Respect The Neighbors // Interview • Gosh Pith

Photo by Jimmy Bui


Ages: Unknown • Hometown: Detroit, MI • Follow: Twitter // SoundCloud


Newly on our radar, Detroit based duo Gosh Pith recently won us over with the combination of their unique sound and mystifying live set at Shubas last month. Like many acts formed in our era, Gosh Pith’s music poses a problem for anyone looking to confine it to one single genre. Instead, members Josh Smith and Josh Freed so smoothly juxtapose an electric guitar, crooning vocals, and trap drums for an ambient vibe that will continue to lure you in the longer you listen. This often leaves with just enough room to hint towards their eclectic influences, including a mixture of whichever artist they're currently binge listening to.

While their sound manages to set Gosh Pith apart from most, their aforementioned live show widens the gap even further. Oddly enough, it’s also what allows them to be booked alongside such a wide variety of acts ranging from Wiz Khalifa and Vic Mensa to Griz to Girlyboi. When we caught them live last month with Girlyboi, I had the opportunity to sit down with the guys and ask them a few things. With appreciation for local scenes, especially within Midwest cities, being at the core of TheseDays, we spent most of time discussing what’s bubbling in our region. Additionally, the duo provided insight on their own listening preferences and their debut EP, Window. Read the Q+A below, and check out some of our Gosh Pith favorites in the 'Essential Listens' playlist above.


TheseDays: Was that kind of a blessing for you guys to be able to come into a music scene that was already so accepting of being very left field?

Gosh Pith: “A cool thing about Detroit is that none of the bills you will ever play on necessarily make any sense on paper. We’ve played shows with a rapper, a garage band, a DJ all on the same bill.”

TD: The Chicago scene, I’ve been immersed in it a while and I love it. There are so many amazing characters and a lot of great music coming out of it. How’s Detroit’s?

GP: “Detroit’s is on its way. There’s one pioneer, the dude Garrett who’s the reason we’re connected right now. He bought a vacant church and just said like, 'Yo, all dope artists are about to just convene here.' I mean there have been pockets of that shit over the years, but in general, it’s a lot more fragmented in Detroit or has been than something like WebsterX and his whole team in Milwaukee and that whole wave of Chance The Rapper in Chicago, all that shit… it’s not really like that [in Detroit].”

“Even in the last year when we started out, it was a lot of people just doing what they do, and even when we started out it was some people like, 'Yo, fuck these dudes, like why you tryna have so much fun and get lit as fuck? Like I hate you because you’re just tryna get so turnt. All the kids like us, though, know what’s good. In the last year or two, people are just trying to make shit together. It’s crazy...but just in two years, every person we used to see now is working with each other, working with us.”

“Detroit’s cool. What our homie Garrett is doing with the church is really cool. You walk in there any day of the week and it’s one of us, somebody from another group, rapper, producer, rock band all in there sitting in one room working on somebody’s track.”

Detroit has fire, but there’s no voice.
— Gosh Pith

TD: Who are some people from Detroit we should listen to besides you guys?

GP: “Little Animal, Jamaican Queens, Flint Eastwood is fire, Helios Hussain just dropped a fire tape. I don’t know, I feel like Detroit doesn’t get a voice. If we blew or five other people did, like how it is here [in Chicago], there would be like 50 artists at least. Detroit has fire, but there’s no voice.”

TD: Are your music preferences the same?

GP: “Yeah, we spend a lot of time together driving, so we like a lot of the same shit, but we come from different schools. The cool thing about it is that our music senses are close enough that we fuck with the same shit, but also far enough apart that we can both bring different shit to the table for each other, which is dope.”

“And we took acid so many times and listened to so many different records that we both got cut so deep by it now so there are some certain blood records there.”

TD: Can you guys just talk a little bit about the Window project and where that’s gotten you?

GP: “For a while, we just made art for ourselves because we just emulated a lot of things that we loved and made us feel really good, but then we kind of found this sound through Window. I feel like Window has some sort of foundation for more exploration.”

“We’ve made a lot of music since then and we’ve got some of it coming out soon and it all grows from there in some way or another, and who knows what kind of music we’re gonna make in the future, but I have a feeling it will all be rooted or some sort of lineage in that project. It is a vibe.”

We were mixing in cars and recording anywhere, and now we just kind of know what we want to make.”
— Gosh Pith