Draag, courtesy Devonte Johnson.

Draag is about as unlikely of an indie band as has ever formed. With a Mexican American guitarist raised on mariachi and an Asian American singer trained on classical piano, the band plays an intense electro-shoegaze built on droning guitars and warped tape samples. Adrian Acosta and Jessica Huang found each other on Craigslist about 10 years ago. Acosta put up an ad looking for a female singer who could play numerous instruments. It must have been meant to be, they concluded, since Huang was the only one who answered.

“And we haven’t looked back since!” Huang says.

Although they’ve had to fight to be taken seriously as People of Color on a mostly white scene, they feel their uniqueness is their strength. Acosta hesitates to describe Draag’s sound as shoegaze because he thinks it’s limiting.

“It’s just an ingredient more than it is a full genre,” he says, noting that Draag doesn’t use a ton of reverb, which is normally a shoegaze hallmark. The major influence on his sound is actually a heater that was in his home as a child. “It had this continuous drone, and it sounded like a beautiful chord.”

He says that he’s been chasing that sound ever since.

Huang grew up in a religious environment that she’s come to feel was a cult. She addresses these issues in her lyrics and in the band’s videos. Acosta’s family was supportive,  but he rebelled anyway, as teens often do. He gave up on mariachi much to his father’s dismay and plunged into the San Fernando Valley punk scene. He played in bands, moshed at shows and designed and printed flyers.

“I didn’t go through those challenges that Jess went through, although there were other obstacles in my life,” Acosta says.

Huang’s rebellion came after she started therapy. She began exploring the concept of shrines, which had previously been off-limits to her, after visiting ornate temples. But the church her family attended conflated Buddhism with witchcraft, and evil.

“I’d see candles, tangerines in a bowl, and maybe a sculpture behind the offerings, and I would want to get a closer look,” she says.

In the video for “Mitsuwa,” Huang’s character, dressed as a blindfolded dark angel, kneels before an altar full of traditional items. She says it was very meaningful to learn how to put together an altar and buy the pieces from small family-owned Asian stores. Her character also wields a sword and battles ghosts and demons, who represent the obstacles in her life to being her own person.

“That forward action of using the sword is progressing, and coming out of all of that,” Huang says.

Draag released Dark Fire Heresy in April, but the band’s been on the road, so a home turf album release party had to wait. In the meantime, Huang, Acosta and bandmates Nick Kelley, Ray Montes and Shane Graham have been through their own trial by fire when their van broke down in Montreal.

“We couldn’t get a tow truck to come and help us because everyone spoke French-Canadian,” Acosta says. The band had to create a GoFundMe to raise enough funds to continue the tour. “Our van is still in Montreal, at a Ford dealership. I have to go back and pick it up later. But we made it to New York and finished off the rest of the tour.”

Huang says other indie bands have told her it’s a rite of passage, which Draag luckily got out of the way. But what she took away from it is how many people who contributed have a vested stake in her band.

Acosta, who spent a lot of time in his youth playing guitar and making tapes alone at home, has come to realize that Draag’s music is meant for someone besides himself.

“If our music could find that person who could be really helped by it … or if we could be the soundtrack of getting through how hard life can be—or for the really high moments and the low moments—that would be success for me,” he says. “That’s the relationship I have with music.”

Follow Rachel Alm at Twitter.com/thouzenfold and Instagram.com/thousandfold.