Just three days after the release of their new EP, "The Grey," Oginalii will stop at JJ's Bohemia, 231 M.L. King Boulevard, for a show Sunday night, Oct. 22.
Just like its name implies, "The Grey" can't be boxed into one genre or another - it hovers between dark and light, somber and uplifting.
"I feel like we re-found our sound. It really does hit everything," says vocalist Emma Hoeflinger, who founded the band with Karalyne Winegarner while both were students at Belmont University in Nashville.
In addition to the two females, the band includes Kurt Kraft and Zach Funkhouser.
Oginalii is Cherokee for "friend." Hoeflinger is from Cherokee County, Ga., 30 minutes from New Echota, capital of the Cherokee nation where the Trail of Tears officially began. Winegarner was born in Oklahoma and is descended from Cherokee.
"Karalyne's from the end of the Trail of Tears, I'm from the start," Hoeflinger says.
Searching for a name for the band they were forming, Hoeflinger was motivated by that coincidence to search the Cherokee language. Oginalii caught her eye because "it looked cool," but when she learned its meaning "We were like yeah, that's it."
When Hoeflinger was preparing to record five songs she's written, she asked Winegarner to sing with her. That evolved into singing some songs at open mic nights around Nashville and then they began writing songs together.
While Nashville is synonynous with country music, Hoeflinger says it's also home to "a rock underground that's pretty massive. East Nashville is the hub for that genre of music."
Oginalii's music has been described as "sludge rock, desert pop" - but perhaps that's just to cover the fact it's impossible to pin down the sound.
"Desert rock means it's dry, a really aggressive guitar sound," explains Hoeflinger. "Our songs are accessible to all genres; it's not too crazy, but at the same time it definitely has a sludgey, droning feel. I'd says it's an aggressive guitar tone with still catchy, but droning, music."
The five tracks on "The Grey" were a collaborative effort between all four of them, she says. The album was recorded in five days in Austin, Texas, produced by Curtis Roush (The Bright Light Social Hour.)
Although "The Grey" drops today, Oginalii has already been touring for two weeks promoting it. Their audience at JJ's will be among the first to hear this new music.
"I wanted it to be something that was moody, but said something without the listener getting irritated or rolling their eyes at it," Hoeflinger describes of the tracks. "I wanted to say something, but I wanted people to listen."
Although Oginalii just played JJ's mid-summer, the only similarity between then and Sunday's show will be that everybody's there to experience the music.
"We just have a good time," says Hoeflinger. "I like to create an environment for the audience where they feel like they are coming to hang out with us and feel open to talk about whatever they want. We're all in the room to experience the same thing."
Contact Susan Pierce at spierce@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6284.