The summer sun isn’t Melt-ing this band!
Ice cream, popsicles, chilled drinks, anything and everything will melt in that summer sun we’ve had the privilege of soaking up this Summer of 2025, aside from ION Indie Music Magazine’s July/August cover, Melt! They’ll stay out in that warmth all day, absorbing the rays while planting the garden for a successful live-music lineup.
ION Indie Music Magazine’s music journalist, Kira Doman (she/her), spoke with Melt’s guitarist, Marlo Shankweiler (she/her), and front singer, Veronica Stewart Frommer (they/them) to discuss the band’s debut album If There’s a Heaven and how things may have adjusted since the positive reaction to the art.
The “Sour Candy” that won’t Melt
What started as a high school senior project, Marlo Shankweiler, Veronica Stewart Frommer, Eric Gabriel, and Lucas Saur began playing music together in 2016 to build a project of original music in their last month of high school. Veronica and Eric were the two driving forces behind the project’s lift-off, bringing in Marlo and Lucas to round out the rest of the sound.
“Marlo and I met in our sophomore year of high school through the music scene,” Veronica Stewart Frommer recalled. “We were both playing in someone's band, and the two of us would constantly be out together. This was around the time when I was first venturing into the music clubs of New York City, so the inception of mine and Marlo's friendship reminds me of the time in my life when I was experiencing adulthood for the first time, and I was excited for the opportunities it and the indie music scene of New York held for us. We played in a few bands together before co-founding Melt, but now we truly feel that this is our project.”
“It just meant to be a ‘senior initiative’ organized by one of our co-founders, Eric Gabriel, and we really didn’t think anything would come of it,” they laughed at the memory. “We wrote a few songs in that month, including our first single 'Sour Candy', and with that collection, won a high school Battle of the Bands, which landed us in a studio with a couple of hundred dollars! We chose to record 'Sour Candy' while in the studio, put it on Spotify and YouTube, and truly, it was the next day we saw it blowing up on Reddit! We had a real stroke of luck early on.”
Shocked by their, by definition, overnight success, the friends knew this project couldn’t be limited to the one collection of songs and planned to keep their band together for the foreseeable future. People wanted to see more from their dynamic, clearly impressed by their desire to have fun with their music, and the good news was that the group wanted to see where their music would take them as well.
“I think people could tell it was our first time in a studio together, and we were just having fun, and that energy drew them in,” Veronica pondered. “It was an unconventional beginning, but it has really allowed us to grow.”
The crew was interested in full, soul-based bands, such as Lake Street Dive and Fleetwood Mac, when they first came together in high school, leaning to replicate that sound a bit, as can be heard in “Sour Candy”, though their taste has certainly evolved to the indie-rock lane over their years of performing.
Marlo, Eric, Lucas, and Veronica were truly able to creatively explore their sound in Melt, honing their writing, melody and harmony crafting, and performance skills before even having officially released an EP or full album. “Sour Candy” was extremely well received as a single upon its initial debut and, as of June 2025, is sitting at over 13 million streams, which specifically shocked lead singer and writer of the song, Veronica, as it stemmed from their personal experiences.
“The subject matter behind the song, 'Sour Candy' was from my experience in a long-distance relationship with someone who loved to adventure, going on incredible journeys for months at a time – it was really about the bittersweet feeling of realizing, 'Wow, I love you for your sense of adventure, but it also sucks to be sitting at home wondering when you'll ever come back,’” they reminisced. “'Sour Candy' was a metaphor for that feeling. Over the years, people have gotten creative with the meaning behind 'Sour Candy', but you've heard it here once and for all: It's a metaphor for loving all of those qualities in someone, even when they hurt.”
Knocking out all expectations with their first project as a band, it was still their final year in high school together, and they all already had established universities they had been accepted to, none of which were the same one. Though their departures didn’t stop any of the members from enjoying their time together before their summer ended, New York City has plenty to offer for budding musicians.
“We had all already decided to go off to college before we started the band, so there was no hesitation or alienation in that; we just made sure to book plenty of shows together before we left,” Marlo Shankweiler explained. “Even though some of us were in D.C., some of us were in Boston, we still found time to play together throughout our college years.”
“Because we started as a tour-heavy band, and because we weren't all living in the same place, for many years, recorded music was kind of secondary in our project; we recorded music so that we could keep touring the music,” added Veronica. “Then, when we finally all graduated from college and moved back to New York, we knew we had the time and the space to really hone in on a more long-form project.”
As the band spread amongst different states of the northeast, choosing majors with no relation to music, but knowing all the same music would play a substantial part in their near futures, they continued to pursue live music opportunities where they saw fit.
“I then went to college for international relations, and studied nuclear weapons policy, but I always knew I wanted to be a musician,” Veronica claimed, “I just wasn't sure if my life would take me there. And then all of us came to the band in this lucky stroke of magic, and we made great and fun music together, but we still had so much of our own futures ahead. We had to grow from 18 to 26-years-old and individually decide if this was the type of life we wanted.”
Veronica thought for a moment, “I'd say overall it's been a natural turnover over the years. We're all so lucky to still be good friends with those who have crossed paths with Melt after all this time. Currently, the group is made of a rotating cast of people on our keys and percussion, me as lead singer, Marlo on guitar, and Lucas Saur on bass. Our co-founder, Eric Gabriel, who was on backing vocals and keys, recently departed from the band to pursue a solo career, which we’re always supportive of!”
Planting the Garden for a successful debut album
It’s not uncommon for artists to have both a solid cast of performers and musicians assigned to certain roles, as well as a rotating selection of people in their band, depending on the intention and sound of their music. With their combination of a rotating cast, as well as a solid and stable collection of artists on their team, Melt continues to create new sounds and projects, even altering their recorded songs while playing live to a genre or style that they’ve deemed better suits their crowd.
“In our early days of performing, the audience truly became one of our biggest collaborators for the album,” Veronica added. “We’d been workshopping a lot of the songs while playing live shows for years, so quite a good number of the songs that made it on the album weren’t brand new! We really rely on that live sonic landscape.”
After a year on streaming platforms, If There’s a Heaven has provided the band with more of their favorite part of band life, touring! Marlo and Veronica have explained that as their music has reached more and more fans across the country, even venturing into neighboring countries, so too has their touring lineup.
“The past few tours we've booked have been these big cross-country tours, since we've just put out our first album, and it's been a huge growth for us,” Marlo said excitedly. “When we were just kids in college meeting up on the weekends, it was the craziest thing in the world to come together and play for crowds, it was so epic.”
“When we would meet up on those weekends, we were performing in Nashville, Atlanta, Georgia, etc.; it wasn't just the Northeast,” Veronica added. “We were really in a weekend-warrior setup. We booked ourselves until we got agents in 2020, early in the pandemic, and they've been incredible in helping us grow our touring operation.”
“Now, it's the same epic-ness, but in a completely different format: we have agents, we have the music behind it, and we get to play for weeks at a time! We’ve really scaled up our performances in the best way,” Marlo concluded. “We ended up sending Sam Evian a collection of five songs the first time we left his studio, kind of putting the ball in his court.”
Melt’s current producer, Sam Evian, offered up his studio to the group after being impressed by the lineup of music Marlo sent. While recording, the band was hit with such a strong, creative force within the nature-oriented studio, and through Evian’s assistance, encouragement, and instruments, they knew the album had found its recording spot.
“When we first met our producer, Sam Evian, we did a two-day session in his amazing, upstate New York studio in the spring of 2023,” Veronica reminisced. “The very proximity to nature within his studio is just so inspiring and lovely, and I think being there, together, with no distractions, gave us the time and space to decide who we wanted to be in our recorded discography. There, we recorded ‘Plant the Garden’ and ‘The Door’, and we were so excited about how that sounded, we knew we had to make the rest of the album with Sam. It was a very live system where Marlo, Lucas, and the full band played live together in a small circle for the core of the songs, and I recorded my vocals in this comforting sound booth. It was a great way to merge our history as a live band with hopefully our future as a recorded and full-time band.”
The band never arrived to their recording sessions with nothing in their back pocket, as they had been constantly workshopping a multitude of songs with their fans in a variety of performances, some of which are currently shining on their discography!
"If There's a Heaven took about two years to compile," Veronica recounted. "Some of the songs, like ‘Plant the Garden’, ‘The Door’, and ‘Better Without You’, we've been playing as early as 2019, but we recorded the album’s entirety in 12 days."
The band experienced the very common speed bump of second-guessing which songs fit this specific project, doubting some of their biggest hitters and now fan-favorites! Marlo and Veronica contemplated why so many artists, including themselves, fall victim to this mentality.
“‘Plant The Garden’ was a song we did not have on our radar to record,” Marlo laughed. “We had been stuck on ‘Plant the Garden’ for a long time, constantly reshaping it – there was a two-minute guitar solo at one point and all sorts of weird alternate bridges – and Sam helped us get the bridge to just eight bars instead of two minutes. Now [early June], that song is streaming more frequently than ‘Sour Candy’, which is crazy to see! It’s such a great song, and I can’t believe we almost didn’t include it.”
"One of the biggest parts of making an album is just deciding on the track list," Veronica sighed with a laugh. "We had a bunch of songs we had to cut, such as a surplus of very sweet ballads. ‘The Idiot’ was the last song we finished writing, and it also almost didn't make it on the album! It was not ready by the time we were projected to be done, but Sam, our producer, graciously stayed up with us until 1 AM to finish it on the last night of recording. At first, the process of weeding out songs felt like cutting through a forest, and then once it all started to come together, it truly clicked into place. This is the project."
"Your weirdest ideas are the least conforming ideas," Veronica stated. "It feels the most vulnerable to choose them. I remember writing ‘Sour Candy’, I have a voice recording of me singing 'sour candy on the table. Is that weird?' And I think the process of being an artist is really just leaning into those quirks that make you feel uncomfortable. It's something that I'm definitely still learning. You always hear those stories, 'It was the song that I never wanted to release,' but I think we all feel that way because they're the most vulnerable pieces we're offering. They don't sound like what other people are making, and that can be a scary feeling."
Veronica’s reassurance, not only in their own uncertainty and vulnerability, but also in their bandmates, has propelled them to take risks with their sound in ways that have certainly set them toward journeys and sounds they never thought they’d be able to make a reality. Together, they build each other’s creativity in ways that continue to benefit the band.
"We all write in many different configurations,” Veronica explained. “Some songs come out of full band collaboration, where the band is jamming, and I'll write melody and lyrics over it. Usually, on the songs that I sing, I've written the lyrics and everyone writes their own parts, because I couldn't tell Lucas how to write a bass part or Marlo how to write a guitar part, and then we workshop them together to the point where the cohesiveness just clicks.”
“Lucas will play a part I love, and I'll just double it to provide some elevation,” Marlo shared. “He played that baseline for ‘Plant the Garden’, and I loved it, so I decided to play chords over that; sometimes it's just fun to double what each other is doing! It's very hard to tell another person what to play when you're in a band.”
“Something I've learned about myself is that I'm more of an analytical thinker,” Veronica pondered. “My songs will just come out, and then I feel like I find the meaning in them later. I was really glad that we, as a band, were able to let our dynamic be that. We all like what we're doing, it feels right, and we're not quite sure why, but we're not going to let that go any time soon.”
Giving each other the space to let loose with their sounds and songs has provided the band with an atmosphere and energy rich with the opportunity to grow and expand to new fanbases and locations.
“We're all expecting our sound to shift a bit with the new music coming out, which is very exciting for us,” Marlo divulged. “We might not be entirely sure where it will take us, but what we've done with Sam is so specific to the sonic world created by his studio, and really by his production style in the way he hears music, so I think if we continue to record with Sam, there will be a consistency in how we sound.”
“If we go anywhere else, it's going to sound pretty different based on the atmosphere of the studio, and the instruments offered,” she continued. “For example, the harpsichord and the 12-string acoustic guitar that's all over If There’s a Heaven were instruments he had. We don't have a harpsichord; I don't have a 12-string; a lot of our sound is very specific to the studio we were in. Our next wild pipe dream is going to Europe – who knows what it'll sound like over there for us? Personally, I hope we incorporate some bagpipes into our sound!”
Veronica laughed at Marlo’s mention of bagpipes, insinuating this is not the first time the instrument has been a suggestion, but they affirmed there is certainly new music in development.
A creative force not to be reckoned with
Having come together at a pivotal point in their lives, and seeing the success of their band and the desire from their listeners for more, they’ve developed a very unique and encouraging bond. The entire existence of the band is built on their ability to collaborate and understand each other’s needs and aspirations in what they create with and for the band, as well as being open and honest about where they see themselves within Melt.
“We'll be writing and recording a lot this spring and summer, so we'll see what materializes in terms of releases, but it's definitely new music season in Melt-land,” Veronica grinned. "We're excited to embrace the edgier side that comes with our live performances, because our live side is a little bit more rock-leaning with harder edges, and we love it! I’m excited to let our sound out of the cage and explore what it might be like to let loose on our recorded discography a bit more. I'm envisioning Marlo really leaning into the electric guitar vibe rather than the acoustic."
Marlo proudly credited Veronica for being the band's primary creative director behind most of the Melt’s artful decisions, encouraging them to discuss their process behind photo shoots, music videos, and their creative force as a whole.
“My creative force is a muscle I've been strengthening since the start of Melt,” Veronica recalled. “Because we're indie, this is the biggest our team's ever been, since we now have agents, lawyers, producers, etc., but we're still unmanaged, and we still don't have a label. Everything's been in house within our band for quite a long time, so I think I first started drawing this creativity out of myself out of necessity, and it rather quickly became something that feels right for me. I think one of the coolest things about being in a band is that you get to explore so many creative frontiers, but you can also really take yourself seriously as a creative!”
“Yes, I'm the main point person on creative direction for the band, but everyone brings their own flair to execute the final product! We are lucky enough to work with a lot of our dear friends, who are also creatives, and have contributed to video and photo shoots,” they listed. “It's all one big snowballing collaboration, but I focus on the overall creative and stylistic direction across the projects we're working on. It's really fun!"
“It's amazing that, as well as making music and putting albums out, I’m also given all these creative directing opportunities. We're creating a world that the album lives in, there are endless opportunities to expand your creative toolkit and push yourself to take you and your craft seriously as a creative in multiple spheres, video editing, styling, creative direction, writing, etc., and I'm so grateful for that.”
Although Veronica is the creative and stylistic director for Melt, the, what one might now call, iconic photo used for their debut album, If There’s a Heaven, came from a connection in Marlo’s life.
"The photo we used for the cover of If There’s a Heaven is a picture of my mom at summer camp," Marlo revealed with a warm smile. "This photo wound up on the cover of an article in the New Yorker about summer camp in the 70s, and it crossed our radar because someone sent it to my mom, and we realized it just radiates the aura of our album and the way we recorded. It looks like the sound we developed for the album, so I thought it could be a good fit."
"We all agreed on it," Veronica backed up. “In the months following the album’s release, so many people have connected to it. So many people see their own connections to the music and to the photo, and it continues to blow my mind. This photo makes perfect sense for this project – It’s all endless.”
Manifestation in action
The start to a show is crucial in setting the tone for the audience in what they can expect, as well as introducing the band to new listeners in attendance. For this specific run of touring, Veronica mentioned the aura or atmosphere they’re trying to create revolves around love, both for each other, but also for yourself.
“I love starting our show with ‘Fake Romantic’,” Veronica glowed. “It has this fun audience moment where everyone screams, 'I just wanted to be loved!’ And it's a fun song to get the crowd riled up, it's also the first song on the album! Our show is very 'love-each-other' oriented, so I think it always gets the room in the right energy. It's fun, almost to the point of being cheesy, to start the show with everyone connecting.”
How does an artist pick and choose the music they’ve lined up for each performance? For Melt, aside from their already planned setlist of songs from If There’s a Heaven, they let the audience’s energy be the driving force behind what songs they decide to cover or throw in just for the fun of it.
“Our live sound is a lot less contained than how our studio music sounds,” Marlo shared. “When we're in the studio, we're all very fixated on our parts and making sure it's recorded all pretty, but live, we're just going for it in a very different way. That's the rock and roll in us that we want to start bringing more of to the recorded music.”
“We also have a habit of adding covers, like our newly added cover of ‘Bad Romance’ by Lady Gaga,” she added. “I'm always excited to see how a crowd's going to react if we do something a little bit weird, and some of those Lady Gaga parts are silly and fun to play with, so that was a cool one to see the crowd react to.”
The audience’s experience within the concert is something the members of Melt are always trying to shape and predict so that they can present their best show for every show, regardless of the venue size, though that does affect the band’s performance style as well.
“A live show is very much a collaboration between the band and the audience," Veronica stated. "We bring 100% to every night, if we can, but we've noticed in rooms where the audience has a lot of energy, like a smaller, packed room, the energy can bounce off the walls, back at us, and right back at the audience. That energy amplifies our performances in exciting ways, and I've recently grown interested in figuring out how to induce that into every crowd, even if we're in a bigger room with a smaller audience. As a performer, it gives me so much more juice to connect with our listeners and really put on a show.”
"We do love small, 500-capacity clubs that feel sold out, they’ve always been our favorites to perform," Marlo agreed, "It feels silly to say, because it's amazing, of course, who doesn't want a sold-out room? But even a packed, 200-capacity dive bar is awesome! We love those smaller rooms, with the lower and rowdier stages; honestly, it lets the wild out of the crowd a bit more."
The members of Melt, as Veronica stated earlier, love to perform their live shows above all else, which can be seen in their inclusion of nearly all audience sizes as they both ponder the question of, “What atmosphere are we drawn to most?” They’ve had the honor to play everything from house shows, to dive bars, to festivals, to their most recent addition, amphitheaters, and it seems they haven’t found a live setting they don’t love!
“We're doing a run this summer with My Morning Jacket, and knowing their audience, they’ll probably be packing huge amphitheaters, which is completely new to us,” Marlo said excitedly, “so we may come back next time here and be all jaded and say we like packed 5000-capacity venues.”
The band has now had the opportunity to play bigger venues, but at the time of interviewing, they were still anticipating this debut over their touring schedule with My Morning Jacket, and the new listeners and chances that were about to come their way with this experience.
“We play based on the size or style of the room we're booked in, because, as mentioned before, we really feed off that crowd energy. It's funny,” Marlo laughed, “even though we just said we love small rooms for our loud and powerful presence, I've noticed when we get on a big stage, it just sounds right. Maybe that’s what will happen as we play with My Morning Jacket! We’re going to be outdoors and at mountainside venues in August for those collaborative shows, so hopefully that energy comes into our music too.”
Touring the country constantly, and loving nearly every second of it, Marlo and Veronica have both been amazed by the response from fans in even the most unexpected of places, such as numerous pockets of the Midwest.
“It's amazing how many times we've crossed this country at this point, and I think one of the biggest realizations I’ve had touring so much in the past year(s) is how much the audience really can co-create the vibe with us, and create their own experience,” Veronica said. “It's very different in every city, and it's cool to see where people are at each night! During our last tour, we were in Boise on a Tuesday, and being from New York City, Boise, Idaho, is not the first place we’d expect a bunch of Melt fans to be, but those people were ready to party! It's like, 'Alright, Boise on a Tuesday is getting lit!'"
Unsuspecting Boise, Idaho, certainly isn’t the only place Veronica or Marlo will find Melt fans, as this writer sits in northern Wisconsin, their music reaches fans across midwest towns they’ve never heard of, as well as the big-name festivals so many artists dream of playing. With the extensive lineup of touring over the years, and their love of the art of performing, the group has certainly crafted their own list of dream venues and festivals that they hope to be invited to as their listener count and fan base continue to grow.
“We are super excited to play Bonnaroo this summer, it's been a big bucket list goal for us,” Marlo exclaimed. “We manifested it the week or the day before we were announced, which was really funny. It's going to be an amazing set, there will be a 360 audio component to it, and I think it will be a big milestone moment for the band. We're also looking forward to taking a slower July, if we can, so that we can hang out together and be human beings, maybe go on a little beach trip for a weekend!”
“We're definitely in our witchy manifestation era,” Veronica nodded. “We fully manifested Bonnaroo, but of course we also worked our asses off for it! We also manifested 'Red Rocks 2025!' We had been claiming that energy for years, and it finally came true!”
Unfortunately, Manchester Tennessee was seeing extreme weather, and had to cancel the weekend events of Bonnaroo after seeing heavy flooding in the campsites and stage areas on June 13th, 2025, after only the first day of the festival. Melt was scheduled to play on June 14, 2025, so they absolutely still manifested, as well as worked hard, for that slot!
They are still playing Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, CO with My Morning Jacket on August 15th and 16th of 2025, and this manifestation of their success comes from an entirely passionate and driven band that longs to show their listeners what they’re here for, and that they’re here to stay!
“Taking yourself seriously as a creative is just like taking that leap of faith,” Veronica expressed. “When I have struggles in taking myself seriously, I think, ‘why not?’ Why wouldn’t we get to play Bonnaroo? Why wouldn’t we get to play Red Rocks? Why should we feel like we don't deserve to play those venues? We write music that's meant to be played at Red Rocks!”
“We've done this for a while now, and as we’re nearing our late-20s, I think we're finally ready to announce: we love what we do! We love what we make, so let's take it everywhere we want to take it and not apologize for wanting those things.”
Of course, Marlo and Veronica have praised their love of touring the music and performing live across the country over the past three years, but with the traveling and touring, they’ve found even more elements to love about their jobs. Marlo specifically declared her love for the small details and moments she creates herself in all of the places Melt gets to visit.
“Getting to travel to so many exciting places is so sick,” Marlo grinned. “We were in Park City for a few days, and I went snowboarding between performances and rehearsals! The opportunity to travel and revisit places, seeing the country in general, is really cool. I love being able to talk about a certain restaurant with a random fan in some obscure state just because of how frequently we've been able to travel in this career.”
Both members, almost as if to annunciate further just how much they love the performing live aspect of their job, mentioned that their favorite parts are connecting with their fans while on the road.
“I love when people are dancing on the outskirts of the show,” Veronica smiled. “For instance, sometimes I'll see a couple really salsa dancing or something, simply looking fabulous from the stage, and I always love seeing that. My two favorite things are, groups of friends who came together or met at the show, and couples who love our music, especially queer couples! I love seeing a queer couple in love in our audience, it helps me realize the world is a beautiful place.”
Fans and showgoers’ general enjoyment and happiness fuel the performances in a way Veronica was never expecting when they first made their way onto the stage with Melt. The acceptance fans feel with the context and energy of their songs is matched by the performers as they watch their fans let go and be themselves.
“This band has helped me be myself,” Veronica said earnestly. “It's such a gift to have a creative part of you be celebrated, because it is so vulnerable. It brings tears to my eyes, because as someone who didn't know I was queer until later in college, that was such a scary thing to acknowledge and tell people, especially with my pronouns, and I find that the more I've come into my own, the more our audience reflects it too.”
“We now have a way queer-er audience, and it feels so amazing to look out into the crowd and see people who I identify with,” they continued, “which is funny, because a lot of people say 'Oh, it's great to see queer artists!' No, it's great to see queer people in the audience as a queer artist where I know I can just be myself! I'm most grateful to have a band where putting yourself out there is done in tandem with a couple of other people who accept and respect your visions the way you hoped. It's truly enabled me to find and accept myself in the most important ways."
Melt has certainly proven there is a heaven with their debut album as they craft the utmost feelings of acceptance and love for everyone, especially in times of uncertainty within themselves, their band, and the world they’re finding space in.
“We're looking to travel out of the country,” Veronica said with certainty. “I think it's a good time to fly the coop. We've been touring the United States pretty heavily for three years, so we're really excited to take Melt International! We thrive when the music has a sense of place, so choosing the location for our next project is important to us, and we’re so excited to find out where that might be.”
Want to join Melt in Heaven as they perform live across the country and further? Follow their website to find out where and when they’re performing next! Traveling across the country as often as they do, you’re sure to bump into them some way or another!
Watch for ION Indie Music Magazine’s bimonthly issues as we cover more up-and-coming independent artists as well as plenty of photo and interview coverage from artists you’ve known and loved for generations!
