Punk-influenced indie rock band Indian School is in its first year as a band and already making plans for a UK tour. Indian School is made up of the former members of Audio Karate and has two additional members, including UCLA alumnus Eric Wood. Daily Bruin’s Margaret Davis spoke with lead vocalist Arturo Barrios about the band’s beginnings, influences and writing process.

Daily Bruin: Could you tell me about how your band got started?
Arturo Barrios: Indian School actually is not very old. We started about six or seven months ago and the band was actually born of another band called Audio Karate that broke up about five years ago. Some of the members from that band started this band.

DB: So how did the members go from breaking up to starting a new band?
AB: In the end of 2009, I was in a car accident. I was rear-ended. It was pretty bad, actually. I wrecked my back … I had herniated discs in my neck and back and so I couldn’t work. I couldn’t do anything, I was just on a bed for a month. … I just started writing songs again and that’s basically where it started from.

DB: Was it hard to get everyone else to start up again?
AB: It wasn’t too difficult. It was difficult finding a piano player, which I knew we needed. … But the drummer and the bass player that were from the original band had been wanting for some time to start up and do something … I think when I came to them and said, “Hey, let’s do this again,” they were like, “It’s about time.”

DB: What are some of your influences?
AB: Well, in terms of foundation, I’m a huge Beatles and Beach Boys fan. I like a lot of older bands like that, that are big on the song writing, like Fleetwood Mac. A lot of new stuff that I like is My Morning Jacket; another one of my favorite bands is Fleet Foxes, (as well as) MGMT (and) The Replacements. I could go on forever.

DB: What is your writing process like when you are writing a song?
AB: Lyrics are always the last last thing. I actually collaborate with a friend of mine, Josh O’Mitchell. The way that it usually starts – I’m about to go to bed and I’m sleepy, and a melody will start swirling around in my head and I can’t shake it off and that usually tells me that I need to go to a guitar and do something about it. I’ll find where the guitar fits with the melody, and I’ll just form a part, like a verse or a chorus, and off of that the song is born.

DB: What’s the story behind the band’s name?
AB: There’s really not much to it. I used to work in finance and there was a street called Indian School in Phoenix, I believe – or maybe it was a suburb of Phoenix. And that name just stuck with me, so I just came up with it when we were deciding on a band name.

DB: Could you talk about your upcoming EP?
AB: It was actually recorded independently … our home studio. We tracked all the vocals and the guitar and all that stuff in our home studio where we live and then we took those mixes to a guy named Sean Sullivan who’s done a bunch of great records. So he mixed it. “Cocktail Flu,” the last song on the EP was actually recorded completely live in his studio.

DB: How do you think your culture changes your music?
AB: Being from Southern California, the sun is pretty much always out. It has its influence, so there’s always a sunny kind of element to our sound. And as dark as it might get, it’s always just peppered with a little bit of sunshine and that’s something that’s just unavoidable. Being Mexican – sometimes I think Mexicans are the next blue collar of America. So I think there’s that aesthetic, there’s like a work ethic in our song and in the way that we live our lives. I was raised primarily Catholic my whole life, so it had a lot to do with religion and I’m kind of crossed between being anti-religious and being (pro-religious), and lyrically, it kind of has an influence too.