Sleigh Bells perform at Neumos in Seattle on Nov. 19, 2016. Ian Young/STAFF.

This story originally appeared in the Oakland Tribune.

Noise-rock duo Sleigh Bells’ guitarist-songwriter Derek Miller didn’t intend to take a break from performing when he left his Florida hard-core rock band in 2004.

Miller wanted to start a new project with a female vocalist. Only problem was, he didn’t have one. So he moved to the West Coast, then back to Florida, and finally to Brooklyn, where he found himself in 2008 – with plenty of song material but still no singer. Eventually, he began to ask women he met at bars whether they sang and would be interested in listening to his recordings.

“Girls thought I was hitting on them,” Miller said with a laugh.

The strategy didn’t work too well, which makes the creation and success of Sleigh Bells, which headlines two shows May 30-31 at the Independent, all the more serendipitous.

Chance encounter

By 2008, Miller was waiting tables at a Brazilian restaurant in New York. Alexis Krauss, 24, a former singer in the teen pop group Rubyblue, was dining with her mother. She also had put herself through school singing in a wedding band, working as a demo vocalist and performing commercial jingles.

But by the time the two first met, Krauss was an elementary schoolteacher.

“Alexis’ mom is really talkative, so apparently while I was away from the table, they were discussing whether or not I was Brazilian,” Miller said.

When he told them he was from South Florida, Krauss’ mother said she was, too. They started chatting and she asked him what he was doing in New York. He told them his background. When he found out Krauss was a singer, he tossed out his go-to line.

“I said, ‘I’d love to play you some stuff,’” Miller said.

Krauss and Miller met up a week later at a park, where he pulled out his laptop and put headphones over her ears.

“We exchanged very few words,” Miller said. “We sat down, and there was nothing else to really talk about.”

Miller had spent the previous four years writing and cheaply recording his songs by programming simple beats on a drum machine and playing heavy metal guitar riffs over them. His formula was complete when he cranked the volume to 11 and broke off the dial. Most of the finished songs off Sleigh Bells’ debut album, 2010’s “Treats,” sound as if they are being played through busted speakers.

“That was out of necessity because my equipment was so cheap,” he said. “The fundamentals of the sound, which is heavy and melodic, is something I was doing since Poison the Well, the hard-core band I was in. That’s all we ever tried to do – mix the two. This is sort of a natural progression, a completely different aesthetic and a different context, but the same idea.”

Getting familiar

After Miller played Krauss a few samples, she was impressed. Although the two still knew practically nothing about each other, they went to Miller’s friend’s apartment and recorded their first song, “Infinity Guitars.” An EP, recorded in much the same way, followed.

Miller, the primary songwriter, incorporated several hard-core rock elements into the band’s style. For one thing, Krauss’ voice often competes with the overall intensity of the music. Often, it is difficult to pick out the lyrics.

“I care about the lyrics; they mean a lot to me, and I work hard on them, but I don’t think that they need to be analyzed,” he said. “There are no messages. It’s just sound.”

Another element is the cheer-squad effect of Miller’s layering of Krauss’ vocals over each other. “Treats” eventually had faceless cheerleaders on the front cover.

“In hard-core, there were a lot of gang vocal parts where you get the band and all of your friends all around one mic and do a big singalong,” he said. “I do love the sound of 10 or 20 girls screaming in a gym. I think that’s pretty great.”

Finally a break

Krauss’ wide-ranging background as a demo singer allowed her to take direction from Miller and knock out song after song. That is how the two became close, Miller said.

The Sleigh Bells’ EP got the attention of singer-producer M.I.A., who signed the band to her N.E.E.T. Recordings label. A truckload of publicity followed, and Sleigh Bells became the country’s indie darling. Since the release of “Treats,” the duo has remained on the road and already has material for a follow-up, which will be released in early 2012, Miller said.

Krauss’ mother never lets the two forget that if not for her, their success would not have been possible.

“We joke about it,” Miller said. “If it wasn’t for her, they would have just eaten and left, and I’d still be working at that restaurant – which wouldn’t be as much fun.”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.