Finneas & Ashe Interview - The Favors Album, The Dream

Finneas and Ashe of The Favors — FINNEAS & Ashe of The Favors.
(photo credit: Alex G. Harper)

For several years, FINNEAS and Ashe have been known for being acclaimed artists who’ve had their own separate, successful careers. FINNEAS is well known for being a Grammy and Oscar-winning songwriter & producer with his sister, Billie Eilish, and for his work as a solo artist. And Ashe is highly regarded for her three solo albums and her hit single, “Moral of the Story.”

Now in 2025, FINNEAS and Ashe have teamed up to form an excellent new band called The Favors, which also includes drummer David Marinelli and guitarist Ricky Gourmet (aka Matthew Fildey). The four members have created their debut album, The Dream (on Darkroom Records), which has just been released.

The Dream is an impressive album that displays their special chemistry as singers & songwriters, and their love of a wide range of musical styles. Their voices blend very well together, sometimes echoing the joyful harmonies of ‘60s band The Mama & The Papas, and other duos like The Swell Season.

There are many highlights on The Favors’ album. Their first single was “The Little Mess You Made,’ which is an appealing, uptempo song that has a lyrical edge to it. Another top song is “Times Square Jesus,’ which has a beautiful melody and a lyric story about the unique characters they’ve encountered while walking through Times Square in New York City.

The musical canvas of this album stretches beyond pop/rock/folk singer/songwriter material. FINNEAS and Ashe express their love for the classic older pop of the 1940s, 1950s & 1960s with their songs “Ordinary People” and “Restless Little Heart.” In addition, there are strong uptempo tracks like the title cut “The Dream” and “David’s Brother.”

Although FINNEAS & Ashe only recently formed The Favors, they have been close collaborators and friends for years. FINNEAS was executive producer of Ashe’s two EPs: Moral of the Story, Chapter One and Moral of the Story: Chapter Two. They also wrote and sang a duet on their popular single, “Till Forever Falls Apart.”

It was earlier this year that the four members of The Favors went into the studio to create the songs for their album. They wrote & recorded the songs in a relaxed, spontaneous setting, and they took their time before announcing The Favors and signing a label deal. It was in June (2025) that they released their first single, “The Little Mess You Made.”

Here’s the video of The Favors’ song, “The Little Mess You Made.”

Now with the release of their album, The Dream, The Favors are playing a series of shows in a few cities. Their first show was on September 18 in Los Angeles, and they will be playing shows in Morrison, Colorado, New York City and Austin, Texas.

We are pleased to do this new Q&A interview with FINNEAS and Ashe. They discuss their collaborations, and the songs they wrote for their new album.

DK: The two of you have been friends and collaborators for several years. How did you first meet and start working together?

Ashe: We first met in 2017. We met at a crosswalk—I was heading into a coffee shop, and I saw him leaving it. At the time, we had the same management team, and they threw us into a session together. Then we wrote this song called “Wrong Side of Myself,” which ended up being on one of my first EPs. So that was our first musical connection, and the first time we got to know each other. I think immediately we were like…Oh, this is a sort of friend, soulmate, make-sense friendship. Then we didn’t work together again until 2019 when “Moral of the Story” came. I think we met for coffee to catch up and then I played him some demos in my car. And he had all these amazing ideas and I asked him, “Would you like to executive-produce this thing?” And he graciously said, “Of course.”

FINNEAS: When we met for coffee and she played me “Moral of the Story,” it was actually a makeup, because I had slept through a coffee meeting a week earlier. I’d been in Korea, and I’d gotten so turned around by jet lag that I slept through my meetings for a week. So I’d slept through this meeting, and it felt so bad…I hate standing somebody up. So when Ashe agreed to meet again, I was very apologetic, and then she played me all this music, and I was floored. I was so happy about it. So I just wanted to include that she was willing to forgive something like that.

Ashe: I must have really blocked that out because I don’t remember you bailing out. I don’t remember that even a little bit so that’s funny.

DK: FINNEAS, you worked with Ashe on her two EPs, Moral of the Story, Chapter One and Moral of the Story: Chapter Two. Can you talk about working with Ashe on those projects?

Here’s the lyric video of The Favors’s song, “Times Square Jesus.”

FINNEAS: I think executive producer is a pretty perfect word for that because I was doing such light work on everything and just looking at it as a whole body of work. I think the other producers that she worked on those two EPs like Leroy Clampett who did a bunch of work on her next couple of records, and Noah Conrad who obviously did “Moral of the Story” and who’s now done well with Role Model. So there was lots of great talent working with Ashe on that. And I think the main thing I was trying to do was cohesify the thing…keeping track that this person is working on this and they haven’t heard this other thing, and this person’s working on another thing. So all I did was tie little things together; It was like the difference between a paint coat and like a glaze. I just wanted there to be a shine on this thing.

DK: In 2021 the two of you wrote “Till Forever Falls Apart” and sang a duet on it. And you made a fun video with the two of you dancing together. Can you talk about creating that song and then making that video?

Ashe: Well I had the bones of “Till Forever Falls Apart,” and I knew I wanted to sing it with FINNEAS, but I didn’t know if he would be up for it. I feel like that’s my entire career, just throwing out ideas with FINNEAS and saying, “Do you want to work with on this idea,” and FINNEAS saying “Yeah I wanna work with you.” And he’s always being so sweet.

So with this song he said yes, and he wrote his second verse which of course has all the best lyrics in the song. And for the video, I said that I wanted to have a Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers thing going on, and I knew FINNEAS was an incredible dancer and I danced for a while. I did ballroom dancing and I was a gymnast, so I thought it would be interesting if we could use some of that in a video. But it was in the middle of Covid so I learned the dance with this instructor and we all had masks on, and FINNEAS learned it over Zoom. So the first time that we actually did the dance together was on site of the video shoot.

FINNEAS: Claudia (Sulewski) has a video of herself in our kitchen, looking out, because the only space I could practice the choreography was alone in our backyard. So she has this video of me alone, dipping, but not dipping anyone (laughs). She was like, “What the fuck are you doing? (laughs) And I was like, “This is all I can do. [During Covid] there was like 12 months of the goofiest things in the world. So funny.

Here’s the video of The Favors’ song, “David’s Brother.”

DK: Well, the dancing was terrific in the video and fun to watch. And now you’ve got The Favors album coming out. At what point did you decide to form The Favors and make this record?

Ashe: I think it was a nice experience to keep it hidden in a way that takes all the pressure off the result…because we weren’t doing it so that we could this big hit record to hit the world. I think for me, selfishly, I had really lost the joy in making music and I knew that working with FINNEAS was a place that I was super-fulfilled and got a lot of joy from. So it was like…if this all sucks, no worries, but it’s gonna be fun no matter what. So we kept it under wraps for a while, and then we realized we had something really special. So I think that was at the point where FINNEAS was like, “I think we might want to shop this and probably put it into the world,” and then we did.

DK: I like the first single you put out,, “The Little Mess You Made.” Can you talk about writing that song?

FINNEAS: That was a fun process and very indicative of involving a band. I had written most of that song and played it for Ashe as a long ballad. She said, “Cool,” but I was like, “Don’t you think we might have too many ballads on this record?” She said, “Yeah, but I like the song.” We were pretty deep in the record at this point, about eight songs in. Then we took it to David (Marinelli) who plays drums on the record and Ricky (Gourmet) who plays guitar. And we were like, “Do you want to try it?” I think Ashe was like, “What if we just did an uptempo version that we sped up and put some drums on it.” Then I started playing my piano through this delay pedal, so it goes like, clunk, clunk, clunk (for an echo effect), and it suddenly had this completely new life and energy. Then what had been this sad song suddenly became very angry and bitter. I liked the way that it transformed, and it wouldn’t have been transformed if it had just been me alone making it a room. I like it so much better now.

DK: One of my favorite songs on your album is “Times Square Jesus,” which has a beautiful melody and harmonies, with a unique title and lyric. What inspired you to write this song?

Here’s the video of The Favors’ song, “The Hudson.”

Ashe: That was a sweet song because we were probably 10 songs into the album, and we didn’t have just a guitar/vocal, intimate song like that. So we were in the room, the four of us, and FINNEAS was playing this gorgeous riff and it was the last missing puzzle on the record. And there’s this fictitious character that you might run into on Times Square, like Elmo or the Naked Cowboy.

FINNEAS: There’s like Bumblebee from the Transformers movie, and sometimes there’s Jack Sparrow (laughs).

Ashe: Imagine running into this sort of savior figure that’s like, “You must confess before you die.” And then you’re like letting out all your secrets. And this was one of my favorite sessions or days together because we sort of split off. We created this hook, and then we split off and started writing in little groups. It was me and Ricky, and David and FINNEAS went off, and it was this camp-like experience that I never had before. Then it came together and it’s a really special one to me.