King Buffalo Interview – Sean McVay

By Dave Borgioli-Jones | May 2026

There’s something about the way King Buffalo balance atmosphere, fuzz and sheer heaviness that feels instantly captivating, wrapping listeners up in a huge warm blanket of sound. Through a run of immersive albums, unique live performances and a fiercely independent approach, the Rochester, New York three-piece have steadily built one of the most distinctive sounds in modern psychedelic rock.

NZRock caught up with Sean McVay (vocals, guitar, synth) to talk ambient influences, DIY, life on the road and recording Acheron underground in a cave.

I was listening to the early demos, and the band sounds quite different vocally compared to Orion, especially with the move from Randall’s vocals to yours. By the time you got to Orion, did it feel like the band had found a clearer musical identity or vision compared to those early recordings?

Sean: The demo all happened very fast. We formed under pretty tense circumstances after other bands we were involved with started falling apart. We were initially a four-piece, and instead of learning covers or other songs, we just started jamming and writing. We wrote the demo and immediately went on tour.

After that tour, our fourth member Randall, who’s still a very dear friend of ours, was going through some changes in Rochester and decided he wanted to move away and start a new chapter. We were happy for him, and we still have a great relationship with him, but suddenly we found ourselves as a three-piece.

We debated whether we wanted to add another member, but instead we just went back to jamming as the three of us and saw what naturally developed from that. Orion was really the product of that process.

To me, Orion feels like the true beginning of the band. It was very different from the demo. We had a fourth member then, the vocal duties were split, and the overall vibe was different. Orion was where we really found our sound as a three-piece and started building from there.

NZRock: Yeah. How does KING BUFFALO achieve such a huge sound as a three piece?

Sean: We also do some synth stuff, simple melodies that we can trigger with our feet, or I’ll take a break from guitar and doodle around with some keyboard lines. There are keys and synth in there to thicken things up and make the sound bigger.

I use a lot of reverb and delay. My bass player Dan uses a lot of effects as well. And over the past few years, probably right before or during Dead Star, I started experimenting with using a looper, so I do a lot of looping now as well.

NZRock: I’ve noticed that live, some of the songs become much more expansive and exploratory jams compared to the studio versions. Do you see KING BUFFALO moving further in that direction over time, or do you still prefer the more structured approach of the albums?

Sean: I think I would never really classify us as like a jam band. Quite frankly, we don’t have the chops to pull that off. Like a lot of jam bands tend to have very prolific, highly skilled players. And while we are proud of what we do and we work hard, you couldn’t throw a chart of a chord progression in front of us and say, “Here we go, let’s jam on this.” 

I’m the only one who had any sort of music school training, and I’m really self-taught primarily on guitar. So that’s not really our forte. I have kind of always approached things, as far as jam-bandy aspects, sort of like how Pink Floyd kind of had that element a little bit, or Black Sabbath, where they’re not quite jam bands, but there are some improvisational elements. And so that’s kind of more of the line we tend to walk. 

Ideally, I would love to have more improvisational things that we do. But at the same time, we like to be able to give a consistent show every night. And, you know, sometimes for us, to live on the edge of jamming for the whole time, I feel like some nights people wouldn’t necessarily be getting our best foot forward that way, you know?

NZRock: Does playing shows like Burning Man give you more opportunity to stretch songs out and explore them a bit more live?

Sean: Yeah, I mean, there are certain songs in particular in our set that we have built in sort of like “we’re going to stretch this out” or “we’re going to shorten it up” or things like that. So there are little things that we do pretty much anytime we play these songs so that it will be different than what we did the night before, but they kind of still always fall into the general structure and motif of the song.

NZRock: It feels like KING BUFFALO pulls from more than just heavy rock or metal genres. There’s a really strong atmospheric and ambient side to the music as well.

Sean: I tend to gravitate towards a lot of Brian Eno. I was getting into trip hop for a while too, with MASSIVE ATTACK and BOARDS OF CANADA, and PORTISHEAD, kind of going back, and even some of the more rave sort of music like CHEMICAL BROTHERS and early CRYSTAL METHOD and that sort of thing.

And then atmospheric stuff more specifically. There’s actually a radio program in the States that I listen to every Sunday, and it’s called Hearts of Space, and it’s been going on since I believe the ’70s or ’80s. It’s very long-running. Their tagline is “slow music for fast times.”

They have different focuses where one night it’ll be Tibetan throat singing, and then the next it’ll be video game soundtracks, all these different aspects. So there’s a lot of cool artists I’ve found through that, like soundtrack artists such as Paul Haslinger, that I really enjoy.

NZRock: Have you ever been approached to do a KEXP session? I could definitely see KING BUFFALO doing something great there.

Sean: We’ve never been offered to do that. That’s certainly something we’d be interested in. I think we had something set up somewhere at one point, but then it was in 2020, so that all got scrapped. We’ve done things like Jam in the Van, which is kind of similar. It’s not a radio station. It’s sort of a studio in a van and things like that. But yeah, KEXP would be great. We’ve had friends do it and they had great things to say about it. So maybe someday.

NZRock: That’d be cool. I was going to bring up Jam in the Van. I love that set, so much stuff going on in that van.

Sean: Yeah, yeah, it was. And especially, like, I’m a very tall guy, so it was pretty tight for me.

NZRock: The other day I was at a family gathering and the word “grifter” came up and I was like, that’s a KING BUFFALO song. How did that song come about lyrically?

Sean: But lyrically I consider it to be a pretty on-the-nose view of the current state of American politics, to put it bluntly. There’s even, tucked into the recording very low, an audio sample from a speech from a politician who I very much despise, referring to himself as the Grim Reaper. I consider him very much to be the Grim Reaper, so I tucked that in there. You said it, man. You said it. I didn’t.

NZRock: Yeah, things seem”interesting” politically over there at the moment.

Sean: Yeah. “Interesting” is a way to put it. Horrifying. Depressing. Yeah. A lot of feelings.

NZRock: At least it gives a lot of potential song material.

Sean: Yeah. But honestly, it’s hard to write about. Things are so beyond parody that it’s hard to write about. I found this when writing even like Dead Star and Burden of Restlessness. I dealt with this a lot. All of the things that are currently happening are things that were written as parody or science fiction in years past, but it’s real life now. So how do you write about this without… you know, it’s very hard to find how to do it.

NZRock: Are you thinking movies like Idiocracy? Because that comes up quite often.

Sean: Oh yeah, that’s one that gets referenced all the time. But even classics like Robocop and Running Man and all these things. It’s so like… I grew up watching these movies and I love these movies, and you feel like other people watched them too, but then they see the bad guy and they’re like, “That’s awesome. We should do that.” And it’s like, we watched the same movie, right? It’s the bad guy.

NZRock: I like to start my day with ‘Morning Song’ at the moment. Do you remember where you were when you wrote that song?

Sean: I was at home. Yeah. We had written the sort of fundamental rhythm track and the sort of structure and everything, and I was in my room trying to figure out… I had sort of a rough vocal line and then just kind of kept tweaking it. It’s like, what do I want this to be about? Thinking about it. And then ‘Morning Song,’ it just kind of came to be that. Kind of like a reverse lullaby. You know, to be comforting like a lullaby, but also for an awakening sort of first thing in the morning.

NZRock: I like that. Longing To Be The Mountain is one of my favourite 2010s albums.

Sean: Oh, thanks. Yeah, that was a big growth moment for us I think.

NZRock: What tracks that you’ve written are the most meaningful to you and why?

Sean: ‘Repeater’ has always been one of my favourites. I’m really proud of that and the way it came out. And then outside of that, there’s stuff on The Burden of Restlessness, Acheron and Regenerator that are some of my favourites. The Burden of Restlessness in particular, that album was very difficult for me to write, and I kind of touched on a lot of personal things that I was going through through the course of those three records. Especially for songs like ‘The Knocks,’ ‘Silverfish,’ ‘Burning,’ and ‘Hebetation.’ These are songs where I kind of was the most introspective and honest and intimate of the writing I usually do. It’s sort of the least allegorical, I think, of all of our records. It’s kind of a little more on the nose of like, I’m not doing well and let’s talk about it.

NZRock: You have epic album cover art from a range of artists. How do you pick these works? Were they made for the albums or did you find them?

Sean: Some of them, yes. So Acheron was made specifically for that. Our bass player did the artwork for Orion. A very talented artist, Adrian Dexter, did Longing to Be the Mountain, and those were created after the record, for the record. I think Repeater as well was another one that the artist did after the record was made. Dead Star was a very talented artist, Ryan T. Hancock, who we ended up stumbling across on the internet, liked it, and reached out to him. I believe that was a piece he’d already had, and then he worked with it to translate it to the album. Burden of Restlessness was a very talented and prolific Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński. That was one where my drummer had stumbled across some of his work, then once I saw the cover for what ended up becoming the cover of Burden of Restlessness, I was like, that is the cover. Thematically, it just fit perfectly. So we reached out to the estate and were able to use that for the record. Acheron was again Ryan T. Hancock. We reached out to him again for that. And then Regenerator, was by Miko Del Rosario. That was one my drummer also found and put together.

NZRock: Awesome. And so for future works, will you work with, let’s say, Ryan again, or do you have any ideas?

Sean: Oh yeah, we would love to work with Ryan again. When we repressed our demo from 2013, Ryan created an all-new album packaging for it. So yeah, we’d gladly use him again. We actually saw him when we were on tour in the UK. We saw him in Manchester and it was cool to get to see him in person because obviously we don’t get to do it that often. But yeah, we’ll certainly use Ryan again. I’m always sort of on the lookout. I have like a little stash of either business cards or graphics of things that I find from artists I like that I kind of just keep around. Someday maybe we’ll reach out if we have a project that we like their style for. But yeah, that’s certainly something that we spend a lot of time arguing about as a band.

NZRock: You’re doing a lot of DIY, right? You self-release pretty much everything, is what I can see. And will you continue to do that? You do all the production as well, right? Music production, mixing.

Sean: Yeah, for the most part. There’s been little things here and there that we’ve brought other people in for as far as production goes. But yeah, I’m not going to say that we would never ever work with a label or anything like that. We’ve just never had an offer. I mean, we have a label that we work with out of Germany that handles our European stuff, Stickman Records. We have a great relationship with them. But as far as in the States and North America, we’ve never quite had an offer or a deal that we were really excited about. So we’ve just kind of always done it ourselves. And it’s worked out very well for us so far. Scott, our drummer, really handles the bulk of that. He packages and ships the records and T-shirts himself when the orders come in online and stuff. So it’s really cool, and while I would never say never to anything in the future, right now we have a really good thing going. So we’re not itching to break that format.

NZRock: How did the Stickman signing come about? Were you looking for distro in Europe kind of thing?

Sean: I can’t quite remember. It’s a chicken or an egg situation in my head here. I can’t remember if it came about because we did a tour with ELDER and hit it off, and ELDER works with Stickman. Or if we got that tour partly because we were already doing stuff with Stickman. Either way, they’ve been very easy to work with. They’re great. Rolf and Jeanette are amazing people. And so we’re very happy with them.

NZRock: I see you’ve been touring with All Them Witches. It’s cool how you both sort of sprung up around a similar time.

Sean: They formed a little bit before us, I think a year or so before. But actually, that first tour that I told you about, when we wrote the demo and then went on tour immediately, it was with them. We all piled in. I think something had happened with their van and something had happened with our van. So I ended up convincing my uncle to let us borrow his RV and we piled both bands into our RV and drove around the country. It was crazy and awesome.

NZRock: Your track ‘Centurion’ has over 5 million listens on Spotify. You must be happy about that?

Sean: That’s pretty wild. Yeah, I never would have expected it. I don’t necessarily track these things, but every now and then I kind of peek around and I’m like, holy crap, you know, that’s pretty crazy. That’s not a number I would have ever expected.

NZRock: What does everyone in KING BUFFALO do when you’re not touring?

Sean: The band is all of our full-time job. Like I said, my drummer handles all of the shipping and everything, which is a substantial amount of work. My bass player, he’ll help out with graphic design and stuff. So when we’re home, it’s to catch up with family, kind of get back set up with your home life. We all have wives and, you know, our drummer has kids and we all have dogs and families and things. We try to kind of check back in and reconnect with our families and everything. And it’s a significant amount of time to be away, which can be hard. So when we get home, we like to sort of retouch base with all that and reconnect there and then get back on either writing, rehearsing, studio building, those things. Gear maintenance, you know, it’s a lot to maintain the equipment, the van. We’ve got to get the van fixed. The brakes are… you know, things like that. All the little things that pop up.

NZRock: Are you working to any kind of a timeframe for a new album or no?

Sean: Nothing that I would feel confident saying right now. I’ll say this, we very much are itching to have new material and to get stuff out there. We just haven’t had a chance to really get on it yet. I know we did… as we were kind of finishing up the live room to the studio, we jammed a little bit and we came up with ‘Balrog’ and put that out. And that came out really well. We were real pleased with it. And that was just sort of like testing the waters of the new room and seeing how we liked how it sounded, kind of just getting things underway. But we’re really itching to get some more… like an album. We want a new album out, but, you know, we’ve got a lot of work to do.

NZRock: As a guitarist, are you eternally chasing that perfect tone or do you think you’ve found it?

Sean: No, it’s laughable. I am always chasing it. My bandmates will kind of poke fun at me here and there because one day I’ll be in the studio or I’ll be at a show and I’ll be like, “This is the best guitar tone ever.” And then that’ll be like a soundcheck, and then the show will happen and I’ll be like, “That was the worst guitar tone ever.” It’s just constantly up and down. And, you know, it’s weird old gear. Things change day to day. Sometimes it feels like you’re playing a completely different amp or something. And whether it’s your fingers, whether it’s your brain, who knows. Whether it’s on tour, it’s always a struggle because the room is always different. So you’re kind of always at the mercy of whatever the room sounds like. But no, I’m always tinkering with stuff. I’m always scrolling on the used ads to see, like, oh, what cool weird used thing should I get now? And I have to stop myself, like, no, you don’t need this. But yeah, I’m always constantly… now I’m debating whether I want to switch amps again for like the millionth time.

NZRock: You recorded Acheron underground. What was that whole experience like and how did that even come about?

The experience was insane. My drummer in the past had been to this cave. It’s like a tourist attraction. You take an elevator down deep into this cave and there’s a stream running through it. He went with his family and he was like, it’s really cool. So it was a really cool bad idea. 

Part of the reason we did it there is because year round it’s a constant 52 degrees Fahrenheit (11°C), since it’s so far underground. We did it in the middle of winter because where we live we get a lot of snow, the weather’s all over the place. So we were like, well, we know it’s going to be a consistent 52 degrees.

But what we didn’t account for was the humidity. So as soon as we got down there, all the gear was soaked in moisture.

I had brought these big acoustic panels just as an emergency because I had never been in there and it could sound horrible. We were also recording and filming it all in one day, so you get one shot. It’s got to be okay.

It was so humid, you could squeeze the panels like sponges and water would come out. We were like, “We’ve got to get these out of here.”

It ended up being really cool, but it was a very long, stressful day. It’s something we’re really, really proud of, but I never want to do that again.