Willem Hartong, guitarist and vocalist for Brooklyn band Breaking Laces, advises the Kent community to buy a DVR and record their television shows tonight.

“Give us a chance, we don’t suck,” he said of tonight’s show. “Get yourself some hot threads too.”

Breaking Laces just ended a short tour around the United States, and is now performing several shows, including their concert at The Outpost tonight with longtime acquaintances Sanity Fare.

“We both played at the Voodoo Lounge in Akron, we stayed in touch, we got hooked on their label, and we kept trying to come back to Ohio, and now we’re playing this show in Kent,” Hartong said.

After touring with bands such as Chicago’s Oh My God and Virginia natives, Conshafter, Hartong found that the best shows they played were in Kentucky and North Carolina.

“I love it, we always build huge crowds there,” he said. “New York is a little slower to catch on.”

The band began when Hartong met bassist Rob Chojnacki and drummer Seth Masarsky when he moved to New York to pursue a solo career. They left the band they were in to become play backup for Hartong and eventually bandmates of Hartong.

The band recorded and released an EP earlier this year, titled Lemonade, which was mostly recorded in Masarsky’s basement.

“We took it to a mixer, a friend of a friend, and it came out real good,” Hartong said.

He said he is excited about all the songs on Lemonade. “I like them all,” he said. “I’m psyched about it.”

Hartong also thinks the album is quite different from most albums because there aren’t any standout songs.

“It’s flattering and strange,” he said.

Hartong also said they aren’t concerned about singles, but about the album as a whole.

“Even though we have time constraints, we can do what we want to do … we like it when an album has flow. (We want listeners to) try to avoid the skip button.” He said.

Breaking Laces’ sound is hard to name with a single genre.

“(Our music) is how it came out,” he said. “We’re into pop music, which tends to be fun.”

Hartong claims that they are “geared towards Snow Patrol, but we’re not entirely there yet, (we) have a different format.”

He admires Death Cab for Cutie, and would eventually like to sound as if “Radiohead married Soul Coughing.”

Hartong also identifies the band as a team.

“Everyone’s trying to grab at the cookie jar at once,” he said. “We travel, we perform, we record well. We’ll willingly sacrifice to the middle … which is the band, the song, the show.”

Contact ALL correspondent Madelyn Otcasek at [email protected].