Friko’s “Something Worth Waiting For” album cover

Local indie rockers Friko are due to release their sophomore album, “Something Worth Waiting For,” on April 24, and it is a work indeed worth waiting for. Originally founded by Niko Kapetan (vocals/guitar) and Bailey Minzenberger (drums), both Evanston Township High School graduates and Chicago-area locals, the band has expanded into a four-piece outfit since their critically acclaimed debut “Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here” (2024), having added Korgan Robb (guitar) and Columbus native David Fuller (bass).

“Something Worth Waiting For” also includes a production credit from the esteemed John Congleton, whose CV includes work with Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand, St. Vincent, Tegan and Sara, The Walkmen, Death Cab For Cutie and dozens of other indie household names. I had a chance to sit down with the band and listen to their upcoming work almost in tandem with our conversation.

Friko’s origin story is, fittingly, unceremonious and organic. As Kapetan explains, “Bailey and I were in a music-theory class together in high school, but we didn’t talk. After graduating, Bailey started a band and I joined on bass. Then my old band fell apart, so I asked Bailey to play drums with me. We just kept building from there.”

This is a young band still, and the thing about promising newer bands is—particularly in this indie business—you hope to see a signal of evolution between their first and second records, particularly if they’ve struck a winning formula with their first effort. It’s easy to replicate a style that’s received critical acclaim (and their debut “Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here” fits that category neatly, having received plaudits from Pitchfork, Rolling Stone and NPR Music). But what I, and would assume most, are more interested in is witnessing development and experimentation. Musicians in their early twenties are not staid beings. Friko has bared their growth to the world in “Something Worth Waiting For,” offering a piece substantially different both tonally and thematically from “Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here.” The band now boasts a catalogue diverse enough to reflect genuine growth, while its coherence across motifs and stylistic elements from their previous work makes it appropriately anthologic.

The band describes a more communal process when recording this time around. “It was more collaborative than the first record,” Kapetan says. “I’d bring a core idea and then we’d all work on it together—arranging, writing parts and figuring out sections as a group.” Fuller adds that their recording process felt more flexible with more personnel: “We’d just get together and jam for hours. No pressure, no deadline. Just letting whatever came out, come out. That was new for us.” Minzenberger continues, “We had such a wonderful foundation of having played together for a few years. So being able to just play and allow whatever comes out, come out, was really fulfilling and exciting—and something I want to continue doing.”

Friko/Photo: Adam Powell

“Radiant” and “cheerful” are two terms consistently used to describe Friko’s often high-energy alternative indie rock. The early releases of singles “Choo Choo” and “Still Around” comport these assumptions, receiving similar descriptions. But as a whole, “Something Worth Waiting For” is a decidedly more somber exercise. The album carries an energy of melancholy and reflects a growing perspicacity to the weariness of the world familiar to any twenty-something climbing into adulthood. The solution to melancholy presented in “Something Worth Waiting For” is motion, a motif elegantly carried but refined from their previous album.

Friko themselves seem somewhat bemused at the notion that the record is “radiant.” “There are a lot of ups and downs on this record,” Fuller says. “We had some pretty dramatic highs and lows on the road, and I think the music reflects that. Moments of the highest highs, and then moments that were… close to doom.” Minzenberger adds, “Music is inherently playful. There’s a reason it’s called ‘playing’ music. So even when you are expressing something on the darker side of things, there is an element of play involved. So I can see how both can be true. But we improvised more when we were last on tour, we stretched our legs a bit, and maybe subconsciously because of those highs and lows it came out a bit more slowly, a bit sadder.”

Kapetan is more direct: “I was definitely in a darker place personally while writing this one. People have said it feels more upbeat than the first record—I wouldn’t agree with that. But it doesn’t bother me that people feel that way. It is ultimately all about the audience, and that’s what’s so cool; people can have totally different interpretations.”

Minzenberger, meanwhile, describes a more abstract emotional palette: “When I was listening back to the mixes, I kept seeing the color blue. It did feel more melancholic, more pensive. I think it’s cool you see it as a slower and more intentional, ‘melancholic’ thing, because that’s kind of how I felt.”

The first track, “Guess,” is a triumphantly sad piece and a wonderful introduction to an evolved iteration of the band. It begins with a slow guitar progression before Kapetan’s lyrics are sung with a pained yearning at a lower and isolated volume. He sings “There’s hardly enough in this world to make us happy / don’t make me guess if that’s a cry or a laugh / a pinch or a stain / a lie or a gaff.” The song builds slowly, before reaching a burning crescendo of heavy guitar and frantic drumming, colored by Kapetan’s now-desperate and elegantly chaotic vocals. I find myself thinking this too often, but, depressingly, it feels like a song that would be so beautifully experienced at Pitchfork, during a 5pm slot in the rain. “Guess” is followed by “Still Around,” a track that picks the listener back up with the more radiant indie rock Friko is known for. It is here and in “Choo Choo” (which follows “Still Around”) the idea of physical motion as a means to escape persistent existential quandaries.

When I ask Friko to thematically define this record, Kapetan puts it like this: “The main theme is these modes of transit—the idea of trying to get somewhere, trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and never quite getting there. You just have to keep believing it’s there.”

Friko/Photo: Adam Powell

In “Choo Choo,” Kapetan sings “I’m trying to take the train / I’m trying to take it almost every day / I take it far away / sometimes I feel alone / sometimes I call these people my home.” It is here, accompanied by exceptional work from Robb, Minzenberger and Fuller, where Friko’s high-energy sound is exquisitely interwoven with Kapetan’s advanced and more melancholic lyricism. The album then returns to a slower pace with “Alice,” a delicate, meandering piece that I mark as a favorite within ten seconds of listening. It is an excellent song, the intro piano melody of which was written by Robb when he was sixteen. Following “Alice” is “Certainty”—perhaps my personal favorite, and it was at this moment in the album that I feel this to be a special record. It is a melancholic, phantasmal piano ballad with an orchestral string section that spins themes of motion-induced clarity, featuring Minzenberger’s vocals in addition to Kapetan’s. Kapetan sings:

“Now you’re right through the door with the sun in your eyes / Jump to the sidewalk up over the lines / And the salt is like lava snows on the ground / God wasn’t it winter three months ago now / Huddled up on the red line / Map on the way / Out past the school where those children will play / And the shine of the wind will put salt in your eyes / Today it’s the train but tomorrow we’ll fly.”

That is gorgeous lyricism, concluding with a dreamy seascape of Kapetan sailing into a hole in the sky, and fittingly packaged in a beautiful song reminiscent of indie outfit Beirut’s early work. The album continues with “Hot Air Balloon,” “Seven Degrees” and “Something Worth Waiting For,” concluding with a faithful tribute to motion in “Dear Bicycle.”

There is a lot of excitement about Friko both locally and nationally, and many predictions are being made about this group. Having one international tour under their belt (and currently embarking on another), one could reasonably predict that Chicago has produced yet another special band to add to its lineage of potential arena-sized rockers, a particularly difficult ceiling to crack in the indie genre.

Fuller, who relocated from Ohio, describes Chicago as a uniquely generative scene: “It’s one of the most diverse cities on the planet. There’s no shortage of inspiration. I think it’s easier to find a more concrete version of yourself here, and that creates really exciting art.”

Robb emphasizes the ethos of the scene: “It’s not really a sound or a scene, more like a community. All of our friends’ bands sound totally different, but we align because of how much people care and how much effort they put in. The energy is more qualitative, but the noise is very distinct. And everyone leaves it all on stage.”

Minzenberger adds that Chicago retains the hunger of smaller scenes despite its size: “There’s still that drive to create and to engage. That’s something I feel constantly here.”

The band could be going big places. But for now, let’s simply appreciate bearing witness to Friko’s growth. Friko will play at the Metro on April 25, a celebratory occasion one day following the release of “Something Worth Waiting For,” and a ticket worth consideration for anyone with their finger on the pulse of our city’s wonderful indie heartbeat.

ATO Records releases Friko’s “Something Worth Waiting For” on April 24. On April 25, Friko will headline an album release show at Metro Chicago.