by Alex Perez ~
Klio is proud to share music from recent Penn State graduates in a Philadelphia-based dream-folk band called Sea Offs. Rashmit Arora and Olivia Price formed this band when they were both undergraduates at this university and have gone on to find success beyond the confines of State College. Recently, they’ve been playing shows all across the Northeast. Some of their highlights include playing at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia at the Philly Music Fest and doing a studio session for WXPN in Philly. They have continued to play in State College throughout 2017, including as recently as October 31 at Chronic Town.
The Sea Offs were recently named one of WXPN The Key’s Top Six Philly Music Discoveries of 2017.
Rashmit Arora, Sea Offs founding member and current graduate assistant in environmental and food economics at Penn State, shared the following musical highlights and interview responses with Klio.
The Sea Offs’ debut album “What’s the Point?” was released in April:
One of their songs,”Leave,” has collected over 170,000 plays on Youtube in a year:
“Unfound,” from their debut album, has collected over 100,000 plays in less than six months:
An exclusive interview with Rashmit Arora:
How did you come together as a group?
Olivia and I met at the first Penn State Songwriters’ Club meeting I ever attended. She was presenting a song that she’d been working on with a local electronic music producer, and I commented 
on her vocal style being similar to that of Elena Tonra of Daughter. This got us talking and, in one of the resonant stairwells of Willard Building, we played each other a couple of our original songs, and soon realized we were on the same page. We started off accompanying each other on our solo sets, and shortly after decided to form a band. We were initially called “Tapestries,”which was a spur-of-the-moment decision before one of our first gigs at the WPSU studios. Soon after our first tour in support of our debut EP, Sea the Blind, we re-branded as Sea Offs.
Did you think that this would be anything more than a hobby?
We’ve always wanted to put music at the forefront, and so we’ve always taken this more seriously than a hobby. There’s a lot of competition in this space, and dropping everything just to do this isn’t something our financial circumstances permit us to do. Olivia currently works for a corporate in Philly, while I’m a graduate assistant in environmental and food economics at Penn State. These things do take up a significant amount of energy, but we always try to carve out time for music. Personally, I think having an alternate avenue for my mind to be active enhances my experiences with music; it makes me fonder.
Did you find a supportive music community in State College? Tell us a little bit about your time at Penn State.
Most definitely. We’ve played pretty much every venue in State College that supports original music. This includes playing shows in the “house show” scene, playing at larger venues such as Chronic Town, and also at local festivals such as Arts Crawl. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for State College. Both our releases were recorded here, at the Penn State studios. Being in a college town gave us access to an incredible set of musicians that the School of Music houses. Beyond music, too, our first music video was shot by a bunch of students in the film school. A community like this brings together a lot of driven individuals, and that has certainly aided us in growing.
There is, however, a threshold to playing music in this town. There’s an upper bound. Beyond a point, you have to start playing covers to play in bigger venues. If you want to keep playing original music, it’s easy to get stuck in a loop because there’s only so many spaces that encourage that. This is one of the reasons that, ever since Olivia moved to Philadelphia, we’ve been focusing more on playing shows outside of State College. We’ve had some notable features in Philly thus far, including playing at the Philly Music Fest at World Cafe Live (where we played alongside several more established acts), and being featured on WXPN’s The Key sessions.
Who are your musical influences?
One of our biggest mutual influences is early Coldplay. Other influences vary between us, and include Daughter, Alexi Murdoch, Angel Olsen, and Gregory Alan Isakov.
We have some upcoming tour dates. We’re playing two dates in Philadelphia on November 30th, at Kung Fu Necktie, and on December 1st at Ortlieb’s, followed by December 2nd at Joe Squared in Baltimore, MD.
We thank the Sea Offs for sharing their music with us and we look forward to what they do in the future. To discover more, check out the Sea Offs website.