This past weekend Mark Foster and Isom Innis made their festival debut under a new name and with a new side project — Smims and Belle. Foster spoke with Rolling Stone about embracing being the underdogs and what to expect from Foster the People‘s next album.

Despite playing numerous festivals as Foster the People, Foster admits being more nervous to take the stage with new electronic project Smims and Belle.

“We love being the underdogs and anytime we’re in a situation where you don’t know our stuff, if you get the crowd putting their hands in the air to something they’ve never heard before, that’s when you know something’s working,” Foster said.

Just because he’s taking a break from Foster the People, doesn’t mean he isn’t thinking of the band.

“[Smims] is something that I love, but we’re kind of ramping into the next Foster record,” he said. “The FTP record is my priority.”

Foster told Rolling Stone that the upcoming release finds influence in West African music, David Bowie and the Clash.

“It’s all in there. We make a really heavily electronic hip-hop track and explore that world, [and] it’s floating around in my brain the next time I write a Foster track. One thing about Foster the People is that it’s taking pieces of a lot of different genres of music and kind of melding them together,” he said.

Foster explained that working on his new project Smims and Belle will help the next Foster the People album.

“In the first record, I was looking at my vision for the project through a piece of opaque glass. This next record’s going to be more evolved; it’s going to be a clearer picture of what I’ve had in my head when it comes to that vision,” he said. “Working on this project and getting deeper into electronic music is gonna help bring a deeper color in the next Foster record.”

-Annie Reuter, CBS Local

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