It’s been awhile since we’ve had any updates, so I thought I could talk to you guys about our background here at Villains Records, why it was started, that sort of thing.

First and foremost, community and collaboration are the two most important things to Villains. A lot of artists and musicians create in a vacuum with no support for their art. It’s a shame, really. Music, especially, is a great way to connect with others — whether through shows, through critiques of each other’s music, or at a party listening to a playlist. When RC started Villains, he wanted to create that same atmosphere of camaraderie and friendship.

We’re all in this together!

That’s how Villains started: as a group of friends who wanted to listen to each other’s music. We started booking shows with each other, recording our albums together, and creating and screening artwork and merchandise. We’re completely in this for the love of music and community, not for profit.

So why do we even bother if there’s no money in it? We don’t need money because we have each other. You could say that we’re more collective than record label, though all of our bands take pride in sticking the big V logo on their CDs.

As a collective, we trade services for each other. We have several friends who record and mix, we have others who can do artwork, some friends who are great at social media, etc. And we’re our each other’s street teams. We go to each other’s shows, put up posters for each other, and share our events on Facebook.

Of course, we have to pay for most of our stuff with our own hard work and free time, but it’s worth it to help each other out.

In fact, we have a super secret project in the works right now that we hope to have released by the end of the summer. It’ll take all of our collaborative effort to make it work! Stay tuned.

Tell us what you think! Tweet us @villains_sd or Facebook us!