Although Dead Leaf Echo began as an “art experiment” in Morningside Heights, this band is far from amateur or unpleasantly bizarre. Dead Lead Echo has worked with a cadre of professional mixers such as John Fryer and Ulrich Schnauss to perfect its dreamy post-punk. The band creates a blossoming world where Cocteau Twins and My Blood Valentine influences swirl and mix with Vladimir Nabokov and Ernest Hemingway love letters. Dead Leaf Echo entices listeners with its shimmering guitar work and closes the deal with crashing waves of hypnotic harmonies. If the wait is unbearable for a full-length record, Dead Leaf Echo will be releasing a 7-inch featuring “Half-Truth” and a previously unreleased b-side “Babyeyes” this fall.

How has Dead Leaf Echo evolved since &ampquotFaint Violet Whiff"? Do you still view Dead Leaf Echo as an art experiment?

The band has changed immensely since its inception and will continue to do so, as different people come in and out of the fold and different themes both musically, lyrically and visually will be explored. It will continue as an experiment as so many different relationships around it have yet to be met and made.

You've had collaborators mixing your music with prestigious resumes. What’s the trade off of having others mixing your music compared to mixing it yourself?

We work with any collaborators to convey what we want using the best of their abilities. Having advanced technology and years of experience is something that many do not have. Especially now with the affordable and easily available software, many often work on their own or others projects from the ground up without having the experience necessary. Getting other eyes and ears on any work, no matter at what stage, is always a crucial element, especially now as the art of mixing has been compromised so much in the past few years by anyone with an M-Box.

Tell me about recording &ampquotTruth." Is this a concept record?

Lyrically, there is a heavy thematic element of the dichotomy of truth versus lies and how one cannot exist without the other. The recordings were all done in Brooklyn last summer, and like our two previous works, [the record] is six songs at 30 minutes in length, the mini-LP.

What inspires your music videos?

The videos are all made as an additive layer to the preexisting song, designed to give further depth to the piece. Inspirations run from many silent and experimental films to filmmakers from Lang and Malick.

The influences you list on your MySpace site are from the music, visual, literary and even the graphic novel (“Sandman”) realms. How do you pull together all these different influences through your music?

The “Sandman” influence is actually to Mark Sandman most well-known from the band Morphine. But now thinking back on it, the “Sandman” graphic novel was an influence! Very well written with highly styled illustrations. As far as pulling all of them together...well, that's something that you don't consciously think of all the time. I think we're all working on melding those...

What do you want your legacy to be in the New York music scene?

Blurring the lines into what a band should be, something that doesn't seem to be of emphasis any more. Bringing something new and different while striving to come out from the underground. A project bold enough to bring the higher sensibilities of the art and literature world into music.