Almost Heaven Credit: Sebastian Saef
At the pearly gates of stardom, will your outfit unlock the door?
Almost Heaven originator and multi-instrumentalist Stefan Barraza arrives at our interview without his signature bug-eyed sunglasses – not a part of the plan, he assures me. His primary set broke in the car, granting me the rare treat of a glimpse behind the shades that the rest of you plebeians will get when the duo achieves widespread acclaim.
“When we accept some superficial award, I can go, ‘Hello, world,’” Barraza says, miming the grand reveal of his full visage with a freshly replaced, identical pair. It’s the kind of vision board manifestation that forms the lofty foundation of this emerging act. Alongside drummer Jaelyn Valero, the songwriter is leading Almost Heaven on a rock & roll performance campaign as they build their hybrid pop discography and launch a label bearing the same name as their forthcoming debut EP: Raw Cranium.
The name, undoubtedly unintentionally, serves as a pseudo artist statement for the pair and their collaborative approach to artistry. To hear them tell it, their live-layered electronic songs, drama-enhancing stage lighting, stylized music videos, and big-picture business ideas arrive concurrently, full-bodied and energetic, itching to crawl into the world like a newborn Athena cracking through Zeus’ skull.
Barraza and Valero, who also drums for Farmer’s Wife, were introduced by mutual friends and gelled instantly.
“We were grown in the same lab,” Valero says. They bonded over a love of asymmetrical dance music and performance-driven playing. Their youthful influences – hip-hop for Barraza and indie rock for Valero – are palpable in the fledgling act’s New Wave-gone-hyperpop sound, which borrows an indie sleaze emotional tenor with a club remix flair that shares a family tree with LCD Soundsystem and fellow sunglasses devotee the Dare.
“Britney meets KISS,” Barraza jokingly describes their sound. He’s quick to downplay the comparison, scrambling to create distance from anything resembling intentionality or inspiration at every turn. It’s an interesting move for a project that’s cultivated a following around electric performance and a cohesive visual aesthetic, elements that typically temper raw ideation with curation. Intuition and kinetic revelation feature heavily in their mythos. Almost Heaven’s latest singles, “hypnoxia” and “fever trying to blow,” released Nov. 21, demonstrate the kind of sonic growth expected from a developing duo learning each other’s strengths and audience reactions.
“Jaelyn has elevated everything about this project: soundwise, lookswise, aesthetic, visual approachwise, everything,” Barraza says. “Nonetheless, I think it’s maintained this rawness.”
Barraza has a background in music video production, which he swiftly brought to Almost Heaven’s growing discography, and Valero launched a zine, Locket, this past spring. These multifaceted creatives, experienced in organizational and design-based skills that invite direction and reflection, find little place for those talents in discussing their music project.
“It’s more like: See a bigger picture ahead and then let things fall into place to get to that picture,” Barraza tells me.
Despite whatever divine intervention led them to their first mini tour and buzzy lineup slots, like the one they’ll occupy at Howdy Gals’ upcoming eighth anniversary on Dec. 6, Dallas Cawley is responsible for some wind beneath their wings.
The entrepreneur and professional consultant long harbored a dream of starting a label. When he met Barraza shortly after the El Paso native moved to Austin, he was impressed by his look and confidence: “‘I make music,’” he remembers Barraza telling him. “‘The good kind.’”
An internet search confirmed his talent and Cawley hopped onboard, helping Almost Heaven establish Raw Cranium as an LLC to protect their intellectual property and provide a springboard for what they all dream will become a multimedia collective in the style of many feeder labels that’ve come before.
“We were put into a vortex,” Barraza says.
“We really hit the ground running,” Valero agrees.
“And not even running – sprinting at full speed before stretching,” says Barraza.
They aren’t slowing down to stretch anytime soon. Still soaring on a leap of faith, propelled by a building, hype-fed tailwind, Almost Heaven is following their guts in a furious ascent.
Almost Heaven performs at Howdy Gals’ Eighth Anniversary at Hole in the Wall on Dec. 6.
This article appears in December 5 • 2025.
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