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If you judged a band solely by its full-length discography, you'd think Mates of State was kind of slacking. After all, the duo's most recent LP of original tracks was "Mountaintops," released all the way back in 2011. ("Greats," released in April, is a compilation record.) 

The reality, however, could not be more different. In addition to writing and performing, over the past few years, the husband and wife indie pop team of Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner have been working on making a movie: "The Rumperbutts," an indie musical comedy about a couple who begrudgingly takes a gig playing a pair of lion creatures seemingly imagined by Sir Mix-a-Lot on a children's TV show. The real-life duo not only starred in the film, but also produced the project along with creating the score and the soundtrack of original tunes. 

And as for why there's been no new Mates of State LPs? The band simply decided to not make them anymore, recording and releasing EPs instead – like "You're Going To Make It," just released on June 15. OnMilwaukee.com got a chance to chat with Hammel before the duo's upcoming Summerfest gig on Sunday, June 28 at 6:30 p.m. at the Miller Lite Oasis about the duo's intentional shift from full-length records, "The Rumperbutts" and the unfortunate memory he has of Milwaukee. 

OnMilwaukee.com: You’ve come out and said you’re only going to do EPs rather than albums. 

Jason Hammel: Yeah. The LP format is dead. I mean, nobody buys albums anymore. And if they do, the few people that do listen to the entire thing once, pick out their favorite songs and then just continue listening only to their favorite songs. I do that, too. So we were like, "why don’t we just pick five of our best songs and release them on an EP and release them more frequently rather than waiting two or three years to release 10 songs, plus release five songs every year, year and a half?" So that was the thinking behind that.

OMC: When did that realization strike you that the LP doesn’t stand up anymore today?

JH: Over the last couple of years. We made a movie, and we made a soundtrack – we made an actual full-length whole soundtrack – and we were writing a bunch of new Mates of State songs and we’re trying to navigate the music industry as it is now, which is really crazy and in shambles. So we were like, well, let’s think outside of the box. We don’t have to do what we’ve done in the past, where it’s like a full-length tour for two years, come back and put out another full-length.

We started toying around, and we had some songs that we were really happy about and started to record them. We just thought, "Let’s just release those; let’s release the best songs out of those 20 or 25 that we’ve written and release them right away." There’s still probably some gems probably in that batch of 20 or 30 that we could use for the next EP then. You have a kind of reserve of songs, and you keep picking the best ones and releasing them as they’re ready rather than waiting for 10 or 12 songs that make a coherent LP.

OMC: Do you think the industry will ever turn around, that the LP will come back around and that this single-era of music consumption will ever cycle away?

JH: It’s definitely gone for the time being. I’ll never say never. It used to be a singles world back in the ’50s and ’60s, and then that kind of evolved into the LP, and now we’re back into the start of it. So maybe it’ll come back around, but right now I don’t see that happening. People just don’t consume music – or anything for that matter – in that amount really. People want little bursts of information. Our brains are being wired into our phones, like the next organ of our bodies, so we just want little tidbits that satisfy our immediate needs and then we want the next burst.

OMC: Now that soundtrack you were talking about was for the movie, "The Rumperbutts," which you also starred in. How did that project come together?

JH: Kori and I always talked about doing a movie, doing that kind of project and that collaboration. We’d done some music for a short film for this writer and director named Marc Brener. After we did that, it went pretty smoothly, and he said, "Hey, I want to make a movie. I’ve written a bunch of scripts, and I want to write one with you guys in mind." And we’re like, "Hey, cool! This guy is big talk; let’s see if he actually does it."

And he did it. He sent us the script and said you guys are the leads and I want you to do the soundtrack and the score. It was a lot of work, but it was a project we thought would be really fun, and it just kept moving forward. He’s kind of a master producer; when he says he’ll do something, he does it. So we just kept plugging along at it, and before we knew it, we were in acting lessons and writing songs to the script.

Next thing we knew, we were shooting a film in Connecticut in our house with real actors in it – like Josh Brener from "Silicon Valley" and Vanessa Ray and Arian Moayed. All of these real actors are in our kitchen, and we were learning from them, who are all doing masterfully at their craft. And we made a movie! We’re really proud of it, and we did the soundtrack and the score for it. So we have that as well behind us. It was a really fun project, and I think it’s a good starting point; we want to make another one.

OMC: What was it like making a score and a soundtrack for a whole movie?

JH: The score was fun. That was kind of like the last bit of music we did because you just watch the scenes and compose pieces of music to the scenes that fit the mood.

The soundtrack actually was kind of easier for us than writing a Mates of State album because there were lyrics thematically in the movie. There were already sort of lyrics written, not completely but blueprints for them. So we’d take those, write all the music for them, edit the lyrics and make them fit. But the themes were already there, and for us, our Mates of State music is so personal and the themes are always what we want to say but hard to pull out. When you already have the themes and emotions of the song spelled out for you, it was really simple to write the songs. We can come up with catchy melodies all day.

OMC: How was the shooting process wearing these goofy kids show costumes? Because you guys were, like, running down public streets wearing those things.

JH: (laughs) When we first put those things on, we were like, "Oh my God, what have we gotten ourselves into?" We had the costume designer from "Yo Gabba Gabba" make those; they’re incredibly silly but awesome. They’re like lions but with huge butts. I think it really fits the tone of the movie, in that this musical couple get themselves in a pretty hairy situation chasing the money to do children’s music, and they end up realizing that this is absurd, this isn’t what we’re meant to do and we need to get back to doing what we really love, which is original music.

OMC: So many of your songs are autobiographical on some level, singing about love and family and things of that nature. After these years of being together, how do you keep that material coming across fresh to listeners?

JH: The way we do it is, if songs are getting real stale for us, we don’t play them for a while. We’ve written enough music now where if we’re like, "Agh, that song! I can’t hear it anymore! It’s bullsh*t or whatever," we’ll put it away and then you come back to it a couple years later and you’re like, "I can look at it with fresh eyes again and play it." We have enough albums now where that’s possible.

OMC: You’ve been to Milwaukee before, correct?

JH: Yeah, we have; a few times, but it’s been a while. I can’t even actually remember the last time.

OMC: Do you have any fun memories of Milwaukee?

JH: I just remembered we actually played in Milwaukee the night before 9/11. We woke up in this dude’s apartment – that we didn’t know, but we just stayed with him that night – and I remember waking up and watching television for hours with some stranger as this is all going on. We were living in San Francisco still at the time, but Kori’s family was in Connecticut, so we bee-lined it from Milwaukee back there to be with her family. It was all pretty surreal. I don’t know if that’s necessarily an uplifting story about Milwaukee, but that’s one that comes to mind.