Trueblood Are Ready To Make a First Impression Of Their Own
With their debut EP First Impressions.
True Blood have already made a first impression. Millions of people found the four brothers through their intimate garage covers on TikTok, watching them play together before many even knew they were a family, let alone that there was original music waiting underneath the covers.
Now, with their debut EP First Impressions, the band is introducing themselves all over again. The five-song project gives listeners a clearer picture of the music they've been making together for years, drawing from the classic rock their parents played at home, the alternative records they discovered as they grew older, and the DIY spirit that got them here in the first place.
That transition has been gradual rather than calculated. True Blood aren't trying to erase the covers that built their audience. Instead, they're slowly redirecting that attention toward their own songs, allowing people to discover that the band they know from a phone screen has always been something much bigger.
From Garage Covers to Original Music
“First Impressions” is almost deliberately ironic given how familiar True Blood already are to their online audience. But the title captures exactly what the band is trying to do. Their covers may have been the entry point, but the EP is their chance to say, essentially, hi, we make our own music too.
The brothers have been playing together since they were children, long before social media suddenly gave their music an audience. They remember playing street fairs, festivals, candle shops, and small shows, with their goal remaining surprisingly simple: put on a good performance and make sure people enjoy themselves. When TikTok changed the size of the crowds, the performance itself didn't need to change. What changed was who was showing up.
There was one major adjustment, though: fewer covers and more originals. Once people began showing up specifically to see True Blood, the brothers realized there was an audience ready to hear what they had actually been writing.
Four Brothers, One Decision
There isn't a secret formula for deciding what sounds like a True Blood song. According to the band, the answer is much simpler: everyone has to like it.
With four brothers comes four personalities and, inevitably, four opinions. Songs and videos don't make it out into the world unless the decision is unanimous. They've learned that if one person isn't comfortable putting something out, it stays in the vault. For a band conscious of the permanence of everything posted online, that standard matters. They want to be proud of what they release years from now, not just in the moment.
That same dynamic extends into their family life. Their parents are deeply involved in the operation, with their mother helping with merch and business while their father shoots and edits much of their visual content. The brothers describe their shared upbringing almost like a creative shorthand: they've grown up listening to the same music, learning instruments together, and figuring out how to disagree without losing sight of the fact that they're family first.
And yes, occasionally the biggest arguments are about food. Apparently, a missing carton of milk can become band drama when four brothers share a house.
The Music Behind the First Impression
The sound of First Impressions wasn't built around one carefully selected reference point. The brothers grew up with their parents playing classic rock, including Led Zeppelin and AC/DC, before discovering bands like Nirvana, Radiohead, and other alternative music from the '90s and 2000s. Rather than consciously copying any one artist, those influences have blended into something that keeps shifting as their individual tastes evolve.
The EP's nostalgic quality happened in much the same way. Nobody sat down and decided that these five songs needed to tell a story about looking backward. They simply happened to be writing during a period when their lives were changing faster than they ever expected, and nostalgia naturally found its way into the lyrics.
“Paint a Picture,” “Matter of Time,” and “I Miss You” all carry that feeling of looking back, even though the band wasn't deliberately constructing the EP around it. In a way, that's very True Blood. The songs aren't trying too hard to explain themselves. They're documenting where the brothers were at the time they were made.
Keeping the DIY Spirit
Signing to Mercury Records hasn't meant abandoning the garage. If anything, True Blood see the label as a way to make the same things they've always wanted to make, just on a larger scale.
They still begin songwriting in their garage. They still made their Make It Out video on their roof with their dad behind the camera. That rooftop setting also deliberately connects the new music to the TikTok videos that first made the brothers familiar to millions of people. Their father even taped amps and drums to the roof for the shoot, creating a visual that felt spontaneous while still carrying a piece of their history.
Their visual process remains just as collaborative as their songwriting. Each brother has different creative interests, from TikTok to merch to video ideas, while their dad handles much of the filming and editing. Whether it's a song, shirt, or music video, their guiding question is essentially the same: is this something they would want to see or hear themselves?
When the Audience Starts Singing Back
Perhaps the strangest part of True Blood's rapid rise is how quickly the audience has moved from watching them through a screen to singing their original songs back at them in real life.
The first time it happened was especially surreal. The band had released a song only the night before, yet people arrived at their next show already knowing the lyrics. More recently, a small San Diego pop-up where they performed the entire EP ended with the crowd singing along to the songs in full. After years of playing to tiny audiences, the idea that people were now showing up specifically for True Blood still hasn't quite stopped feeling strange.
The Observatory in their hometown was another full-circle moment. The venue holds around 1,200 people, making it their biggest show yet, but it carried an extra significance because members of the band had previously attended shows there as fans. Standing on the other side of that room was something they had to experience to fully believe.
First Impressions, Not Final Answers
Despite being their first EP, First Impressions wasn't created by walking into a studio with a grand plan for a cohesive body of work. The brothers simply wanted to make songs they liked. They spent more consecutive days in the studio and devoted more time to production, eventually reaching the unfamiliar territory of having enough songs to choose which ones actually belonged together.
That makes the EP feel less like a definitive statement and more like a snapshot. True Blood are still figuring things out, and they seem perfectly comfortable with that. Their songwriting is changing, their individual tastes are changing, and their audience is changing with them.
What they don't want to change is the relationship at the center of it all. They're brothers first and a band second. Even if the attention disappeared tomorrow, they say they'd still be playing music together in their garage.
For a band whose first audience knew them through covers, First Impressions isn't really about starting over. It's about finally letting people hear what was there all along.
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