In true underground tradition, Broken Water is a band that deliberately smears the boundaries between various genres - garage, punk, shoegaze, s***gaze - and in doing so, generates something wholly unique, exciting and loud as hell. Their recent West Coast tour was an ambitious undertaking, including stops in Montana, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, as well as South of the Border. I caught up with members Jon Hanna (guitar), Abby Ingram (bass) and Kanako Winkoop (drums) after a gig in Phoenix, Ariz., about halfway into their tour.

WEEKLY VOLCANO: At the time this interview runs, you guys will have already wrapped up this big tour, but right now you're still in the thick of it. How is it going so far?

JON HANNA: It's been going pretty well. We just played in Tijuana last night. That was a trip. It was at this bar that's right downtown, and I guess they've been having a bunch of punk shows lately. We played with (three) local Mexican bands. They were rad garage bands (San Pedro el Cortez, Donde Esta La Playa?, Speck).

VOLCANO: I've heard really good things about the Mexican garage scene, actually.

HANNA: Yeah it was a really good time. And it got really wild.

ABBY INGRAM: It was crazy last night (in Tijuana). There were these girls with megaphones, and while we were playing, I could hear this really loud singing - someone was singing along through a megaphone, and these guys were just talking over it. I asked someone from the first band, "I don't know what they're saying, but it sounded really cool. I hope they weren't s*** talking." He said, "No, they're, how do you call it? They're poets." It was just slam poetry over a megaphone.

VOLCANO: You guys booked this yourselves, right? How was that? Because in my experience - both with my own band and in talking to DIY buddies - it can be really daunting and really stressful.

HANNA: Yeah, it is really stressful and hard to do, and the internet helps with that, but it's like a full-time job booking a tour, even if it's just a three-week tour. It's always kind of up in the air as to what's actually happening, and it's something we started working on four months ago. Kanako actually took most of that on.

VOLCANO: Are you finding (or do you already know) like-minded bands at these shows up and down the coast?

HANNA: In San Francisco, we like to play with Grass Widow, but unfortunately they were already playing a show the night we were there. In Albuquerque, we're playing with a friend of ours' band called Scrams. The first week of this tour, we actually took another band from Olympia with us called Morgan and the Organ Donors. For the most part on this tour, we've just had the locals set up bands around us, and we don't really know much about them. It's interesting every night because you don't know what you're getting into.

VOLCANO: Your guys' music covers a lot of ground, sonically, so I wonder if that makes it easier to find other groups that feel like a good fit for a show together.

HANNA: Yeah, we've been lucky that we can get a good reception at a hardcore punk show, and also (from) more mellow (crowds) too. So that's been pretty beneficial towards us being able to get shows. Our sound has a pretty widespread appeal. It's not confined within a specific genre, I guess.