Photo by Sung Min Kim

By DCist Contributor Sung Min Kim

The first time the staff of Babe City Records heard tracks from the artist known as Den-Mate, they were immediately blown away. The very next day, the local indie label invited Jules Hale to their headquarters in Dupont Circle. A few months later, many of them are now Jules Hale’s live band.

“Jules kind of came out of nowhere,” said Peter Lillis, Babe City Record’s publicity guru. Lillis and the rest of the Babe City crew were impressed by Hale’s songwriting and style, a unique hybrid of electronic, dance, and pop music. “There’s something very fresh about Den-Mate. A lot of electronic music has a potential to be very dated.”

Babe City Records, who also supports local rock bands like Witch Coast and The Sea Life, provided her with resources to fuel her career, including a supporting cast. Playing now with a live band, Hale boasts a powerful persona in performance. She screams on her mic, jumps into the crowd and bumps into the audience members to push the energy. She is a catalyzer onstage.

“Once I was able to play with a full band, I feel like I was able to be as charismatic as possible,” Hale told me. “I’ve always wanted that (punk) energy from the start. It feels very natural getting in people’s faces.”

Even in a venue where jumping into the crowd and moshing may not be easy for performers—such as 9:30 Club, where the band performed in August for Babe City Records’ first anniversary celebration—she’s still found a way to “get in people’s faces”. She did not, however, enjoy having to go over the ledge to greet the concertgoers. “This guy working [at the 9:30 Club] was like, “I’m going to help you” and he picked me up. I was in front of like, 600 hundred people and he was holding me by my ribcage!” she recalled, laughing.

Jules Hale hails from a suburban town in northern Virginia, though she wouldn’t say exactly where. “I’m just embarrassed,” Hale said, “it’s just kind of south of Fairfax—very equestrian, fancy people, country music, Top 40s, Confederate flags occasionally… it was all horse people, banks and diners.” Hale did not fit in.

“Ever since I started to learn how to play music, I wanted to be serious with it,” Hale said. “My friends would come over and fuck around with instruments and I would be like ‘Okay guys, I want to be serious with these.’” Hale then decided to record her own material instead of relying on others.

Den-Mate started as a bedroom pop project in 2013.When she entertained the idea of being a singer-songwriter, Hale had a guitar, a cheap amp and “something to record with and mix—I had this old PC that had some sort of recording program on it.” She wanted to make music, but wasn’t sure what kind yet. Soon enough, she found inspirations from artists who were in same boat, such as Grimes.

“I remember one of the first songs I made—there was this one sample that sounded like it would be on Visions [Grimes’s breakout 2012 album], so I named the song “‘Grimes Song.’”

Hale was also inspired by Crystal Castles, the Canadian experimental electronic group known for out-of-control live performances. “I saw them twice—seeing Alice Glass’s energy on stage, I thought, ‘that’s what I want to do.’” But she also reveres their sound: “super-synthy…but it didn’t feel like electronic music. It felt like punk. Every song wanted me to just dance and run.”

Hale first wanted to write simple guitar songs. That all changed when she discovered GarageBand, a Macbook app used by many electronic musicians. Her first songs, uploaded in her SoundCloud page, were fully electronic.

Hale was shocked by the constructive feedback she received. From positive notes on Yahoo! Answers and criticism on Tumblr, she became even more focused. “These strangers don’t give a fuck who you are,” she explains. “They’ll be mean to you if they want to.”

For the next year and a half, Hale did nothing but make music, even dropping out of Northern Virginia Community College to focus on it.

Hale released the first Den-Mate album in September 2013 through her SoundCloud page. “None of [those] songs were compressed at all,” she recalled, concerning her GarageBand learning curve. She’s come a long way since then.

With new band members, a new live sound and live presence, Den-Mate’s powerful momentum has put Jules Hale front and center of the D.C. indie music scene. In addition to a her appearance at the 9:30 Club, Den-Mate also completed a six-week tour of the east coast and opened for Wildhoney at a record release show at the Black Cat. And Hale will perform a solo acoustic set next month at the Smithsonian’s Luce Unplugged series.

As for a new album? We can expect one early next year. “[It’s] not fully recorded yet,” Hale explained. “In the past, I put a lot of demos on SoundCloud and I realized that I want to keep these hidden!” But she feels her new songs are leaps and bounds above her previous work, mostly because of the addition of a live band. “We sound incredibly tight,” she happily boasts.

“When I first made the Den-Mate LP, I just wanted to make ‘cool electronic music.’” she says with air-quotes. “But with these new songs, I put much more of myself into the songwriting. I wanted everything to matter.” Though she still loves her early songs, Den-Mate is completely “evolved.”

“It’s so exciting to see something that has so much potential that we saw,” Lillis added, “and we already see dividends from it and there will be bigger things to follow—and I think we are on that path.”

Catch Den-Mate at the Luce Unplugged concert series at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on Thursday, November 5th.