The Greeting Committee is finding peace in growing up

“Rising up, I assumed I needed to be locked into this type of unhappiness,” she says over Zoom from her girlfriend’s home in Reston, Va. “Loads of indie music is that this tortured artist kind of stereotype, and I didn’t wish to be a part of that anymore. I actually wished to prioritize my happiness.”

It’s that newfound pleasure that seeps into latest single “Hopscotch,” an upbeat pop spin for a band that’s used to leaning on strings, which lets Sartino’s wealthy vocals shine. “I used to be devoted to annihilation of self in consumption of spoon-fed nothing,” she sings. “If I get comfortable, will you forgive me?”

“Hopscotch” could sound like a breakup tune, and in a approach, it’s. Two members left the previous four-piece inside the final 12 months after “numerous band remedy,” based on Sartino. With simply her and bassist Pierce Turcotte remaining from the unique group, she says, she desires to “have enjoyable writing once more.”

“Whenever you’re 15 making music, that’s actually your solely aim,” she says. “After which it turns into your profession, and quite a bit on the road. We’re virtually attending to go backwards now, visiting the basics of music and what it’s that introduced us to music within the first place.”

For Sartino, which means retrospection; she listens again to previous songs — together with “Palms Down,” a 2015 launch with practically 28 million Spotify streams — with nostalgia. Her discography is, for her, like a scrapbook of her teenage years.

“She sounds so completely different,” Sartino says, referring to her voice on a few of the Greeting Committee’s first releases. “She sounds so younger. It feels virtually like a stranger, however on this type of candy approach. I strive to have a look at it with love, however typically I do cringe.”

Regardless of the brand new sound, Sartino (a self-described “hopeless romantic”) continues to be writing love songs with the eagerness of youth. On the Greeting Committee’s final D.C. present, a fan proposed to their accomplice onstage. Fanatics stroll down the aisle at their weddings to “Palms Down.”

“I like attending to be part of folks’s moments like that,” she says. “I really feel very fortunate that we get to be the soundtrack to so many individuals’s love lives … and all the ups and downs of life typically.”

Whereas the band itself hasn’t averted these turbulent occasions, Sartino says she’s grateful for what it’s allowed her to study herself.

“I’m like, ‘Oh, hey, we did that.’ I want a break,” she says as her mini goldendoodle, Clementine, jumps onto her lap. “I want some happiness. I want some peace right here.”

Dec. 9 at 7 p.m. (doorways open) on the Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. blackcatdc.com. $20-$25.