Sophomore Trinity Kronlein sat in her room, writing in a notebook full of poems. Her phone went off, Kronlein looked over and when she saw a message from freshman Aiden Potter, she played the recording. As she began to listen to the guitar solo, She looked back at her notebook. This was the beginning of a song.

“I’ve been singing forever,” Kronlein said. “It just sort of happened.”

Kronlein is the lead singer for the band Pastel Waves.

“My mom used to listen to a lot of old rock, and after a while I decided I wanted to play guitar,” she said. “After that I got into violin classes and that’s how I learned to read music.”

While Kronlein had guitar and violin lessons to help hone her skills, she had no vocal training. Kronlein says her biggest inspiration to sing comes from the band Imagine Dragons.

Potter, the main guitarist for Pastel Waves, has been playing guitar since the second grade.

“I had already been playing piano and I always wanted to play guitar,” Potter said. “I still play piano now.”

Potter sometimes uses the piano to help write some of the band’s songs. Potter, however, said his biggest inspiration is the Beatles and his father.

“My dad played guitar and a bunch of other instruments,” Potter said. “I kinda wanna be just like him.”

Junior Collin Hardison, who plays drums for Pastel Waves, is also heavily inspired by his father.

“A long time ago my dad introduced me into drumming, it was around when I was four years old, and I just continued from there,” Hardison said. “My dad is also in a band called Radio Republic. I kinda just follow in his footsteps.”

Hardison always wanted to be in a band, so when he heard one of Pastel Waves’ songs, he jumped at the chance to be in the band. He was even more ecstatic when he was let in.

“I was ready to work,” Hardison said. “As soon as I got in the band we recorded a song maybe two or three days later.”

Freshman Dalton Clemens, the bassist for Pastel Waves, was also ecstatic to be in the band.

“Aiden and Trinity were both really good friends of mine, and they needed a bass player. I couldn’t play bass,” Clemens said. “But they asked me and I was like ‘sure, why not’ I couldn’t pass that up.”

With that, Clemens began to learn how to play bass. Pastel Waves has just released the song ‘Condensation’ on iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud and Google Play.

“We got the song done sometime in January,” Kronlein said. “It didn’t come out on iTunes until February.”

Kronlein said that the band was hanging out at Clemens’ house talking about how cool it was to have a song on iTunes, when they first saw it hit the app.

“I looked it up and was like ‘guys shut up for a second, this is important’,” Kronlein said. “Then I told them and we kinda just partied for a bit. There was a lot of yelling.”

Once the song was released people began to notice the members of Pastel Waves.

“There was this one kid in my 5th period like ‘hey I bought your song recently’,” Hardison said. Hardison was shocked he couldn’t stop thinking, “We released it three days ago.”

Kronlein has also been noticed for her part in the band. “Somebody was sitting next to me in choir and she just looks at me and goes ‘oh by the way I like your song on SoundCloud’,” Kronlein said. “I was like, ‘cool thanks’.”

Pastel Waves not only has fans at Rider, but in places outside of Texas.

“The other day there were some girls that followed us on twitter,” Potter said. “They said they really liked the band.”

Hardison then direct messaged them to thank them for supporting Pastel Waves.

“I said ‘hey, thanks for following us’,” Hardison said. “And she said ‘yeah, everyone down in North Carolina likes you’. I was like, North Carolina, that’s not here.”

Potter has also found out that the band has fans in California.

Along with being in a band, there is bound to be musical differences. Kronlein said that handling conflicts within the band is never hard to do.

“We had a conflict the other day,” Kronlein said. “We just say ‘guys, we’re in a band’ and that normally fixes it.”

Pastel Waves plans to release an EP before the summer and release an album before the end of summer to the end of the year. Pastel Waves also plays at the 8th Street Coffee House for open mic night on Fridays.

“When I hear it, or see it, I just think of my three best friends that I play with,” Hardison said. “I’m having fun doing what I’m doing, and that’s all that matters to me.”