A metalhead and an African Ewe drummer walk into a bar. The punch line? They proceed to form an indie rock band.
Okay, so Meric Long and Logan Kroeber of The Dodos, probably didn’t meet in a bar. But the duo, who hail from San Francisco, have managed to blend and hone their different styles and personalities to craft a unique, eccentric sound for years.
The Dodos released their sixth album, “Individ,” in January on Polyvinyl Records, and began a North American tour with a stop in Boston scheduled for Sunday. Their tour will take them to Europe later in the year. Kroeber, the drummer, said “Individ” illustrates the long way the duo has come since their genesis in 2005.
The new album, Kroeber said, is about “accepting what is natural for you” and taking life in the right direction. It also reflects some personal experiences he has gone through recently.
“I kept making the same mistakes in my life. The same things were making me unhappy over and over again,” he said. Once found himself at a low point, he said, he had to make a change.
However, Kroeber said no matter what was happening outside the studio, he was always at his best when recording.
“Working in the studio has always been a place where I apply myself more,” he said. “Over the years, even when I was making bad decisions in my personal life, I was always into the music, so I was able to give my best self to that.”
With fresh inspiration from working in the studio, the duo started working on “Individ” almost immediately after finishing recording their previous album, “Carrier,” in 2013. Kroeber said he and Long, who sings and plays guitar, believe working on new material immediately results in the best creative process.
The album reflects a maturation of the band and a continuation in their development as artists, Kroeber said.
“I have a metaphor I like to use to describe it,” Kroeber said. “In the beginning, we were panning for gold with ‘Beware of the Maniacs’ [their first studio album], and it was a little more open. And after ‘Visiter,’ we started mining for gold. And we kept digging deeper and deeper, and at this point, we’re halfway to the center of the Earth.”
As far as the band’s unique roots — Long’s African Ewe drumming and Kroeber’s metal — Kroeber said they have definitely drawn inspiration from the two diverse backgrounds. And while they don’t consciously think about them while writing music, he described the combination process as a snowball effect, where the inspirations for previous records continue to create inspiration for new music.
With The Dodos coming up on their 10th birthday, Kroeber said he really hadn’t thought about where they would be in the future when he and Long started making music.
“I was pretty bad about looking forward in the future in general, so I never even thought about whether we’d still be doing this in 10 years,” he said. “After we had been together for five years, though, I realized that there was a possibility we’d be going strong for another five.”
In March 2008, as the Dodos left their hometown of San Francisco for the South By Southwest festival, Kroeber said he had a moment of clarity sitting in the front seat of the van and realizing how much the band had accomplished already.
“It was more a moment of, if it all ends now, this was enough,” he said. “Even if the tour we were about to go on completely fell apart, we had just put out an album and had done a lot.”
The Dodos will be playing at Brighton Music Hall on Sunday night.
