colder started in high school, and is still going strong now. Many people joke about high school bands not being real or not lasting long, so how did you guys manage to get through these transitional life periods together while keeping the message of the band the same?
SAYLOR: That is an amazing question because I would say Four Degrees Colder should not exist. With the way that it formed and the way it’s come to be, it really shouldn’t be a thing. But somehow it is. A little bit of backstory, Four Degrees Colder came together in middle school, and it was with an entirely different group of friends. We’re not really a friend group anymore, we kind of fell out going into high school. I really wanted to do the band thing, and I was like, “Well, I need a name,” and then I remembered we had a band called Four Degrees Colder. I was like, “I’m gonna take it for myself.” So I took it for myself, and then I was friends with Kendal in high school. I went up to her the very next day, and I was like, “I’m in a band now.” She was like, “That’s cool, who’s in it?” and I was like, “Just me!” and she was like, “Oh, okay. Can I join?” and I was like, “Sure.”
But mind you, at the time, I was a drummer and Kendal played baritone in marching band and stuff. She was a drum major. And Kendal didn’t really play percussion instruments very often or really play drums at all. But, she didn’t want to sing, so that was the deciding factor of well, if Kendal doesn’t want to sing, and we want to be in a band, that means I’m gonna have to learn how to sing and how to play bass guitar, and then she’s gonna have to learn how to play drums. And mind you, this was back in 2019. So the fact that we put our first EP out in 2024, that’s a five-year gap of not doing anything, and somehow it’s stayed together. And now we’re putting out this “Buoyancy” song tomorrow and it’s got Kendal playing drums on it and I’m singing and it’s like, what happened? Why is this a thing that exists?
CRAVE: Well, it’s a good thing it did.
SAYLOR: I’m very glad it did. Everything happens for a reason.
CRAVE: I know you held many music industry jobs before and during your time working on Four Degrees Colder. What do you think was your biggest takeaway from those jobs?
SAYLOR: I’m employed by like seven different people right now. It’s pretty bad, but I’ve done a ton of music production work, stage handing, backstage production stuff. For coming up on five years now — half a decade, that’s scary — but the biggest thing I’ve learned from it is that you can never stop learning. That is a really important thing, to never stop learning; never stop being hungry for new information. If you want to learn something, just go do it. You know, go ask somebody. Never stop asking questions. People who enjoy what they do like talking about what they do. Talk to people, make friends and stuff like that. I’ve learned a lot. I’m self-taught with the music thing, like writing, recording, everything, and I didn’t go to college for that, but the reason I’ve been able to learn it and fill shoes that I might not have been able to otherwise is literally from just asking questions.
CRAVE: Right, there’s definitely a lot to learn. What do you think, if you could, you’d tell that version of yourself just starting out?
SAYLOR: That’s a scary question. There’s a lot I could say. I would probably just say the same thing: just never stop learning. Always be hungry to learn more. Don’t stop asking questions and everything happens for a reason. I feel like that’s a big one. If something happens, just go with it, you couldn’t have changed it. Just let it go, you know? Move on to the next thing.
CRAVE: I was going to ask Kendal this, but I think I can format it for you. I know you took the wheel for a long time during the beginning of the band while Kendal was at school. What was it like for her to start transitioning into a more involved member of the band? What was the share of responsibilities like?
SAYLOR: I would say we’re actually still in the transition. Kendal has been attending, for the past four years, art school. So, she’s been very busy. She’s been learning how to drum on the side of art projects and final exams and all these things. She’s been doing a lot these past four years. But especially because the band kind of started being a thing in COVID — that’s when we started being like, “Okay, let’s do this.” A lot of it was, you know, I’ll work on it, I’ll figure out how to write the music, I’ll figure out how to get it made and recorded, produced, and everything. And I told her, “If you just want to be there and I’ll ask you questions, just give me whatever input.” We were just kind of just being a pair. It was let’s hold hands, let’s get through this together. But we’re slowly getting to a point. Kendal’s about to graduate in two weeks or something.
CRAVE: Oh, that’ s amazing! Congrats!
SAYLOR: Congrats to Kendal for graduating and getting a degree. I did not do that. I think within the rest of this year, I think it is really gonna be the turning point for when Kendal starts getting really involved. She’s slowly getting more involved, but she’s still really busy with school and stuff. I’m hoping to have her at the same level and equal creative input, and just more involved in everything. We’re looking forward to that.
CRAVE: Well, tell her on top of how sorry I am about her car, that I’m very happy she’s graduating.
SAYLOR: Stream “Buoyancy” so we can afford to fix Kendal’s car.
CRAVE: That honestly should be the promotion now.
SAYLOR: It’s also funny because she just got in a car crash a few months ago. That’s why she got this other car, and now this. I don’t know what’s going on.
CRAVE: Someone give Kendal a break.
SAYLOR: Yeah, let’s give Kendal multiple breaks. Multiple breaks, please.
CRAVE: Before we go, is there anything else you can share about the future? Anything you want to promote?
SAYLOR: I can say that we do have a new album coming out. It is 10 songs long. “Buoyancy” is the second track on it and it’s coming out in July, and then we will be doing an album release show for it as well like a week later. Until then, we have two more singles coming. The second single is called “Crash Out.” That one is a crazy shoe-gaze noise wall. It’s an insane song, and everybody I’ve shown “Crash Out” to, they just absolutely…that’s the song that they are hooked on. That’s the song that gets all the rave and the comments and everything, so I’m really excited for that one.
Then we have another one, “Don’t Leave Me.” That one, I think, sounds the most like our first EP. So, if anybody really likes our first EP, this song is probably gonna be your favorite off this upcoming record. We have the record in July, you can look forward to it. I’ll give you the title, too; I already spilled all the details. It’s called Nothing To Do. If people wanna follow us on Instagram or TikTok or whatever they got, you can stay up to date with everything we’re doing.
CRAVE: This is certainly going to be a jam-packed summer for you then. I’m excited to see it!
SAYLOR: We’re looking at touring soon, too. And I’m like, “Okay, it’s happening.” We thought 2024 was the Four Degrees Colder year, but it’s 2026-2027, baby.
Keep up with Four Degrees Colder and stream “Buoyancy.”
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